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Domestically, the age old Republican versus Democrat debate over how big of a role government should have in our daily lives now extends to the internet. Back in the 90s, Clinton's administration decided to allow internet commerce to continue without taxation knowing that internet commerce revenues would lead to further development of the internet. In 1998, Congress enacted the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which: (1) established a three-year moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access and sales; (2) called for no new federal taxes during that period; and (3) established an Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce (Feehan, 2).

Although this act has long expired, no direct taxes have ever been levied on internet access or traffic. However, with physical commerce, state and local government is vested with the power to tax in the form of a sales tax. If one purchases a product through an internet business located out of state, there is no tax, President Clinton ensured this. Because sales tax is local governments' primary source of revenue, local government wishes to tax internet sales (which could account for 21$ Billion in revenues). In November 2007, despite much protest, President G.W. Bush passed an act to keep the internet untaxed for a few more years (Grewlich, 8). But what will happen after that time has passed is up for debate, especially with the recent inauguration of Barack Obama, who historically supports big government and taxation, could view internet taxation as a means to cure the financial ills that have been plaguing the country recently.

The biggest debate lies in the future of Internet version two (WWW2). The internet we access today is based on static web pages with some bells and whistles. Internet Two uses executables (programs) as the backdrop to web sites. While this is a new technology worth investing in, as we will be able to access full video clips and interactive programs with the internet, it causes a problem because with this amount of bandwidth being used. Experts estimate that within two to five years we will run out of available bandwidth. The Telecommunications industry wants to control this Internet Two bandwidth highway and turn it into essentially a tolled road. Telecoms will charge for high-speed bandwidth and give free low-speed bandwidth. What this essentially means is that big networks will be able to dominate the internet space and grass-root organizations and alternative sites will be pushed out. This is against the whole concept of the internet as a force for democratization of content. Control of the internet will be centralized with the telecommunication industry and indirectly with the United States government. We have already seen Telecom's betrayal of its customers by allowing this presidency to tap phones and track IP addresses in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. This goes to the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of privacy and speech (Twomey/Jennings, 237).

The First Amendment right to free speech concerning the internet causes a problem. The problem lies between Freedom of Speech and inappropriate content on the internet. The scale to which governments deal with inappropriate content is very different based on what country, as the protection of the First Amendment is only guaranteed in the United States and to its citizens. In the U.K., police have recently made a large number of arrests of child pornography suppliers and subscribers. In China, there exists an internet police that tracks and arrests anyone who speaks poorly of the Chinese government. In the U.S. we are still debating what to do about internet control. The U.S. as a key member of the UN has a huge say in what other countries are doing in terms of internet control. If the internet is controlled by the UN it will be subject to the laws of the international community. . .

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