Why You Should Be Cheering for Verizon to Win This Internet Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 17 -- People should be able to use the Internet without fear of harm. Simple enough, right? No less an Internet luminary than Vint Cerf, often referred to as one of the fathers of the Internet, said so this week at the 40th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit industry group that administers domain names -- .com, .org, .xxx.

Vint's statement has picked up some resonance in the hallways here. That's not surprising since, depending on whose statistics you believe, about 30% of the general public doesn't want to use the Internet out of fear: Some criminal could use it to hijack their passwords, steal their retirement, expose their children to pornography and violence.

At a more basic level, many people are confused by the images, emails and websites that pass by them, and can easily be lured into thinking they are engaged in, say, online banking, when in fact they are surrendering their most valuable personal data to a criminal syndicate.