To regulate or not to regulate the Internet - Research Paper Example

Many politicians and businesses have also embraced the internet in order to sell a better image of themselves to the public. Politicians use the internet for their campaigns because it has many users and these will be able to access the message easily, which the politicians are trying to pass across. Businesses on the other hand are using the internet not only for advertising their products but also for transactions between them and their customers. However, despite the good that the internet has brought, there are also some very malicious activities that go on within it, which have raised a great debate concerning internet regulation in many countries (Yang 359).

In this paper therefore, we shall look at some of the reasons why the internet should be regulated and why it should not be regulated on the political and business arena. It is our belief that the internet should indeed be regulated in the political and business arena, especially in the latter. In the business arena, the internet should be regulated because there are so many businesses, which conduct their activities through the internet, and many do this without any form of government oversight.

This means that some businesses might give false information about their products online and after the customer pays for them, he finds that he receives a product of lesser quality from what he paid for. Furthermore, it is easy for false business websites to be set up online with the intention of defrauding those people who fall into their clutches of their money. Online payment methods have made it easier for people to lose their money to false business schemes and to prevent such things from happening; governments all over the world should take steps to regulate the business activities that take place on the internet to protect their citizens.

There should also be internet regulations on the political arena because even though the freedom of expression is a fundamental right to all, some politicians tend to propagate agendas which may be harmful to other people either within their own countries or without. For example, when some politicians propagate racist views online claiming that their own race or ethnic group is far more superior to all the others. If a politician in a multiethnic and multicultural society does this, then there is a possibility that his statements will most likely cause friction between the ethnic groups in this society.

To prevent this, the government of such a society should put very strict regulations especially on websites, which encourage disunity within the society, and those who run such sites should be prosecuted and given stiff sentences to discourage others from doing the same (Wu 24 – 43). Governments should therefore take steps to ensure that content from the political arena is regulated over the internet because political news tends to spread very fast online and it is never known who will be able to access it and what its precise consequences will be.

The capability of internet service providers to self-regulate is very much open to question because the internet is so wide and encompasses the entire world and it would be very difficult for a single internet service provider to be able to regulate it. There is however, some countries, such as the United Kingdom, where internet service