Eric Schmidt Quotes

I think we should not control the Internet.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain as an engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe—or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests.

Unfortunately, opponents of online speech have decided to punish our changing technological world.

Calling China's online censorship system a 'Great Firewall' is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools.

Allowing a handful of broadband carriers to determine what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the features that have made the Internet such a success, and could permanently compromise the Internet as a platform for the free exchange of information, commerce, and ideas.

China's Internet will continue to be policed and controlled, information filtered, sites prohibited, noncompliant search engines excluded, and sensitive search words disallowed. And where China goes, others, also informed by different values, are already and will follow.

We think of the Internet as a bottom-up phenomenon. There are people and countries that would like to treat it as a top-down institution; Americans resist that and I think rightfully so. It would cramp our style in terms of creativity, innovation, and so forth.

Without net neutrality protections, the Internet would no longer be a free and open ecosystem for innovation.

The public should have access to unfettered communication and commerce, and the Internet is increasingly the medium where that takes place.

The Internet freedom issue we need to focus on is network neutrality.

Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast, and print outlets as we organize for change.

One of the great debates about the Internet is whether it is making people more or less free.

The most important thing to remember here is that the Internet is not broken, and all of the innovation that we've seen since inception has been based on it being free and open.

Now look: I love Twitter. But let's not kid ourselves; when it comes to a free and open Internet, Twitter is a part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

As long as a government can come and shoot you, you can't jump on the Internet to freedom.

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.

Net Neutrality is what makes the Internet so great - and so vital for innovation and creativity.

Internet freedom is a bit of a Rorschach test: it means different things to different people.

The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done.

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.

With Storytelling, at least, it's explicit: this is what the censors say American citizens, no matter what age, are not permitted to see, even though it can be seen by other people all over the world. I suppose you could call it a political statement.

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.