Because the Internet was the first - and so far only - global free or mostly free market that has ever existed. It came of age at a time in which every major economy is highly regulated, rigid and bureaucratic. By design it came into this world with: free speech and expression, the ability to create and start things at will without permission (no little bureaucrat to get approval from first), and had little to no taxation placed on top of it for a long time (even if eg in the US those sales taxes were supposed to be paid anyway). The powers that be have had to work for two decades to try to cripple it to strip that very high degree of freedom away and acquire the control they want over it (whether for data espionage purposes, or control of commerce, or control of speech for social purposes, or taxation et al). Most governments were caught entirely off-guard with the speed at which the Web emerged.<p>Any time large bureaucracies run into a free market, they inevitably try to kill or regulate it (whether for the benefit of entrenched companies, or for state control purposes, or out of misguided nanny-state protectionism). There are few nations across the globe that haven&#x27;t followed the same increasing regulation &#x2F; control path with regards to the Internet, to one degree or another.