Internet hitting mid-life crisis?

Some clear signs that you have reached middle age:  Getting lucky means finding your car in the parking lot and happy hour is a nap.  You little black book only contains names ending in M.D. You ears are hairier than your head and your back goes out more often than you do.

On Sept.2 the Internet officially entered middle age and became 40 (or not, depending on what event you list as the beginning of the Internet). On Sept. 2, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock and a group of about 40 people gathered at his lab at UCLA to observe two computers 15 feet apart send data to each other.  This was the beginning of what became known as ARPANET, which evolved into the Internet.

Stan Schroeder from Mashable and AP reporter Anick Jesdanun argue that while the Internet is not getting pectoral implants, buying a red corvette, quitting its investment banker job to train for triathlons or divorcing it wife of 25 years to start dating someone it met in spinning class, there are several signs that the Internet is showing its age and indeed may be going through a mid-life crisis.

The researchers doing the original Internet experiments sought to create an open network to freely exchange information, an openness that spawned the creation of the World Wide Web, YouTube and Facebook.  But while the Internet may be available in more places throughout the world and it keeps getting faster, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.

First, authoritarian regimes such as China and North Korea are increasingly blocking access to sites and services.  Second, companies have erected firewalls to guard against spammer and hackers, but these make collaboration between people in different companies more difficult.  Third, several firms have challenged the notion of net neutrality, the principle of equal access to the Internet so that broadband carriers should not be able to employ their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Fourth, the Internet is becoming fragmented because copyright laws keep U.S. users from sharing content effectively with the rest of the world.  Finally, companies are trying to maintain monopolies on their products such as Iphone restricting what software that can be run on it.

What do you think? Do newer applications such as social network sites make 40 the new 30 for the Internet?  Or have the barriers that have been erected make the Internet look it age and is it entering a mid-life crisis? Should the Internet be an open network as it was envisioned, not subject to any government or corporate controls?  Or are there some restrictions such as copyright protection that are needed online? I am interesting in hearing what you think.