Facebook boss: don’t regulate us
FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg defended the internet’s freedom of speech to world leaders at the Group of Eight summit in France yesterday.
Smart-suited Zuckerberg (below) and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt both hit back at plans by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to regulate the world wide web, arguing that it aided democracy and free expression.
The G8 has proposed that the internet is policed more stringently, arguing that intellectual property and privacy need to be protected.
But the two internet moguls said regulation would hinder innovation.
At a meeting at the Deauville summit on the issue, Zuckerberg described the web as “really a powerful force for giving people a voice.”
“You can’t isolate some things you like about the internet, and control other things you don’t,” he said. Schmidt said: “The industry as a whole is concerned that premature regulation…can shut off whole new industries, whole new opportunities.”