As with most polls, they probably set it up to get the stats that they wanted. They most likely hand-picked the type of people most likely to provide the spread they were looking for, and then carefully worded the question to skew the results in their desired direction. It was probably something like "Do you believe the government should regulate the internet, or should they continue to let terrorists and pedophiles prey on your children?"

(If you think I'm exaggerating, believe me, I'm not. I've known people who work for polling organizations. This is SOP.)

I love flawed stats projections.

Here's one that should give you an idea about how much we follow them:

71% of Americans believe all lawyers are crooked.

With such an overwhelming majority feeling that way, why haven't we gotten rid of them yet?







[edit on 6/23/2008 by garyo1954]

Oh man... here we go. We get enough kooks on the internet and mix those with people who are easily "shocked and appauled," and we get a recipe for more government! The internet is arguably one of the most important tools ever invented! We don't want it to be regulated in any way. Look, if you can't handle the internet, don't get online!! Don't ruin it for everyone.

Very bad idea, very very bad. Internet is already regulated by all kind of organisations with government connections, no need to further ease the way for corporation takeover. I just feel how the hands of top guys itch knowing that people get almost for free things that they would pay more to get. Bad idea.
I wonder how the question actually sounded.

The people who want the Internet regulated are parents who want someone else to babysit their children and people too dumb to realize the Internet's great potential.

For anyone who has seen how great the Internet can be for freedom and for anyone intelligent enough to see other solutions to the problems that the Internet unfortunately produces, the answer to this would be no.

Unfortunately bad parents and idiots make up most of the American population.

If this happens, I will create another internet.

Honestly the internet is actually easy to create, if you really wanted to. All websites sit on different servers all over the world.

oops apologive, i didn't even know this section existed, lol

anyone can make up statistics

40% of all people know that

I am 99% positive these results are manufactured. How would I know? Well nobody ever asked me. So I would venture to say that 49% is merely a portion of a portion of a portion. So how can we get any real numbers from that?
Sensationalism, I believe the world could use less of this fabricated drama.

There is a glaring problem here. First, as most of those 49% must not be aware of, the Internet is not American. The government can regulate American TV and Radio because it's.. well... American. But how do regulate something that you don't control?

I suspect that what is really being asked is what I call the Peking Proxy question, that 49% of the people want to be protected from the Internet. The government will lock down those organizations it does have control over and protect Americans from the possible sight of a nipple, exposure to free speech and accesses to information they don't approve of.

I mean, image a government forcing an ISP, like Verison say, to block access to something like Usenet... oh wait, that just happened. I guess the 49% won.

Never mind.

Interesting. I just read in the newspaper this morning about a related survey, where a majority of people said that they WANTED people to be able to snoop through their emails to look for inappropriate things. Can you imagine that? I don't have a link, unless you happen to get the Edmonton Journal, but I can't imagine anyone actually wanting such an intrusion of privacy.

And yeah, I don't really see how anyone can regulate the entire internet, since it is a global phenomenon.

76% of all statistics are made up on the spot