“The Internet is the first thing humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the greatest experiment in anarchy we've ever had.” ~Eric Schmidt. As CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt and his company own and operate one of the largest search engines in the world. Economically earning $54 billion per year and also $25 billion in the online advertising industry, they understand the Internet. In fact, their estimated total economic influence they have had on the world is close to $119 billion (Ha). The Internet is growing at an exponential rate. The Internet, in fact, has grown in size since it was first launched in the late 1960s. As with any resource of this nature, however, we soon ran into a problem. How will we maintain this free and open environment, while at the same time preventing criminals from going too far and causing the property and rights of other innocent people to be violated? Because the Internet is an inherently free and open global network, the United States government does not have the right to increase regulation of the Internet regarding privacy, spam, and pornography. Context: Basic Internet infrastructure. The Internet was first launched in 1969 and consisted of only four host computer systems (Tyson). The Internet is huge these days, so huge that we currently use 95% of the 4.3 billion addresses available on the Internet. This means we will soon move from IPv4 to IPv6, which has an exceptional number of available addresses of 3.4×1038, to help accommodate excess connected nodes (Shankland). Every node on the Internet has an address that follows the format of four octets joined by a period such as 192.186.1.1. With IPv6 they are...... middle of paper......: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.Hollings, Ernest. “Stricter Internet privacy laws are needed.” Internet: opposing points of view. Modify. James Torr. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.Mishkin, Jeremy. “Stricter Internet privacy laws are not needed.” Internet: opposing points of view. Modify. James Torr. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.Crews Jr., Clyde Wayne. “The government should not ban email spam.” Internet: opposing points of view. Modify. James Torr. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print. Shankland, Stephen. “IPv4 Network Addresses Are Now 95% Exhausted” October 18, 2010. cnet.com. March 31, 2011.Tyson, Jeff. “How Internet Infrastructure Works” April 3, 2001. HowStuffWorks.com. March 31st 2011.