Saying 'The internet' needs laws, would imply that there is a central point of control somehow.
Laws don't cover places, they cover people. If I steal something, it's not my country that punishes me, it's the people that somehow declared themselves (through one means or another) to own that country that punish me.
They define the laws, they define who judges, and who enforces those laws.
All well and good so far.
But for this to work on the internet, you'd have to define who 'owns' the internet. Which is very difficult, because the internet isn't structured in a way that allows it to be fenced off into easily recognisable regions.
You can't really keep people 'out of your territory', because everything on the internet is somehow outside of any obvious physical boundaries.
And since we don't really have an obvious group that 'owns' things not specifically claimed by any country, it is incredibly difficult to declare who has jurisdiction over anything online, and for what reason.
I'm typing this on the Escapist. I'm a citizen of two countries, and living in one of them. The Escapist is a corporation registered in the United States. The .com domain is apparently 'us property', by some bizarre ruling... Presumably the servers he escapist is on are physically located in the US.
However, since I'm physically in the UK, the message is actually routed through at least the UK and US. But, based on IP traces I've tested in the past, and the way the internet functions, it could quite likely also pass through France, Germany, the netherlands, and several other EU countries first...
So... For the simple task of me typing this message on this forum...
There are at least 2 legal jurisdictions that might apply... And it could easily be argued that there could be any of the following:
Legal Jurisdiction of Top Level domain; (US in this case)
Legal Jurisdiction of company/person owning website; (Also US here)
Legal Jurisdiction based on physical location of the web server; (US)
Legal Jurisdiction of physical location of Person using website; (UK)
Legal Jurisdiction based on citizenship of person using website; (UK & Australia)
Legal Jurisdiction of any of the countries the network traffic may be passing through; (US & UK at least. But could easily involve 6-7 or more intermediate countries)
That's anything from 6 to more than a dozen legal jurisdictions which might all have a claim on what I'm doing here, and may all have differing laws.
And that's without even considering the hypothetical case that the internet had it's own independent laws. (Even if it did, it wouldn't necessarily mean these other laws would no longer apply...)
Compare that to the case of breaking a law within the physical borders of a country... How many jurisdictions are there? Well, depending on the country's legal system, maybe 3 or 4. But these have well-established priorities based on physical location.
In practice it's really just whatever the local laws are. Which is easy to establish.
Jurisdiction on the internet is a nightmare to decide upon...
And that's the problem.
It's all well and good to say 'there should be laws on the internet', but without establishing ownership, the immediate question becomes 'Whose laws?'.