Following the Colorado massacre of schoolchildren, many lawmakers have proposed that an
international body regulate the internet so that sites which provide information to terrorists should be eliminated.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the above opinion. Support your opinion
with reasons and examples.

The above statement claims that by regulating internet activities, terrorism can be eliminated. I think this is an oversimplied solution for a worldwide problem. I will not agree with the soltion provided because of certain reasons.

The foremost reasoning is that the above statement assumes that terrorists use only internet for getting information or planning their activities. It seems there are no other medium apart from internet to coordinate and plan terrorist activities. How would you then justify the terrorist activities at Iraq who are illiterate and has no knowledge or access to internet service, but still they have troubled US for decades. Are we oblivion of the fact that we are living in a world of hitech communication ?

How many sites are we going to close? An average of 100-200 new sites come up everyday. It likes trying to stop the water from leaking from a huge water tank which has multiple holes opening up as soon as you close one. Further, lets accept the assumption that the terrorist depend heavily on internet for their hidden operation, but how does it make sense that by regulating Internet will eliminate terrorism. How do you filter the contents in the ocean of internet world where milions of information traverse from one end of the world to the another end of the world.Further more, terrorist would not simply publish on their website something like "Mass destruction on America on 9/11". They will definitely encode the info and decoding it from our end would require extraordinary skillset and expertise. This further calls for major research and development involving millions of dollars.

Finally, not every nation in this world is affected with terrorism, so how can we assume that international bodies will cooperate us in curbing the internet access. For a moment say that they may do it, but are the major nations ready to invest in such an ambitious project?
Next question is how do you distinguish what kind of information to be barred from view. Even wikipedia contains a lot of info on guns and weapons which any Internet Users either terrorist or a non-terrorist would be generally interested.

After penning all my thoughts above, I want to conclude that in the current scenario, controlling internet activities and contents is not only impractical but not advicable too. Govt. bodies need to come up with alternative and sound measures to curb the terrorist activities.