Google will be obliged either to accept Chinese regulations or exit the world's largest Internet market, with serious consequences for its long-term global ambitions. This is a metaphor for our times: America's most dynamic company cannot take on the Chinese government - even on an issue like free and open information - and win.
If you believe in democracy, you accept, by definition, the existence and triumph of opposing ideas. The people who believe deeply in the Internet's force as a commons operate on that kind of premise.
Net neutrality rules ensure an equal playing field on the web for everyone, from the start-up to the tech giant.
The Internet, like most successful American innovations, have not thrived because of heavy-handed government regulation.
Who I am really doesn't matter at all. If I'm the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.
When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.
What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the Internet? Well, it certainly wasn't heavy-handed government regulation.
Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.
Internet freedom is not possible without freedom from fear, and users will not be free from fear unless they are sufficiently protected from online theft and attack.
Americans' information independence is under attack, whether it's the repeal of net neutrality or the repeal of broadband privacy protections.
The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet - we do, or should - but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want.
The Internet belongs to all of us, not big telecom.
Censorship is saying: 'I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.' But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word - even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.
After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.
Instead of fostering investment and innovation through deregulation, the FCC will be devoting its resources to adopting new rules without any evidence that consumers are unable to access the content of their choice.
When Google went into China, there were some people who said they shouldn't compromise at all - that it is very bad for human rights to do so. But there were other people, particularly Chinese people, who said they were glad Google had gone in.
Disclosure and transparency are the currency of the Internet, and they are at odds with authoritarianism.
I think the Internet has developed at this incredibly rapid pace because of net neutrality, because of the free nature of it, because a YouTube can start the way YouTube started.
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
#BlackLivesMatter was born online but now lives in street actions, in conversations in our homes, and in the dignity swelling in our hearts. That is the power of the open Internet, and it is why we must do everything we can to protect black voices. Our lives depend on it.
Political divisions may be fierce, but there is at least one issue that most Americans agree on: net neutrality.
In cyberspace, once privacy is breached, it may be breached worldwide. Free speech is not restricted to a street-corner audience, a locker room, or a limited-circulation publication, but travels the world.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.
