Ben Huh Quotes

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.

I think we should not control the Internet.

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

The early idealists and companies and governments have all assumed that the Internet will bring freedom. Yet China proves that this is not the case.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

The user in China wants the same thing that any Internet user wants - privacy in conversations, maximum access to information, and the ability to speak their minds online.

If the U.N. were to be successful in its efforts to control the Internet, countries where human rights records range from questionable to criminal could be put in charge of determining what is and is not allowed to appear online.

One repressive state after another has had to face the dilemma of wanting abundant Internet for economic advancement, while ruing the ways in which its citizens can become empowered to express themselves fearlessly.

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

To uphold state security China like many other countries of the world has placed some restrictions on the Internet to protect the freedom of the majority of the people.

The Internet in China is fully open and the Chinese Government manages the Internet according to the law. As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don’t watch what you cannot watch.

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.

We now expect Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies to police the Internet for dangerous and illegal material - violent, terrorist, criminal - and some democratic governments require them to do so. But what if they did decide to repress material for political reasons? How would we know?

I have worked on open Internet, speech, and entrepreneurship issues for years.

Even though the Internet touches every part of our lives, one person is to blame for potentially destroying its potential for innovation and freedom of expression: former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the 'Net' doesn't become the site for technological book burning.

Experience has shown us that attempts to control the Internet will invariably fail. We should be instructed by the failed efforts of China to regulate political content, the efforts of America to regulate Internet gambling, or the efforts of Australia to regulate certain speech. By its very nature, the Internet will always resist such controls.

We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.

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

The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?

No matter what you do, any country in the world is going to have the ability to set its own rules internally. Any country in the world can pull the plug. It's not a question of technical issues, it's not a question of right or wrong, it's not a question of whether global Internet governance is right or wrong. It's just with us.

It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the Internet as a threat in part because they see the U.S. government behind the Internet.

I fear that light touch regulations that have allowed the Internet to prosper will now be replaced by a heavy hand that stifles innovation and does not adapt well to change. The Internet is not broken.

We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.

Reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.