Germany unlikes the Facebook “Like” button. Btw, is there an Internet worldwide legislator?

Many people consider Internet as being a new (virtual) continent. Out of 7.0 billion people on the world, 2.1 billion are internet users. And if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest country in the world! But since the Internet virtual continent is housed in real continents and countries, who is supposed to decide on the laws regulating this continent? This past summer in Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein's data protection commissioner ordered state institutions to shut down the fan pages on the social networking site and remove the "Like" button from their websites, saying it leads to profiling that violates German and European law. Technical analysis shows Facebook violated German and European data protection laws by passing content data to the social network's servers in the U.S. Facebook and Google - often with success. And last year Germany fight as well against Google Street View stating this mapping system is going against the privacy laws. These are interesting examples of a country which considers that some Internet tools and rules a going against its laws and the Europeans ones.

So should Internet adapt its tools and rules in any country? Or should any “real” country have to accept universal Internet laws? Can we imagine a kind of continental Internet government, defining the general Internet laws? And this federal Internet government would deal with its countries/ states governments (Google, Facebook…) who would have their laws too? On the paper this sounds like an idea but it would be more than difficult to implement - and even more difficult to update on daily basis. On the current times when Europe and the US try to streamline their administrations, this would go on the opposite direction. It would add a new level or regulations, be expensive, complicated to manage, need many resources, and the ‘real’ countries would not accept to lose part of their sovereignty. It would be a kind of worldwide cobweb. So let Germany unliking the Facebook “Like” button!