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| Democracy
and Cyberspace: Audience Discussion |
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Ira Magaziner: I think your first statement is a fair statement. I was referring more to the traditional political ideology, but I think it's fair to say that there is a bias towards economic growth which is reflected in what I'm saying. I think that's a fair comment--good or bad. The World Trade Organization is a specific organization set up for a specific purpose by the governments in the world. The only thing that we are taking to it is the effort to get no customs duties or tariffs on the Internet. The World Trade Organization was created by the governments of the world to deal with issues of tariffs and trade regimes. So it's a very specific thing only that we would take to it. Phillip Hallam-Baker: I just had two problems with what Ira said. One was about privacy. I must thank you for advertising one of my companies' products, in that we do exactly the sort of privacy certification scheme that he described, but not mentioning cryptography. Of course, if Ira Magaziner says anything remotely sensible here, then Louis Freeh is either going to resign or Ira Magaziner's going to resign. And if Louis Freeh resigns, then the Republicans will insist that Kenneth Starr replace him. The second point on the DNS scheme, what you've got is not a market scheme or a stakeholder scheme. My company has invested $40 million over the past three years setting up an Internet Registry. We've done this on the basis of public key cryptography; we're the largest that has set it up without government help. We've not been a stakeholder? More importantly, my country, the United Kingdom, is also a stakeholder. My government is a stakeholder, and we're being shut out. Essentially, what you've got there is not a market-driven scheme. You've got the New York taxi license scheme: You're going to create six medallions; you're going to give these out to six folks that you choose; and, then you're going to have this board of directors that Ira Magaziner is going to choose. Now that is not a stakeholder-scheme. Of course, there you can't say anything remotely sensible either, because if you admit that non-U.S. citizens are stakeholders, then Jesse Helms is going to have your head on a plate. Ira Magaziner: Well, let me respond to the second one because you've really misrepresented what we're doing there. The first one is another story. About the second one, what we're proposing--and we'll have the final White Paper on it in a week or two--is not as you describe it at all. First of all, the U.S. government is not going to be involved at all in choosing who gets put on this new non-profit corporation's board of directors. That's going to be something that's based in stakeholder organizations that are international organizations like the International Architecture Board and Engineering Task Force and others. Secondly, this new organization willhave an international board of directors, and it will determine what the policies are in setting up new registries or registrars--not us. It will be done with full international consultation. There are some changes that will be made from the green paper based on comments. That's the reason you put a draft out there--to ensure and to make clear to everybody. . . . I think your government and other governments around the world will be more supportive based upon comments that have created the assurances that people are looking for in this. The only reason why we're acting on that now is because we currently do have the legal authorities, and that's for historic reasons. But we are looking to give up those legal authorities, and this process is designed to do that. So I think you're a bit misrepresenting that. On the issue of encryption, I think there are disagreements that exist within the Administration and elsewhere. You've characterized me in a bit of an extreme way, but--on the other hand, you're essentially righ--that there are those disagreements that exist. Those policies are, hopefully, going to get worked out in some way that will be sensible, but I don't think we've done that yet. I think that's a fair statement. Charles Nesson: I'm curious about your general philosophy of leaving the 'Net unregulated, which I subscribe to, as applied to something like Internet telephony which poses a choice. Either you leave it unregulated entirely, in which case there is an impossible distinction to be drawn between Internet telephony and wire-telephony or you regulate it, which equates them. One other choice is that you use the Internet in some way to leverage a movement towards de-regulation of the established industry. It would seem that that same paradigm will repeat itself, again and again, in different areas. Do you see your philosophy as something that extends well beyond Internet to a whole attitude towards regulation? If so, is that some opportunity for established industries, which say that they would like to be freer of regulation to actually become supporters of your initiative? Ira Magaziner: I think the way that you characterize it is exactly right, and I think the view that we have is that we are trying to move towards a de-regulation of the new converged environment. You could argue that to say, for parity's sake, that because voice telephony over circuits which networks is regulated that, therefore, Internet telephony should also be regulated on parity grounds. But we think that would be letting the new world be captured by the old way of doing things. Instead, what we want to move towards as new packet-switching networks are becoming a bigger and bigger share of the total. You know, ten years from now, probably 90% of what goes on in the way of traffic will be done that way. What we want to try to do is to leave that de-regulated and eventually bring the whole system that way. That's why we're not regulating the Internet telephony. I would caution going too far beyond that, because I'm not inherently opposed to government action or government regulation in certain areas. I don't think it ought to be there in this digital economy area, but, for example, in areas like health care, I think it's appropriate for the government to be involved and to ensure everybody access to quality health care. I think that should be a fundamental right that government guarantees to people, and the only way you can do it. Whereas the Internet can be almost a pure marketplace in the way it functions and function efficiently; health care can't be. You don't get sick and, then, look in the Yellow Pages after you get an appendicitis, and you've got to pre-pay. There's got to be a collection mechanism. I don't think it can be a pure marketplace and, therefore, I think government has to be involved there. I would say the same thing about public education. I think it's very important to have a public education system, and I think governments have to be involved there. So I wouldn't want to extend the paradigm too much beyond what I said. Andre Schwartz: I'm a graduate student here, and one of the things about the supposedly-predominant libertarian culture on the 'Net is that-- although originally programmers, etc., were predominantly libertarian, apart from that-- there's another issue. That is that any proposed policy about the 'Net has to deal with free speech and privacy, which means that it's very difficult to not be a libertarian in that the moment we advocate a decency act or regulations on cryptography. You immediately leave the realm of acceptable politics--at least, here, in the United States. Now when you've been told that you agree with libertarians, first comes denial, then, rage, then bargaining, and, then, acceptance. But that is not the end of the world. The question would be, how long is the Clinton Administration going to continue having an official mumble, mumble, mumble policy towards cryptography, until finally admitting that it really doesn't have a feasible policy to propose in this regard, rather than taking the libertarian line? When it comes to free speech, it's becoming very clear the Clinton Administration has finally stopped trying to appease censors in this regard. And although there's been a lot of talk about how the Internet is going to transform American society, what the Internet will do to American society is nothing compared to what's going to happen in the rest of the world. The existence of a large country separated by broad oceans in which the government is hostile towards would-be censors is a direct threat to a huge number of the governments in the world. I'm not complaining, of course. Ira Magaziner: The answer to your question is, I don't know. I mean, the question is how long will we continue the current debate on cryptography without having a satisfactory solution. The answer is, I don't know. It's something that we're working at very hard with industries and others to try to develop a sensible solution. We're not there, and I don't know how long it's going to take. Steven Calcote I'm a technology writer and consultant in the area, and my question goes towards a mechanism that has important implications for today's debate, and that's the White Papers that you put up on the Web-site. I'm curious about the mechanism you have for determining which comments make the break in the next draft, because that would seem to have far-reaching implications for the idea of a participatory democracy via the Internet. Ira Magaziner: By law it's preponderance of opinion. So, basically, the drafts are put up on the 'Net. All the comments are put up on the 'Net, and any time I have a meeting with any group or have a telephone call with any individual--and the same is true for the relevant people in the Commerce Department in this case--those conversations' notes need to be taken and they're posted on the net. So everybody can see the Paper and all the comments that everybody is making about the Paper. We are bound tofollow the preponderance of opinion that's expressed to us, and if in some way there's a balance, or if there's a reason why we don't follow the preponderance of opinion, we have to explain it. So, for example, if the preponderance of opinion called for us to do something illegal, then, we would say, "Well, the majority of opinion said this, but we can't do this because it's illegal in this way." Basically, that's the process. It's a very open process, and I think a good one-- in that sense, and it really does have to be the preponderance of opinion. So when this new Paper comes out in a week or two, you'll see some significant changes, and you'll be able to track those changes directly back to the comments that were made, if you want to do that. Eric Loeb: I'm from NetCapitol in DC. Thank you for doing these experiments in the e-commerce comments. I think that's wonderful that you're doing this. Your comments on protecting privacy, I didn't find satisfactory. It didn't seem to me to make sense that the government doesn't have the ability to track and enforce violations in privacy, but these sorts of standards organizations would have the resources to track and recommend enforcement on these violations. That doesn't seem, to me, to follow. It also seems, to me, that privacy is really too important to leave unregulated. Ira Magaziner: Let me try to clarify. The question is, if you can create certain zones where people have represented that they are going to follow certain principles--they display the seal and by doing so, they are legally making themselves liable for following certain principles--then, number one, you know who that universe is; that universe has joined certain organizations where they've taken certain legal responsibilities; and you can find them and you can go after them if they don't. You already have on the books anti-fraud laws and so on, which would be operative here and which we will take action on. So it's not that the government's doing nothing. We would, in fact, take action there. The difference is that you can't do that for the whole 'Net. In other words, you can't police so that you can guarantee that everybody who's setting up a server in the Seychelles Islands and moving it the next week to Bermuda or whatever that you're going to be able to monitor them in the same way; neither you as a government nor any inter-governmental institution nor any private organization. So the best thing you can do for people is to say, "We're going to provide safe zones here that we can police, but we don't know that we can police everything." Eric Loeb: And you can't keep those Saychelles Island servers from having the seal on their Web-sites. Ira Magaziner: Oh, yes, you can because if they fraudulently display the seal, then, you have a limited population to go after. You don't have to take all 10,000 Web-sites that form every week and go after them; you can go after only a limited subset that are displaying a certain seal. Then, by international agreement, you can have a better chance to go after them. I think you raise good points. I don't think this is the be-all and end-all, and I didn't talk about children's protection. I think there we may try to move to something that has a bit more direct governmental teeth in it, for a variety of reasons. What I'm worried about is misleading people into thinking they're protected when they're not. If they hear, "ah, the government's passed a law; I'm OK now," and, in fact, we can't enforce that law, then, we got a problem. So I think we're going to have to see how this plays out, but that's, at least, what our thinking is right now. Paul Starr: I'll straighten out Ben later about the health-care process. The question I want to ask is whether the Microsoft anti-trust suit case and all the issues that it's raised point to a longer-run problem with keeping the government out of the digital marketplace and with maintaining this commitment to low regulation. You mentioned that there wasn't the argument, as there is in broadcasting, about scarcity of channels, and there isn't the argument, as there was in the old telephone days about the high investment levels and other things that required natural monopolies. But there are very strong forces operating in these high-technology markets. It's fundamentally a network externalities problem that creates enormous pressures for winner-take-all--for one dominant technology. Often, one dominant company ends up with an extraordinary degree of monopoly power. So we don't have the old ways that led to government regulation but, perhaps, we have an entirely different way that is just as powerful that leads to the case for government's role. Ira Magaziner: Anti-trust enforcement has always been part of the free-enterprise economy that we've set up in the market economy, and by saying that there shouldn't be government regulation, I'm talking more in the FCC mold rather than saying there shouldn't be anti-trust enforcement. There should be, and there is. I think, though, that the digital economy has some different characteristics, and I would just raise one or two questions. I can't comment on the specifics of the Microsoft case. That would be a legal violation, and I and all of the rest of you for having heard me would then be called before a Congressional committee. I can say, in general, that if you had looked 15 years ago at the Justice Department's main concern in the information technology arena about anti-trust, it was Wang Computer. Wang had 90% of the office market in software and had a dominant position. If you looked eight years ago, the main concern on its list was IBM, because everybody knew that OS2 was going to become the operating system that everybody used. IBM was behind it, so IBM would dominate. Today it's Microsoft. The point being that in an arena that's growing very fast, where technology is changing very rapidly, market shares and dominant positions can shift fairly rapidly. What that means is that the overall policy we're following in anti-trust is that the mere existence of high market share in an area does not constitute prima facie evidence of an anti-trust violation. However, if that high market share is used in a predatory way in related areas to stifle innovation or competition, then that should be where anti-trust action focuses. The courts will have to decide whether that is happening in the Microsoft case or not, but that is what the anti-trust focus would be about. Certainly, the anti-trust enforcement type of government intervention will continue to be there, but that's different from the kind of regulation that the FCC exercises over TeleCom and broadcast. Benjamin
Barber: One of the things that's very confusing to anyone
watching this is both the government's and the libertarian's
seeming belief that if government's out of the picture, monopoly's
out of the picture. This is to follow up on Paul Starr's case.
It may be that market share in and of itself doesn't constitute
a prima facie case, but when you look around at the mere size
and scale of the corporations that are operating in the realm
of information and communication--particularly precious to anyone
who cares about privacy and the First Amendment--it would seem
to be a prima facie case for, at least, a little curiosity on
the part of the Department of Justice. They've only recently
roused themselves in the face of 90%, 95% market share and clear
attempts to obstruct competition with respect to Bill Gates
to actually do something. That suggests to me the power of this
anti-governmental ideology and the notion that one is safe in
the market. Even in your comments, Josh, it occurred to me that back when cable first came on, the government required public access when local franchisers got involved on the basis that the public utility interest of cable would be satisfied if there was a public access channel locally. They're still around. You can turn your TV on--if you want to enjoy yourself for about 30 seconds--and watch your local public access channel with an empty studio with some poor fellow with no training and a camera is sitting there. And the government says, "Now Titanic has competition." There's the competition here. That is the notion that the needs of a free market competition for ideas are satisfied because I can have a Web page, in this monopoly-ridden marketplace where people are making billion-dollar films and associating those films with all kinds of other goods and so on. That is the notion that I can have a market page and Disney can have a market page, and the notion that when Burtlesman moves in and takes Random House, that's not a problem--when middle books disappear. I frankly don't understand the mythology of the marketplace that acts like we're living in a pre-Industrial age, l8th century realm where there are hundreds of small firms in competition with one another, and one large gargantuan government which represents the primary threat to liberty. I would have thought, particularly for libertarians, of which I'm not, the fear would be with Bill Gates, Michael Eisner, Rupert Murdoch, Burtlesman and Michael Orwitz, not with the government of the United States. As a teacher of mine said a long time ago, "The American majority has always been a puppy dog tied to a lion's leash." We're always fearing what they're going to do. Your quote from John Stuart Mill, you know, the government, what it's going to do and what the majority is going to do. I'm much more nervous about what these operators, these predators in the private realm are doing if government abdicates its role of regulation and uses anti-trust as wanly and thinly as it's currently doing. I'm glad it's, at least, trying now and beginning to move, but there are so many other areas in which it ought to be moving. I think it's that mythology of an l8th century, competitive, small-firm market in the presence of these gargantuan monopolies that control, not merely steel and rubber and automobiles, but ideas and pictures and pixels which are the very stuff of what we think, how we think and how we communicate. It seems to me that that mythology is the most dangerous one. Joshua Cohen: I think it's everybody's question, including yours Ben. Ira, you did talk some about fair access toward the end of the presentation; you said that you think you downplayed it. I think, maybe you did. It's a fundamental issue. The question is, how do you achieve fair access in an environment in which there is this kind of hostility to any kind of public regulation? What are the measures for achieving fair access? The market in this area, as in other areas, is not going to provide fair access by itself--what are the policy measures? What are the strategies? I mentioned a couple of them. I borrowed some from . . . .there's an article from Hastings Law Review by Andrew Chin who's a Yale law student, for example, this requirement of providing linkages to low-access sites. It's not a matter of people just setting up a Web-page. That's a misstatement of the idea. The idea is you've got a Web-page; you're not getting very much access; you have a requirement of linkages. It's like a must-carry rule except it's. . . a must-link rule. But it's an off-hand speculation of support for community networks, for example. What are the measures? We take this fair-access idea seriously. I don't think we can take it seriously and, then, say, "No, don't regulate it." What are the measures that are going to achieve it? Ira Magaziner: I think that's a fair question. We have taken the position that the promotion of fair access is a legitimate public policy goal. The question is, how do you achieve it? I think the things that we've done--and I'd say upfront that I don't believe they are yet adequate--are things like ensuring that all schools and libraries do have access to the Internet in a serious way; that there is education and training of people in that regard; and so on and so forth. That's one step. We have preserved a universal service fund of some sort so that if the Internet doesn't spread as the television did by itself, there will be some mechanism to make sure that it does. Beyond that, we have supported, and will continue to support, publicly-funded television, which is publicly funded creation of content that can be more in the civic vein that Mr. Barber talked about. I think the question is --and this is where we're not sure- despite the media moguls and so on that Mr. Barber's afraid of, you can turn on most television sets in this country and get 50 or 60 different channels, talking about just about everything; pretty soon, that'll be hundreds and, then pretty soon, more than that. That is something that is pretty significant. The question of some of them being less or more interesting, I don't know what you do with that. You can turn on and get, literally, a hundred different radio stations and, then, you'll be able to get all kinds of things on the 'Net, and that's more than any other society on earth, in terms of access to content of various sorts. That is available to virtually every citizen. I mean, virtually every citizen has access to a radio, television, and the Internet eventually. So, that's something. Now the question, what beyond that should we do? Joshua Cohen: It's a provision for fair access to content, not fair access to being in the audience. As I said before, that's the key issue. . . . Ira Magaziner: That's a good point. Steve Miller: Mr. Barber, I'm interested in asking you to engage one part of Mr. Magaziner's argument that I haven't heard you respond to yet. You were talking about an anti-government ideology. What I hear him saying is that he's not anti-government, in general; he's anti-government in this specific area because of the unique dynamics of this area, that is, its complexity and its speed of change. I'm wondering, don't you feel that's a fair point, and how do you respond to that? Benjamin Barber: Two things. One, I would say that the policy and technology is subservient to the general policy of this Administration with respect to global markets, transnational corporations and large corporations, which is to say, "hands off". I would feel better if this were an exception to a rule, were it the case that otherwise this government was engaged in attempting to regulate and intervene in the global economy in the names of environment, social justice, and so on. But here, for the particular reasons Mr. Magaziner suggested, it wasn't. I think that would, perhaps, be a fair question. I also think the argument itself--and I won't indulge myself tonight by talking about it too much; because I want to talk about it tomorrow--but I think the very fact that it's fast-changing, while democracy is dependent on slow deliberativeness, is precisely the reason for intervention. I know that the way the technology evolves quickly creates problems for government intervention, but it may be precisely to control it in a way that makes it more conducive to educational and civic uses that government wants to do that. Let me just go back to the example of hard-wiring the schools. I find it deeply inconsistent to argue, at one and the same time, that the 'Net is to become a primarily entrepreneurial and commercial enterprise and to also say "let's hard-wire the schools." That sounds like "let's commercialize the schools," because if the 'Net becomes the engine of the new economy, and you feed it directly into the schools, you're aiding and abetting the already deleterious process of commercialization of education which is currently going on in America. So those would be the two dimensions to my response. Andrew McCloud: I actually host a show on Boston local cable access that reaches 140,000 households, and it's a quality program. We talk about a lot of issues that directly affect people--whether it's economic development or affordable housing. I have a comment and two questions. My comment is that often in public forums, such as this, when it gets to the question-period from the audience, I find that the folks that have come to speak often take up more time than the folks that are here to ask the questions. No disrespect to you, gentlemen, but I think that sometimes it would be much more prudent and helpful to have more time available to listen to what people in different communities have to say. My first question is about a lot of the discussion I've heard tonight, which has been about the free access or the access for the 'Net. We see that there seems to be a combination of cable access, Internet access, and phone access occurring. And that's not going to be free, and I'm very concerned about the costs of that, and I wanted to hear what you gentlemen had to say. Most people don't have Internet access; most people don't have a computer, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. The second question had to do with, a lot of the discussion tonight about the digital media and cyberspace has a lot to do with the Internet. As Tip O'Neill said, "all politics is local." Often a lot of change begins on the local level, and although we can access the 'Net and find out about the recent burglary at the Louvre, we can't find out why they're digging up the street at the end of our driveway. I think the next revolution with cyberspace may very well, hopefully in my opinion, be local. I wanted to hear what your opinion was about local bulletin board services, which are free. You don't have to have a credit card to access a local bulletin board service, and I wanted to hear what you saw as some of the opportunities for social change on a local level, focussing on local issues. Joshua Cohen: I think I was on that cable access show, so I appreciate that. I don't like to watch the Cambridge cable access when they're showing Central Square; it's not generally what cable access is like. I think it's very important. On the general point about limited access, I completely agree with what you say. I do feel a large hesitation about what Ira Magaziner was saying about de-regulation in this area. I think that there's a tension. It's a complicated issue. There's a fundamental tension between saying de-regulation and saying fair access, and that hasn't been given enough attention. I think it's everybody's problem. It's very hard to figure out how you ensure fair access to people, both as audience and as speaker, without regulating content and without doing things that, given the rapidity of the changes in the technology in this area, are just stupid. But the fair access is more than just a legitimate public policy value. It's a fundamental, constitutive element of democracy, and if you don't have a solution to that problem in this area, then you're in real trouble. I don't think anybody does have a solution yet. Benjamin Barber: The cost of access, of course, is a lot more than just computers. One of the problems I have is that people think hardware and hard-wiring will solve access problems. Access to a computer requires life-long literacy, life-long education, and a capacity to use the language. That depends on the quality of our educational system generally, which is being starved at the same time that money is being poured into the hard-wiring of schools. It seems that misplaced emphasis about "let's get the latest computers in the schools and everything will be fixed" really misses those life-long costs. There's even disturbing news about cultural and racial differences, even among educated people. There were recently statistics that suggested that middle-class educated blacks use computers a lot less. What's that about, and how are we going to deal with it? Putting hardware in libraries or hard-wiring schools, in and of itself, clearly won't begin to answer those questions. With respect to local service, that's great that you have your program. What I worry about is having space and money for it. That's the other question. I mentioned "Titanic" because it's a billion-dollar movie. You give me $200 million and I can probably do a pretty decent program. I'll bet you could do a lot better program than you're doing now if you had that kind of money, or you could do 200 of them right across the country at the same level you're doing now. Money counts, and there are people with very large money who are creating programming that squeezes out other programs. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well, some is interesting and some is not." You know, Leonard DiCaprio had just a little bit of luck there to make it. "Titanic" was an interesting movie, and your program isn't quite so interesting. So you only get 140,000 people listening, and he gets millions around the globe. That's not what it's about. It's about merchandising. It's about marketing. It's about advertising. It's about a global industry. It's about multiplex theatres. The private economy is currently dominated by giants who have, through vertical integration, connected merchandising, the fabrication of needs, the development of entertainment and news, the blurring between knowledge and information--all of those things. We can't begin to deal realistically with those issues in the private sector. For the public sector to say, "it's not our business; we're the threat to liberty; let us get out of the business and leave it to that private sector; let's hope that good citizens like you at the local level, with a local cable show, are going to provide an adequate answer to the Disney Corporation, the news corporations and the Burtlesman Corporation" seems to be a kind of naivete that could lead to the loss of our liberty and our democracy. Ira Magaziner: I think you're characterizing our position in too extreme a way. I don't think we say that government should have no responsibility whatsoever. I think the fair access issue is one where we've tried to have some responsibility, because we think we should. I do think it's a fair criticism that we don't have it figured out and haven't done it well enough. I think that's a fair criticism. There are government roles that need to be played. I also think it is true that the Internet's becoming commercial and that that's the fastest growing part, but that doesn't mean that the free part and the educational part of the Internet can't co-exist with the commercial part, and aren't growing very rapidly, too, because they are, and they should. Regarding your point on communities, it will be extremely valuable because the Internet, in only four years, has penetrated to 50 million people in this country. It took television l3 years; and it took radio 23 years. Next year, too, there'll be a chip that will come with the televisions for l2 bucks that will give you the Internet. Basically, I think the Internet will be accessible to everybody with a television, not just a personal computer. That may mean they all get pornography, but I think it also can mean some positive things. You're not going to have to pay to see most of your Internet access. When I say that the "free" can co-exist with the "pay," I think that most of what will go on on the Internet will still be free for people. If you want to enter the commercial zone, just like you can sit in a hotel and go into pay-TV or stay in free-TV, you'll be able to do that. But I think they'll both co-exist. And I think the community bulletin-board types of things that you're talking about will become very widespread, and I think they'll be an additional dimension. It won't just be your geographic community, but you will be forming communities, based around your interests, with people from around the world that have common interests. You will be parts of lots of communities, not just limited by your geographic living space, and I think that's a good thing. Hopefully, people will be able to be parts of a lot of different communities. David
Thorburn: One thing that's not democratic is the necessity
for the moderator to say, "We are stopping." Thank
you very much, and especially this heroic man, Ira Magaziner.
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