Rant ahead. On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Benjamin Grosman wrote:
I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that it would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present situation, where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.
I would totally agree with you here...having an agency is definitely the best of a bad set of choices.
Doubtful. Under the current situation our technoilliterate oppononents are passing demonstrably unworkable and heavy-handed laws, which, if the CDA was any indication, have a high chance of being at least partly neutralized in the courts and the benefit of being a headache to implement technologically and commercially. If our opponents institutionalize the regulation of the Net, including a GAK law, on the other hand, the policy will have the benefit of an entire federal bureaucracy working behind it day by day to make it workable and turn it into something acceptable to the judiciary and to those who are seeking compromise. We will then have another FCC, but this time with its own pet FBI, and given enough time (these people are essentially government employed full-time lobbyists) everyone but us nutty libertarians will regard their methods as common practice and something without which the Net would be unlivable. Society will once again fall for the fallacy of government necessity and we'll get divided and conquered. Just ask the average person what they think of abolishing the FCC and you will see what I mean. In the long run a new dedicated bureaucracy would be the worst of all possible choices, first because it would actually function and second because it would never go away.
corrupt. We might get two or three good years out of a Federal Internet Agency, depending who was appointed to run it.
3 semi-bad years instead of a couple of scary years of GAK being fought head-on, in exchange for a permanent problem.
And that would probably be a major problem...finding someone with whom both the government and industry are happy.
Locking the rest of us out. Divide and conquer.