CONTENT CONTROL
Content was another area in which the regulation debate was exceptionally heated. While most of the world's major players extolled the Internet as a great leveler and democratizing force and a tool for the free exchange of information, there were numerous efforts by regulators all over the world to restrict certain kinds of access, and sometimes these efforts spiraled into international controversies. Regulators in the United States and elsewhere have been vigilant in trying to stamp out, or at least restrict access to, generally offensive materials such as child pornography on the Web, but sometimes these actions veered too close to the abridgement of free speech and free flow of information for civil libertarians to stomach. One highly publicized case occurred in the early 2000s when the French government worked to restrict French Web surfers' access to sites containing Nazi content and paraphernalia, a move that many international observers decried as excessively restrictive and a dangerous precedent. Critics pointed out that not only should anyone have the right to express beliefs, particularly political beliefs, on the Internet, but Web surfers should have the right to visit such sites, and that their visits, moreover, couldn't be construed automatically as endorsement of the views expressed.
In other parts of the world, such as China, government suspicions of potentially subversive foreign materials led them to restrict access to Web content stemming from outside the government's own network. Such cases highlighted the tensions born of the Internet's dissolving borders, which some viewed as the dissolution of national sovereignty.
Other content that continually wrought tension between and among regulators, consumers, and businesses included sites depicting violence or providing information about weaponry, online gambling sites, and various shades of online pornography. In all these cases, approaches differed as to the degree and nature of regulatory involvement.
In general, the European Union opted for the self-regulation of online content. The EU's plan to combat illegal and harmful content encouraged companies, industries, and Internet users to devise and enforce their own safety provisions, implement content filtering systems, generate awareness about responsible Web surfing and online content, and facilitate harmony in international standards. In that spirit, a coalition of European companies launched the Internet Content Rating for Europe (INCORE) initiative.
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