Vinton Cerf, CircleID Internet Governance, 2004 November 04
"In its earlier years, the Internet was simply a tool for the research and education community to explore new ways of sharing computing power, software, and information by way of electronic mail (which became a popular application around 1971 on one of the Internet's predecessors, the ARPANET). The approximately one billion users of the Internet today have the same range of interests as the general population in most countries. The side-effect of this wide spread use is that abuses have arisen that are not unlike the kinds of abuses one finds in other societal settings. Fraud, misinformation, harassment, illegal transactions, theft of resources, breaking and entering (hacking into computers), copyright infringement, and many other exact or approximate electronic analogs of improper behavior can be found on the Internet. Such problems plainly raise public policy concerns among governments and stimulated much interest during the many talks associated with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
"The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the Internet represents an important area of national interest for all countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other telecommunications media previously invented.
Continues at http://www.circleid.com/article/795_0_1_0_C/
