@ Keith

"James, the internet is part of the infrastructure you say we elected our elected representatives to maintain."

Here's the thing though. Who "owns" the internet? To what extent can/should a government regulate it?

Should a law regulating the internet apply to German citizens in Germany? In which case, what about Germans abroad, and foreigners in Germany?

How about all people in Germany? In which case, can I legally step across the border into France and then do whatever I wanted to do before?

How about All Germans -- home or abroad? In which case, does the government retain the right to govern its citizens that are not resident within the country, and how would the government enforce such laws when the "perpetrator" is elsewhere?

How about servers in Germany? In which case, if my web hosting service is based on Germany, am I prohibited from testing my own website?

Or what about data transmissions going through Germany? In which case, can a Brit, testing a server in France, which happened to take a route across German data lines, be charged with a crime? And again, how could the government enforce this?

The main reason governments shouldn't try to govern the internet, is becasue the internet doesn't belong to them. That and the fact that most governments are so painfully ignorant to modern technology that you could probably get them to pass a law banning air if you told them it was for internet security.