There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Internet provides the access to resources, so it's incumbent upon the people who control those resources to make sure that the economic engine stays intact.
The important thing to remember with the Internet is that there are large companies that have an interest in controlling how information flows in it. They're very effective at lobbying Congress, and that pattern has locked down other communication media in the past. And it will happen again unless we do something about it.
The internet has become one of the motors of the 21st century economy, allowing all of us to reach a global audience at a click of a mouse and creating hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs.
What the Internet has done is it has decentralised power.
The thing we have to be careful of is that the Internet is a global communications medium, and if one country tips the balance in regulating its use or regulating what companies or individuals do on the web, it could have an economic impact that might be unintended, quite frankly, by the regulations themselves.
I think the Internet's been a tremendous tool in terms of breaking down the power structure of information and entertainment, particularly at a time when so much information and entertainment were in the hands of so few people, with multinationals owning everything.
Our belief is that it is a basket of well-diversified companies that are playing the Internet, but are not direct Internet companies.
If multi-stakeholder Internet governance is to survive an endless series of challenges, its champions must commit to serving the interests and protecting the rights of all Internet users around the world, particularly those in developing countries where Internet use is growing fastest.
We are having Internet Governance discussions and meetings and a very large number of people are discussing the future of the Internet who have no clue as to what the Internet is except that it is important and that they have to be involved.
We are going after a targeted group of businesses that are creating opportunities for themselves using other people's property. The Internet has very little to do with this.