Google's senior policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin said his company routinely encounters countries' conflicting laws that force the Web giant to walk a legal and political tightrope. A recent example involved a user-submitted video on Google-owned YouTube, which the Indian government found "hugely offensive."

The video, posted by an Indian American comedian in New York, showed him pole-dancing while dressed as revered spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi. Indian leaders asked Google to remove the video even though the data was not located in India and YouTube does not have an official presence in the country, he said.

Despite Google's run-ins with foreign governments, McLaughlin does not think a U.S.-led global standard for take-down notices is feasible. "The best way to handle this is on a nation-by-nation, case-by-case basis," he said.

Meanwhile, Steve DelBianco of the Association for Competitive Technology spoke out about confusion over a proposal to designate a Web space for pornographic content. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is currently considering the scheme, can only approve and create a contract for administering the .xxx domain, he said. "There's nothing that ICANN can do to force the adult entertainment industry to put content there."

The .xxx debate underscores a misunderstanding that exists about the governance and the technical management of the Internet. ICANN and participating governments run in "parallel lanes," DelBianco said. "Every once in a while, the U.S. government swerves over into ICANN's lane and creates the perception that ICANN is more than a technical manager."