Interesting debate. As a general point, I think one of the problems here is that the vast majority of politicians (in Europe & the USA) know next to nothing about the net, or computers in general, and tend to believe what they are told by their advisors. For example Tony Blair barely knows how to switch a PC on, let alone how to use it. This can lead to highly entertaining moments when his hand written notes are miss transcribed :)
This should begin to change as younger politicians get elected.
I've written to my local political representative about several matters over here, and he has agreed with me on almost every point. Mind you, that is because he has worked in the IT sector in the past, as I have done for the last 20 years or so.
It gets a lot more tricky when you consider the issue as to what information sites should be able to display. The laws in each country are very different - to take an example, any site that showed pictures where a woman was displaying too much leg would be illegal in Saudi Arabia - hardly a porn site by western standards. I'm sure everyone would agree that pro nazi propoganda is offensive, but does that mean it should be banned? And how would you do that anyway? Oh, and btw I don't think that Europe respects the privacy of their citizens (not in the UK anyway) - otherwise why did the UK goverment pass a bill authorising interception of any email without requiring a court order to do so?
