Gore Commission wants to regulate the Net like broadcast
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:28:24 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FC: Gore Commission wants to regulate the Net like broadcast ************* Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:20:23 -0500 From: Alan Moseley <amoseley@clark.net> To: declan@well.com Subject: the Gore Commission and digital media The Gore Commission -- the group created by Clinton to determine the future public interest obligations of digital TV broadcasters -- showed signs last week of broadening its reach to include other digital media that can deliver broadcast-like audio and video. Significantly, the group discussed the possibility of including other digital media in their recommendations after viewing a demonstration of the Internet's potential to provide audio and video. If digital TV broadcasters can be made to serve some notion of the "public interest" through government-mandated programming and restrictions on programming, is it not a short step for the government to regulate other digital content-providers? This group should be watched carefully as they discuss future regulations on digital speech. The Media Institute (http://www.mediainst.org), a First Amendment advocacy group based in Washington, has issued the following press release on this subject: --------------------- Media Institute's Public Interest Council Sees Danger in Gore Commission Suggestion Washington, Jan. 20 -- The prospect of extending government-mandated public interest obligations beyond the broadcasting industry, raised in comments by the co-chairman of the Gore Commission, illustrates both the lack of justification for and danger in these proceedings, The Media Institute's Public Interest Council said today. The Council was reacting to comments last Friday by Norman Ornstein, co-chairman of the Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, at an open meeting of the group in Washington. Following a demonstration of "video streaming" Internet technology and a discussion of digital convergence, Ornstein noted that mandatory public interest obligations on broadcasters may not be sufficient. He suggested that the Advisory Committee (popularly known as the Gore Commission) might want to examine the public interest role of other digital media as well. Ornstein questioned "whether we should be making this really firm distinction, saddling broadcasters...with heavy public interest obligations, and letting others get off scot-free." Media Institute President Patrick D. Maines, speaking for the Institute's Public Interest Council, challenged that idea: "The mere mention of that possibility -- extending the 'public interest' rationale to other media -- should raise alarms for anyone who values our country's constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press. "We already have a presidential commission considering whether to recommend additional public interest obligations for broadcasters solely because they will be converting to digital technology. Mr. Ornstein's comments illustrate the ominous ease with which government might attempt to impose so-called public interest obligations on other types of digital media, such as on-line information services, DBS, cable, and perhaps even newspapers that are digitally transmitted to printing plants," Maines said. "The Gore Commission is correct to note that over-the-air television is far from the only medium serving today's consumer. That felicitous fact, however, ought to lead the Commission to recommend a lessening of the obligations on broadcasters, not an increase on broadcasters and everyone else." The recent experience of the Communications Decency Act demonstrates the government's willingness to control digital speech. The digital convergence argument could be a new rationale for further such interventions, Maines warned. Maines spoke on behalf of The Media Institute's Public Interest Council, a four-member group created recently to study the public interest question and to follow the work of the Gore Commission. Members include communications attorneys Robert Corn-Revere and J. Laurent Scharff, and constitutional scholars Robert M. O'Neil and Laurence H. Winer. Information about The Media Institute, its Public Interest Council, and the Gore Commission is available on-line at http://www.mediainst.org. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 12:30 PM -0800 1/21/98, Tim May wrote:
I was always of the understanding that the mandate for regulation of radio and television broadcasts had to do centrally with the "allocation of scarce resources." That is, that because there are only a finite number of non-overlapping spectrum slots, some degree of regulation or allocation is justified.
That was the government's justification.
The Internet is not constrained by a finite number of slots...capacity can be added arbitrarily (well, at least for as many decades out as we can imagine). And consumers can, and do, pick what they choose to download or connect to.
The Internet is about pure speech, about publishing. For the Gore Commission to even _hint_ at regulating it is reprehensible.
The measures being discussed at are clearly not in the interests of the public but of the continued maintenance of the state's priviledged position to influence or limit speech, information flow and public opinion. The Feds cannot easily control millions of citizens directly and therefore need to create a franchise, like broadcast, whose licensees will bend to retain their priviledges. This paradigm is the same as for crypto. Since their goal is to limit access to crypto (which is most likely to find widespread acceptance only after seemless integration with common products ) and the Feds find it more difficult to control individual (e.g., cypherpunk) efforts, EAR enforcement is geared to corporations and congressional debate is steered to jobs, corporate profits and competitiveness. To the extent that civil liberties issues are raised the national security trump card is played. These attempts at regulation show just how terrified they are of true free speech and every man a publisher. --Steve
At 11:26 PM -0800 1/21/98, Tim May wrote:
Which leaves unruly Cypherpunks still running free.
(Which is why I would look for signs that Congress will seek to make ISPs responsible for political speech, a la the Chinese actions. Not this year, not next, but someday. Except it won't be explicitly a law about political speech, it'll be something about dangerous information, safety of the children, etc.)
But if rapes or kill just one child... --Steve
These attempts at regulation show just how terrified they are of true free speech and every man a publisher.
Yes, they need "choke points" to control the anarchy.
As with the British plan to license a series of "certificate authorities," or U.S. plans/wishes to do the same thing, this effectively forces all citizen-units to sign up with one of the authorized certificate issuers. (This is why certificate-based systems are so heinous.)
It's not just the government - the mass media have been scared of the Net for a long time because it disintermediates them. The recent flap about the Drudge Report and the lack of fact-checking and quality is a good example of that - the spin has been very negative about the dangers of uncontrolled, uncensored, unthrottled speech. An alternative spin could be to emphasize signal-to-noise and the far better quality of information that traditional media can provide. While I've got some disagreements about James Donald's explanations of Crypto Kong's model (no need for CAs, etc. vs. the simple approaches for replicating the Web Of Trust and CAs using his tools), once nice thing about it is that you don't use anything called a "certificate" - it just compares whether a message is signed by the same key that a previous message was. That previous message can be a vanilla message, or an introductory note from someone (Alice saying that Bob's key is 457HLJCR8YFDG7807FG7FD87G, and that this is the Bob she met at the Peace Center fundraiser), or a note from Catbert the HR Director saying Bob works at MegaFooBar, or a note from BankFoo that the checks from account 23123124 need to be signed by key 93243248329048. While they work like key signatures, they don't look like CA signatures, they look like ordinary correspondence. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
I was always of the understanding that the mandate for regulation of radio and television broadcasts had to do centrally with the "allocation of scarce resources." That is, that because there are only a finite number of non-overlapping spectrum slots, some degree of regulation or allocation is justified. (I'm not saying I support this, just that this was the argument for the FCC and related regulatory measures.) The Internet is not constrained by a finite number of slots...capacity can be added arbitrarily (well, at least for as many decades out as we can imagine). And consumers can, and do, pick what they choose to download or connect to. The Internet is about pure speech, about publishing. For the Gore Commission to even _hint_ at regulating it is reprehensible. More comments below. At 1:34 PM -0800 1/20/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:20:23 -0500 From: Alan Moseley <amoseley@clark.net> To: declan@well.com Subject: the Gore Commission and digital media
The Gore Commission -- the group created by Clinton to determine the future public interest obligations of digital TV broadcasters -- showed signs last week of broadening its reach to include other digital media that can deliver broadcast-like audio and video.
Just because the Internet can deliver audio and video signals is hardly a matter of "allocating scarce resources." Video rental stores can also deliver video signals, but there is no (well, modulo the "obscenity" laws in various communities) regulation of these sources. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
At 10:35 PM -0800 1/21/98, Steve Schear wrote:
The measures being discussed at are clearly not in the interests of the public but of the continued maintenance of the state's priviledged position to influence or limit speech, information flow and public opinion. The Feds cannot easily control millions of citizens directly and therefore need to create a franchise, like broadcast, whose licensees will bend to retain their priviledges.
This paradigm is the same as for crypto. Since their goal is to limit access to crypto (which is most likely to find widespread acceptance only after seemless integration with common products ) and the Feds find it more difficult to control individual (e.g., cypherpunk) efforts, EAR enforcement is geared to corporations and congressional debate is steered to jobs, corporate profits and competitiveness. To the extent that civil liberties issues are raised the national security trump card is played.
These attempts at regulation show just how terrified they are of true free speech and every man a publisher.
Yes, they need "choke points" to control the anarchy. As with the British plan to license a series of "certificate authorities," or U.S. plans/wishes to do the same thing, this effectively forces all citizen-units to sign up with one of the authorized certificate issuers. (This is why certificate-based systems are so heinous.) We're seeing the pieces being put together in various ways. The new Copyright law, which felonizes even minor infringements, is one piece. The laws making it illegal to disparage food products is another. The proposed "no anonymous speech" notions are another. As with prison "trustees," or as with the forced deputizing of corporations as soldiers in the War on Drugs, we are seeing "overlords" or "sheriffs" being appointed/annointed to control their unruly underlings. Which leaves unruly Cypherpunks still running free. (Which is why I would look for signs that Congress will seek to make ISPs responsible for political speech, a la the Chinese actions. Not this year, not next, but someday. Except it won't be explicitly a law about political speech, it'll be something about dangerous information, safety of the children, etc.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102802b0eca2f84a96@[207.167.93.63]>, on 01/21/98 at 11:26 PM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
(Which is why I would look for signs that Congress will seek to make ISPs responsible for political speech, a la the Chinese actions. Not this year, not next, but someday. Except it won't be explicitly a law about political speech, it'll be something about dangerous information, safety of the children, etc.)
I wouldn't be suprised if you start seeing ISP's closely monitoring the activity of it's users RSN. I would imagine all it will take is the SPA or COS bringing a few ISP up on criminal charges under the new Copyright laws as accesories (or co-conspiritors). A couple of "show trials" and the rest will toe the mark. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: He who laughs last uses OS/2. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a-sha1 Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNMbq3Y9Co1n+aLhhAQGeEgP+MbSqYmneWWv+zyCjb9ySfVv3ee9QCarb sMJqPvuEm1KhYvDuYdtkgJtb3S/224ihhY+GnHw1JFxRyk9nUvOftcPa/NwxxCe5 YXECnaPdxNVa/Nm8GnNinuE31AOTs1YY9B9BLIYIaTMtjTpjgju5Ob5UpZ47Jo7E UxFBc1K1Su8= =+gm0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
At 8:36 PM -0800 1/21/98, Bill Frantz wrote:
At 12:30 PM -0800 1/21/98, Tim May wrote:
At 1:34 PM -0800 1/20/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:20:23 -0500 From: Alan Moseley <amoseley@clark.net> To: declan@well.com Subject: the Gore Commission and digital media
The Gore Commission -- the group created by Clinton to determine the future public interest obligations of digital TV broadcasters -- showed signs last week of broadening its reach to include other digital media that can deliver broadcast-like audio and video. ... The recent experience of the Communications Decency Act demonstrates the government's willingness to control digital speech. The //eagerness digital convergence argument could be a new rationale for further such interventions, Maines warned.
Just because the Internet can deliver audio and video signals is hardly a matter of "allocating scarce resources." Video rental stores can also deliver video signals, but there is no (well, modulo the "obscenity" laws in various communities) regulation of these sources.
Presumably they intend to also regulate live theater. It can also deliver audio and video. FUBAR.
Nope. Just places that rent or sell DVDs and CDs. "Other Digital Media". FUBAR, indeed. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Adobe Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.
bill.stewart@pobox.com wrote:
You know better than that, Tim - The Internet is about Commerce! The military started it, federal funding for universities made it popular, Physicists working for Foreign Governments and grad students at US government universities made the Web, and Big Commerce made it grow. It's all Federal Interest - trust them! ......................................................................
You know, I wonder why they didn't think about the Federal Interest and the Legitimate Needs of Government when all this was going on back then. Are universities, students, and Physicists working for Foreign Governments any more (or less) trustworthy than anyone else? Was there no secrecy at all, when all these people - especially the scientists - were communicating no such open networks? I guess The Authorities also, among other things, didn't expect encryption (PGP) to grow as it did. .. Blanc
At 12:30 PM -0800 1/21/98, Tim May wrote:
At 1:34 PM -0800 1/20/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:20:23 -0500 From: Alan Moseley <amoseley@clark.net> To: declan@well.com Subject: the Gore Commission and digital media
The Gore Commission -- the group created by Clinton to determine the future public interest obligations of digital TV broadcasters -- showed signs last week of broadening its reach to include other digital media that can deliver broadcast-like audio and video. ... The recent experience of the Communications Decency Act demonstrates the government's willingness to control digital speech. The //eagerness digital convergence argument could be a new rationale for further such interventions, Maines warned.
Just because the Internet can deliver audio and video signals is hardly a matter of "allocating scarce resources." Video rental stores can also deliver video signals, but there is no (well, modulo the "obscenity" laws in various communities) regulation of these sources.
Presumably they intend to also regulate live theater. It can also deliver audio and video. FUBAR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | All politicians should ski.| 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
At 12:30 PM 1/21/98 -0800, Tim May wrote:
The Internet is about pure speech, about publishing. For the Gore Commission to even _hint_ at regulating it is reprehensible.
You know better than that, Tim - The Internet is about Commerce! The military started it, federal funding for universities made it popular, Physicists working for Foreign Governments and grad students at US government universities made the Web, and Big Commerce made it grow. It's all Federal Interest - trust them! And besides, IPv4 addresses _are_ a scarce resource that needs to be allocated for the public good, and IPv6 has to be stopped because it will devalue the addresses given to IPv4 users (which would be an unconstitutional "taking" of their entitlements) not to mention because it supports technology that could support narcoterrorist agents of foreign governments and money-laundering father-raping pornographers.
Video rental stores can also >deliver video signals, but there is no (well, modulo the "obscenity" laws in various communities) regulation of these sources.
There's also regulation against revealing the rental records of individual customers (at least customers named Bork or Thomas), except to accommodate the legitimate needs of law endorsement or advertising. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
participants (9)
-
Bill Frantz -
Bill Stewart -
bill.stewart＠pobox.com
-
Blanc -
Declan McCullagh -
Marshall Clow -
Steve Schear -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III