Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google chief Eric Schmidt have joined Internet activists in speaking against over-regulation of the Internet.
Internet activists say that governments’ attempts to control the Web will be bypassed and become irrelevant.
Schmidt and Zuckerberg are leading a group of Internet entrepreneurs to the eG8 summit in Paris, slated to begin on Thursday.
They have warned governments that over-regulation of the Internet could stifle its virtues, adding that governments cannot be selective about aspects of the Web.
Zuckerberg said, "People tell me on the one hand ‘It’s great you played such a big role in the Arab spring [uprisings], but it’s also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people’."
"But it’s hard to have one without the other. You can’t isolate some things you like about the Internet and control other things that you don’t."
Schmidt warned the governments saying, "Technology will move faster than governments, so don’t legislate before you understand the consequences". He had earlier said that governments should not follow the regressive policy of the Chinese to regulate the Internet.
The new role that the Internet has played in the Arab uprisings, Wikileaks disclosures and injunctions have alerted governments the world over. At the same time there are growing concerns around the world about government censorship.
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president and CEO Gary Shapiro was among the 800 technology executives at the eG8 summit who heard French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s opening address calling for greater regulation of the Internet.
In response, Shapiro warned that Internet regulation will kill innovation.
Shapiro said, "President Sarkozy’s call for global regulation of the Internet must be resisted as dangerous and would stifle and smother innovation. This is absolutely the wrong approach to growing our United States and global economies. Furthermore, misguided laws could harm emerging democracies and movements, such as in Egypt, that rely heavily on the Internet and social networks to affect change."
"In the U.S. we also face calls from legacy industries to censor or regulate the Internet. We must resist these demands. Too much is at stake for America and the world to allow the Internet to be constricted by misguided governmental attempts to control content. The men and women on the leading edge of technological innovation are smart enough to see the potential problems, and innovation itself will do a much more effective job at addressing potential problems than behind-the-curve government officials could ever hope to do themselves. President Obama must lead the nation and the world by resisting the well-meaning but short sighted calls to regulate the Internet."
Free speech group Reporters without Borders chief Jean-Francois Julliard said "G-8 governments should say very clearly for once that Internet access is a fundamental human right."
Julliard added that over 60 countries now censor the Internet in some form or the other, and that number is growing.
In his opening address at the first ever e-G8 forum, the French President had said that countries cannot allow completely unchecked Internet use.
Sarkozy told the online entrepreneurs, "The world you represent is not a parallel universe where legal and moral rules and more generally all the basic rules that govern society in democratic countries do not apply."
