Internet By Government? Yes and No.

Well, it was bound to be suggested sooner or later: A leading anti-virus researcher has proposed that the only way to preserve the Internet for the future is by governments around the world controlling it, including instituting formal usage rules that are enforced by Internet police and compelling users to obtain licenses to drive the information superhighway.

If researcher Eugene Kaspersky's alarm becomes actuality and a movement kicks up with the result that governments do take control of the Internet, the question before the house might well be "Will that give governments their own license - a license to control and censor Internet content and information they just happen to find not to their liking, for any reason?"

Attorney J.D. Obenberger said the answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes - unless you want the Internet to become merely utilitarian.

"The framers of the Constitution believed government is inherently evil and is justified only to the extent that its power is necessary. I value the right to anonymous speech, and so do the federal courts," Obenberger said. "Licensing of Internet users is anathema to freedom. The ultimate victim would be society, as it is deprived of the value of speech that is embarrassing or dangerous to express."

Eugene Kapersky, anti-virus research chief of Kaspersky Labs of Moscow, sees the issue another way. He told attendees at the CeBIT trade show here, "The Internet today is like a road without policemen and driving licenses." That means the only way to keep the Net from collapsing under the weight of worms, viruses, and cyberattacks is for the world's governments to control it, he said.

"If we want to have a big public network like the Internet in the future," Kaspersky said to a gathering of reporters at the trade show, "there must be very strict usage rules. If we don't have those, the Internet will die." He also warned about a new era of global cyberattacks that could be well beyond anti-virus experts' ability to repel or eliminate.

Kaspersky told the gathering fast-spreading Web worms have cut the window of opportunity for protection measures to a day or two, and the window is and getting smaller. "In the future, anti-virus companies won't be able to deliver protection on time," he told reporters. "We have to prepare for a scenario one day, this year or next year, that will visibly slow down the global Internet."

Obenberger said that just as any measure or weapon inspires countermeasures soon enough in war, so it is with the Internet. "As a technological system, the Internet is no different," he said. "The solution to the problems [Kaspersky sees] will have to be technological. We can deal with any virus and preserve the Internet. But if we lose the Internet as a robust forum of essentially unregulated speech, the world will have been deprived of the thing that offers the greatest hope for the true spiritual transformation of our race.

"The Internet changes people and the way we look at the world and people in other lands, because it brings us all intimately close and promotes mutual understanding," Obenberger continued. "It changes society because of that attribute, and for many other reasons. Let people, not government, dominate the face of this incredibly wonderful thing, the Internet, and it will transform, inspire, and enrich all of us. Let government control it, and it will become starkly utilitarian and discourage our journey together to discover the origin and fate of humankind."