Vint Cerf, regulation and the new Wild West

Vint Cerf, one of the scientists credited with helping to creat the internet and now in the pay of Google, was interviewed on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, discussing the regulation of the internet.

Broadly, he was put on there to argue against regulation. Although we're delighted to see the issue getting air time, the level of the debate was not as high as it could have been. o be fair to John Humphreys though, it was Vint Cerf who was most at fault for not engaging with the question being put to him.

The idea that the internet is not currently 'regulated' is a bit daft. Of course it is, in many of the same ways that any other form of communication is. Harrassing or abusing someone by email is as much a crime as doing it by phone, if a little harder to detect.

But Cerf, responding to accusations that You Tube (owned by Google) often showcased inappropriate matetrial, said that the website would always stay within the law, and that was enough. Very true, the company cannot really be accused of flagrant abuse of the law (leaving copyright aside for the moment).

He also says that parents can filter internet searches to prevent certain material from being available to children (provided the filters are effective).

Is this enough? After all, we don't ask parents to filter pre-watershed television broadcasting to stop children seeing sex and violence. Instead we impose a rule to say that it can't be shown. When similar things appear on the web, why expect parents (who may not have the know-how to filter) to take on this extra responsibility?

Cerf says the web is a mirror of our society, and can't be divorced from what happens in the real world. Of course it can - China does it, with Google's full complicity.

In my opinion it is Cerf who is trying to divorce the web from the real world. In the real world, responsible people take care of the vulnerable and protect the innocent. We do this within our families, our workplaces, and our media - or at least we try to.

Cerf is suggesting that the web is detached from all of this, and not subject to these norms.

He's right to say the web is the greatest communication tool we've ever seen. Untold opportunities exist there - just like they said about the wild west.