Sometimes I just hate myself for being so picky, especially since I agree with you that this whole 'controversy' is silly. So I don't blame you if you roll your eyes on this and think it pedantic, but (ahem) (1) There is no content regulation on the Internet as a whole, though some governments may impose filtering restrictions. There is no US governmental agency that rules the net. That's not to say you can't get busted for child porn or sued by the RIAA for downloading music, that can happen anywhere. (2) The Internet was not released to the general public for 'web development.' Though not as pervasive as today, the general public had access to the Internet way before the web was even invented. We used gophers for file content, ftp for transferring files, telnet to get from one computer to the other, and usually something like Pine for email. The 'web' is a relatively recent addition. Some people are nostalgic enough to think it was better then.
In terms of this ad, good Lord, get over it. If you paid for this content, they might not need to have advertisements. But you didn't, so you really don't have a say. If you don't like it, talk with your feet and walk away.
Okay, now you're being super-nit picky and semantic. And a bit sad, really.
I put the part about The Internet being released to the general public for web development
in quotes expressly so that it would be understood that I was
generalizing. You've now taken it totally out of context and are showing off. I should have guessed you were going to pick up that stick and proceed to beat around the bush with it.
Here are the facts:
The
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (
DARPA) is an
agency of the
United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new
technology for use by the
military.
DARPA developed the Internet. I've been to the
Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and seen the developers' photos and read their biographies, although I don't remember their names. I'm
sure you'll help me with that.
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/cerf.shtml
Later, HTTP and the protocols for developing the web were created, and the Internet became available for use by the general public when previously, it
wasn't.
Furthermore, the government
HAS, in fact, restricted the use of the Internet, along with Google; the Chinese government has restricted many parts of access to the Internet to Chinese citizens (called "The Great Firewall of China"), and
have also done so in the United States. In schools, for one.
From a 2006 post by
Jeremy Reimer,
"Stung by criticism after an MSN blog was pulled that contained criticism of the Chinese government, Microsoft has responded with an official press release outlining company policy on any future incidents of this nature.
The company will now only remove access to blog content when it receives a legally binding notice [emphasis mine]
(such as a court order) from the government indicating that the material contravenes local laws, and will only block access from users inside the country in question. In addition, users that have been blocked from content will be informed of the reasons for the restrictions."
I was around when all but the very beginning of this was going on. Although (
again) I AM NOT AN EXPERT, my father has been a computer science professor all of my life, and I grew up with a much better working knowledge of what was going on in computers and networking than
most kids did.
I'm thoroughly familiar with Gopher, FTP, Fetch, and the pre (and post) web protocols like the Usenet, because I not only used them, but helped run a BBS. One of the reasons that many are nostalgic for this time is that if the government did (hypothetically) shut down the free web, we would have very little recourse, and most of the people that blog and email and use the net these days would have no idea what to do. This is a pretty common conspiracy theory that is being bandied about these days--that might signal the Orwellian crackdown that the patriot groups are expecting along with martial law and FEMA camps.
In fact, there ARE computer crimes divisions in various departments of the government (see the great book
The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling for details) that have authority over the Internet. (I think "rule the Internet" is a horrible choice of words.) While it's left largely to the private sector (eBay is expected to regulate itself,
et al) to self-police, the same segments of society that police the offline also do so in the online world (FBI, police departments, local, county, state, federal, etc.).
Of
course there are divisions of the alphabet agencies whose sole purpose is to deal with people that abuse the system (from the earliest phone phreaks and people that were looking around in the phone system to Gary McKinnon, and the nefarious hackers that sell State secrets to foreign governments in between), many of these agencies had to develop as the new technology developed, and which ones had jurisdiction over these crimes changed hands as laws were passed, since the law enforcement side of it was
generally behind the curve of the criminal element of it.
This is stuff that most of us already know.
The way the free web was let to develop (see the
Clean Slate Project) required that once people started screwing around with it and trying to test the boundaries of it, somebody had to deal with it. So, government on all levels stepped up to the plate and developed their own ways of doing so. So, yes, there is
absolutely regulation of the Internet (after the fact, largely, rather than before, which is what we think of when we hear the word regulation, especially in terms of broadcast regulation).
Those are the
facts. If you want to argue with my
interpretation of the facts, please, feel free. Knock yourself out.
(know where you're coming from though 
