"There are a great many MKs who are keen to submit bills relating to the Internet, many of whom do not understand the subject. People who don’t understand the Internet believe that it is something that requires special legislation, but in most cases, current legislation can be applied to the Internet too. Only in extraordinary cases is there a need for legislation," Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) president Rimon Levy said at the 15the Annual Conference of ISOC.
Levy mentioned the Internet's role in the Egyptian revolution. "I attribute little of the revolution in Egypt to the Internet. Obviously, it was an important factor, but I doubt that it was the key factor." He added, "We also saw that governments can shut down the Internet for several days."
Levy believes that the transition from a web world to an applications world is another sign of the "closing" of the Internet, alongside the trend of localization. "Localization is easily liable to bring us to Balkanization - the splitting of the Internet into many networks. The Internet Society, in contrast, seeks an open and global Internet, where the user is at the center. This is the only way to enable the Internet to continue to function as a platform of innovation as well."
As for the ISOC-IL's venture to encourage companies to register domain names in Hebrew (with the .il suffix), Levy said that 20,000 Hebrew domain names were registered in the first two hours. He added that hundreds of new domain names were registered every day. He said that ISOC-IL planned to put on the air within days a database of information on the Israeli Internet, which will be available for free to the entire Internet community.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 21, 2011
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