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Zuckerberg's claim -- which he's already pointed out involved taking his words out of context -- was just that there could be socially useful reasons why younger people might be helped if they could have accounts, but over aggressive internet controls prevent that. Again, that seems to argue against control, not for it.

The internet does not exist as untouchable. Morality and the rule of law do apply to the actions people do there. The question is whether those laws are appropriate. In many cases, it appears they're not.

the fallacy is not that these laws are obsolete because they're difficult to enforce. It's that they're obsolete because many of them don't make any sense, such as these injunctions that seek to merely protect the rich and famous from having their own embarrassing actions discussed.

ome of these laws aren't "difficult" to enforce, they're impossible to enforce. And it's not because the internet is some "wild west," but because it's a very different platform of communication -- a many to many platform, which the world has not had before. We've had one-to-one and one-to-many forms of communication, but a many-to-many platform really does change some important fundamentals when it comes to speech. Far more important are the questions of internet access to unsuitable material, especially but not solely by children, as well as the danger to children from inadequately policed social media. Merely to write such a sentence is to invite outrage in some quarters, but these issues are all too easy for a society to ignore until they return to haunt us. And the proper response, if there is "unsuitable" (unsuitable to whom, by the way?) content is to go after those who produced and distributed it. Not to seek to block access and sweep it under the rug. That's denial. Let's live in reality.

Kettle talks about spam and pornography. Yet, I almost never see spam any more. Why? Because technologists came in and built filters. I never see pornography either. And not because of any laws or filters, but because the websites I surf don't display any, and contrary to the myth makers, it's pretty difficult to "accidentally" run into porn. I do a lot of surfing and can't recall ever accidentally coming across any.

Mr. Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia and frequent contributor to The Chronicle Review, reminds readers that they aren't consumers of Google's offerings. Rather, their use of Google's services is the product it sells to advertisers. Both books look at the continuing evolution of the Google Books settlement as a key test of how far the company's reach could extend and a sign of how the perception of Google has changed from that of scrappy upstart with a clever motto, "Don't be evil," to global behemoth accused by some of being just that.

Is the Internet on its way to getting monopolized? That question underlies Tim Wu's The Master Switch. The eccentric Columbia Law School professor—he's known to dress up as a blue bear at the annual Burning Man festival—recounts how ruthless companies consolidated their power over earlier information industries like the telephone, radio, and film. So which tech giant seems likely to grab control of the net?

it feels like we're perpetually on the verge of a tipping point, when e-books will overtake print books as a source of revenue for publishers. John B. Thompson, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge, analyzes the inner workings of the contemporary trade-publishing industry. (He did the same for scholarly publishing in an earlier work, Books in the Digital Age.) Mr. Thompson examines the roles played by agents, editors, and authors as well as differences among small, medium, and large publishing operations, and he probes under the surface of the great digital shift. We're too hung up on the form of the book, he argues: "A revolution has taken place in publishing, but it is a revolution in the process rather than a revolution in the product."

technology is actually doing far more to bolster authoritarian regimes than to overturn them, writes Evgeny Morozov in this sharp reality check on the media-fueled notion that information is making everybody free. Mr. Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, points out that the Iranian government posted "most wanted" pictures of protesters on the Web, leading to several arrests. The Muslim Brotherhood blogs actively in Egypt. And China pays people to make pro-authority statements on the Internet, paying a few cents for each endorsement. The Twitter revolution, in this book, is "overblown and completely unsubstantiated rhetoric."

Internet is rewiring our brains and short-circuiting our ability to think. And that has big consequences for teaching, he told The Chronicle last year: "The assumption that the more media, the more messaging, the more social networking you can bring in will lead to better educational outcomes is not only dubious but in many cases is probably just wrong."

The Access guide provides tips for keeping communications safer in such a climate. It recommends Gmail, for example, because it uses a secure connection by default, known as HTTPS, like at banking Web sites; Hotmail provides HTTPS as an option, and Facebook began offering it in January. The guide also explains how to disguise browsing histories and how to gain access to banned sites.

Implicitly two separate debates are being collapsed here and I would argue that we need to separate both. The first one relates to the stability of the internet as an information and communication infrastructure because of the way we collectively use that infrastructure. The second debate is whether ISPs and telecommunication companies should be allowed to differentiate in their pricing between different levels of quality of access, both towards consumers and content providers.

Just as with freedom of speech, circumstances can be found in which the principle while still cherished and upheld, can be adapted and constrained to some extent. To paraphrase Tim Wu (2008), the aspiration should still be ‘to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally’, but maybe some forms of content should be treated more equally than others in order to guarantee an excellent quality of service for all. However, the societal and political implications of this need to be thought through in detail and as with freedom of speech itself, it will, I believe, require strict regulation and conditions.

In regards to the first debate on internet stability, a case can be made for allowing internet operators to differentiate between different types of data with different needs – if for any reason the quality of service of the internet as a whole cannot be guaranteed anymore. 

Concerning the second debate on differential pricing, it is fair to say that from a public interest and civic liberty perspective the consolidation and institutionalization of a commercially driven two-tiered internet is not acceptable and impossible to legitimate. As is allowing operators to differentiate in the quality of provision of certain kind of content above others.  A core principle such as net neutrality should never be relinquished for the sake of private interests and profit-making strategies – on behalf of industry or for others. If we need to compromise on net neutrality it would always have to be partial, to be circumscribed and only to improve the quality of service for all, not just for the few who can afford it.

Separating these two debates exposes the crux of the current net-neutrality debate. In essence, we are being urged to give up on the principle of net-neutrality to guarantee a good quality of service.  However, this argument is actually a pre-text for the telecom industry to make content-providers pay for the facilitation of access to their audiences – the internet subscribers. And this again can be linked to another debate being waged amongst content providers: how do we make internet users pay for the content they access online? I won’t open that can of worms here, but I will make my point clear.  Telecommunication industry efforts to make content providers pay for access to their audiences do not offer legitimate reasons to suspend the first amendment of the internet.