Mal Fletcher considers issues of regulation, repression, activism and anarchy

Already, marketers can discover our buying preferences through social networking sites. They can learn about our spending patterns via mobile phone payments. They can even track our movements using phone satnav apps - and use the information to predict likely future movements. This is all very convenient when it comes to pitching products and services.

The most important internet laws will be those dealing with the protection of minors and the prevention of crimes such as fraud, money laundering, terrorism and abuses of patent law.

Without regulation, the internet takes on the culture of the wild west and it's every man for himself.

Yet if governments get too heavy-handed or reactionary in their approach, people will begin to practice excessive degrees of self-censorship motivated by fear. This is not the same thing as acting with self-discipline, with willing respect for social structures and ethical norms.

Fearful self-censorship stifles innovation because it causes us to hold back on sharing potentially helpful ideas.

The internet offers a rare place for us to take healthy risks, reaching out of our comfort zones to engage with people and concepts we might not otherwise encounter.

Julian Assange has, it seems, been aware of the potential of the internet since he was a boy. As an early adopter, he recognised that it would become a pervasive part of the human experience.

The internet has allowed him - for better or worse - to come to a place of prominence in society.

If he can now look beyond his own immediate concerns, perhaps he will see that by his erratic behaviour, self-serving rhetoric and unattractive grandstanding, he is merely adding wood to the fire for those who oppose internet freedoms.

Not only have the actions of WikiLeaks suggested that the internet is an enemy of the state and therefore something governments must tightly controlled wherever possible. As a power broker in the internet world, Mr Assange's personal behaviour, unstable as it is, potentially makes the internet seem a more ramshackle, Wild West entity than it really is and one that either now or in the near future may be in need of government control.

Of course, Julian Assange is not directly responsible for the way some governments are try to curb internet freedoms. But he certainly isn't helping the netizens' cause.

[1] http://opennet.net/