Is the dream of one global internet still alive?
Increasingly, moves by governments to filter and restrict content are threatening to fragment the system created with the promise of connecting the world with a largely unified body of content.
China for years has walled off some western services, and the fragmentation may be accelerating with regulations being imposed elsewhere, say analysts.
This is leading to a "splinternet," a term circulated for a decade or more but gaining more traction in recent months.
"The internet is already fragmented in material ways, but each regulator around the world thinks they know how to fix the internet," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University.
"I think we will see a tsunami of regulations that will lead to a further splintering of the internet."
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WNU Editor: I did a post about a decade ago where I felt that the golden age of the internet, with its diverse content and freedoms, was coming to an end. Governments by their nature like to control and regulate human activities, and the internet was a frontier that they had no control of when it exploded in the 1990s until now.
