Governments Needed to Avoid Internet Anarchy, Says French President

Posted 05/24/2011 at 12:39pm | by Brad Chacos

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After France turned its regulatory wrath on women in Islamic headgear, the country needed a new boogeyman to harass. For a while, we weren't sure who their over-zealous regulators were going to turn their nitpicky attention towards. The new nemesis was identified today after French President Nicolas Sarkozy spent the afternoon riling the digital elite at the e-G8 conference in Paris, saying that governments needed to take a stronger hand in directing the Internet.

“Nobody should forget that these governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies," Sarkozy said made his case for further government intervention on the Net. "To forget this is to risk democratic chaos and hence anarchy.”

Naturally, this didn't go over well with the assembled crowd of technological CEOs and industry thought leaders. FT.com reports that after Sarkozy's initial hostile volley, the panel speakers who defended the Net's openness and crucial role as a free-speech platform drew the most applause from the crowd. The heads of several major companies warned Sarkozy to cool his jets, and Vivendi's Jean-Bernard Levy went so far as to calling the European Union's "hyper regulation" a "major threat" to the Internet.

Sarkozy even played the terrorist card after being challenged to "Do no harm" to the Internet. "Do you mean bringing up the matter of security from terrorism is harm, is that harmful?" Sarkozy fired back, hopefully to derisive sneers.