The Internet is a "god-awful mess," but few U.S. government officials are willing to take action against virus writers, spammers and other scammers, author Bruce Sterling said at the Gartner IT Security Summit Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Disorder and corruption are winning on the Internet, and computer users need the U.S. government to crack down on the thieves preying on the Internet, said Sterling, author of futuristic novels "Heavy Weather" and "Islands in the Net" and the nonfiction book "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier."

By Grant Gross at Info World.

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