[originally published as "Du prototype au moteur de croissance: comment administrer Internet," Annales des Mines: Realites Industrielles, Oct-Nov 1996, pp. 58-61.]
It is said that the power to phrase the question is the power to determine the answer. That is why changes in the language used to frame policy questions in the United States shows how the American conception of the information society has evolved. It is especially illuminating as a way to understand the policies the American government has declared its intention to enact.
When Vice President Gore released the Agenda for Action four years ago he launched the Clinton Administration's "National Information Infrastructure" initiative. The term NII was used to indicate the inter-relatedness of what had been the separate policy arenas of the computer, media, and telecommunications industries. And NII also meant that policy in these areas was going to be more important than sectoral policies designed to improve economic performance. The creation of an advanced NII also had significant implications for social policy, and indeed how Americans would participate in governing themselves. So the Agenda for Action outlined the areas for policy development the new administration intended to pursue, everything from reform of the basic law governing telecommunications to improvements in the way the government bought and used computers. The only place in this document the word "Internet" appeared was on the last page, informing people where they could retrieve electronic copies.
This time, however, the Clinton Administration has begun a four-year term with a very different outline for its policy goals and using different words to describe them. The White House's new "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" contains more than 50 references to the Internet, and electronic commerce is clearly defined as "commercial activity on the Internet." In fact, the terms "Global Information Infrastructure" and "Internet" are used interchangeably. The language may be far less grandiose, but what it lacks in glamour it makes up in precision. Previously, the Internet was merely a model for the more advanced communications networks and services that were sure to come. It is the model no longer. The Internet, now privatized and primed for commercial activity, is now the motor that will drive growth for a wide range of new goods and services, from high-speed computer communications to new, lower-cost Internet access devices and new formats and delivery vehicles for American cultural products.
The change in the use of language over the last four years has been slow and subtle, but the effects of the transition of the Internet from the model to the motor are profound. At a large meeting of about 500 members of the nation's technology elite in 1995, the question was asked if tomorrow's NII was just a better and faster version of today's Internet. Not a single person raised a hand in agreement And yet, with the abandonment that year of most of the interactive television experiments, the Internet was already well on the way to transforming itself from the model to the motor, a process that can be declared concluded with the release of the new White House report.
Today, one can observe cable television operators scrambling to offer Internet access, a market that will grow from about $50 million in 1994 to more than $5 billion in 2000. And even though fewer than 50,000 low-cost, specialized Internet access devices have been sold so far, estimates are that by 2000 more than 20 percent of people accessing the Internet will do so on devices other than personal computers. Among the greatest source of new business for American telecom operators is new telephone lines for computers. About 11% of U.S. households report having used the Internet in the previous month, three times the number of a year ago.
And this, more or less, is the reason that the vision of information nirvana has become so much more concrete--there is serious money to be made. But while some abstract National Information Infrastructure has no citizens, the Internet does. The difference to government is like the difference between planning a city that has yet to be built and planning changes to a city that already has a thriving population. No government can ignore the voices of the citizens who already live there. So increasingly, the U.S. government is addressing its policies to the Internet, which will make the opinions of the ever-growing community of users increasingly difficult to ignore.
Foreign Affairs: The International Internet
The computer, media, and telecom industries are not just the most rapidly growing segments of the American economy. They are also three of the most successful industries in international competition. What precisely does the U.S. government intend to do to help fuel their expansion? The "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" report covers nine areas "where international agreements and/or guidelines" would be useful to facilitate "the growth of commerce on the Internet." They are financial, legal, and market access issues.
Financial issues: First and foremost it says government's should "refrain from imposing new and unnecessary regulations, bureaucratic procedures, or new taxes and tariffs on commercial activities that take place via the Internet." In addition, "the United States will advocate that the World Trade Organization and other appropriate international fora declare the Internet a duty-free environment whenever products or services are delivered across the Internet." It also commits the U.S. government to this position in discussions on the taxation of electronic commerce taking place through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Legal issues: The report also reinforces the U.S. position on three new international agreements currently being considered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) designed to give greater protection to intellectual property. It also calls for adoption of a model law on the commercial use of international contracts in electronic commerce, which has been produced by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), as a step toward an international "uniform commercial code" for electronic commerce. On privacy, the report expresses greater concern for violations of free trade than for an adequate defense of personal privacy. As it says, "if national laws and regulations are not harmonized on an international basis, disparate policies could emerge that might serve as non-tariff trade barriers." The report commits the U.S. government to a two- tiered strategy. It will give support to "market-based approaches to privacy" and continue bi-lateral and multi-lateral discussions with its trading partners. On security issues, it repeats the current position of the American government that there will be no restrictions on the export of encryption products so long as keys that may be used to decrypt a communication are adequately stored for retrieval by due legal processes.
Market access issues: The report restates support for telecom market privatization and competition and is critical of the mechanisms national telecommunications operators still use to retard the growth of independent commercial Internet service providers. It commits the U.S. government to defending the interests of Internet users and service providers in the WTO's Group on Basic Telecommunications. On content issues, the report finds foreign content quotas and advertising regulations to be potential inhibitors to the growth of trade on the Internet. But it hedges on content regulations that control violent or indecent materials, since the Clinton Administration has already passed a law restricting the exchange of indecent materials, which the Supreme Court will rule on next summer.
This report marks the first time the U.S. government has issued a set of detailed and specific statements on its policies toward the Internet. That is notable by itself, since the point of reference is not some abstract Global Information Infrastructure that is going to be built someday, but the problems faced by today's users of the Internet.
The War at Home: Domestic Issues
What is most interesting about the new White House report is that it implies a policy toward free speech on the Internet that is very different than the first Clinton Administration's policy. Indeed, the report adopts the arguments of the plaintiffs who have won a preliminary rejection of the recently-enacted Communications Decency Act, which the Clinton Administration continues to defend in court. The report calls for self-regulation, rating systems and technical solutions to give users the ability to block objectionable materials.
Another notable aspect of the report is that it reinforces the continued internationalization of Internet-related policy-making. The United States is represented at the WIPO talks by the Patent and Trade Commissioner, who is attempting to resell proposals for stringent intellectual property protections that failed to win approval by the U.S. Congress last year. Should these proposals be adopted by the Convention in Geneva, then the Congress will no longer be able to revise them. It will be forced to simply vote in favor or against them. This action, called an "unprecedented move" by the New York Times, is a very high risk, all-or-nothing strategy. It is especially dubious because of the widespread opposition to the U.S. position on intellectual property from within the United States.
In addition to these two ongoing disputes, there are also some other areas in which the Administration has indicated it will take action. During the fall campaign, the President announced a "Next-Generation Internet" initiative to connect at least 100 universities and national laboratories at speeds that are 100 times faster than today's Internet. The goal is to promote the commercialization of high-speed networking technologies and promote experimentation with more advanced networking technologies. The new allocation of $100 million is to come from a reallocation of defense and domestic technology funds.
One of the best barometers of the Administration's level of aggressiveness in pursuing the NII initiative in the second term will be the fate of a small grants program in the U.S. Department of Commerce. The program was designed to do bring Internet connectivity to classrooms, clinics, libraries and other public institutions. The Administration won $24 million for this program in its first year (fiscal year 1994). The next year, however, while it originally secured $64 million from Congress, the newly-empowered Republican majority rescinded $19 million from this item after taking control, leaving a second year total of $45 million. The program has settled into a baseline of $21 million for 1996 and 1997 which is pretty good considering the Republican majority's stated intention of eliminating it. Preliminary reports indicate that the Clinton Administration will once again go to bat for this prized program, asking the Congress for a 50 percent increase in funds.
During its first term, the Clinton Administration also discovered a tool for public policy-making that had been left largely unused by previous governments. It attempted to turn the White House and the civilian side of the government into leading-edge technology adopters, with the goal of conveying legitimacy and validity on emerging commercial technologies. The U.S. government has been more aggressive than the private sector in the adoption of electronic mail and Internet connectivity. In fact, the Internet has become the medium of record for most high- profile public documents. There is still a lot of life left in this policy-making tool, if the second Clinton government chooses to use it. The Federal government could have a huge impact upon digital authentication techniques so that users's true identities can be verified in a legally acceptable way. Not only would agencies such as the Social Security Administration or the Veteran's Administration be able to offer personalized service, but private sector electronic commerce would be improved. In addition, it is reasonably clear that today's Internet browsing software will evolve into tomorrow's collaboration tools for work groups. Netscape, Microsoft, IBM and others will have major new products in this area next year. If even a few of the government's proposed regulatory initiatives solicited citizen input using these new collaboration tools, it would have a substantial benefit to the agencies, the public, and the American software industry.
Finally, it would make sense for the next Administration to take privacy far more seriously than it has. Despite the declared intention to use "market mechanisms" to regulate privacy, the fact remains that the vast American information industry is almost entirely unregulated. Personal information about consumers is bought and sold without constraint, and freely applied to purposes it was never intended to serve. Despite decades of reports and international pressure to form a privacy commission and deal with the loss of privacy in a rigorous and methodical way, no American government has seriously addressed this issue since, ironically enough, the Nixon Administration. Unfortunately, privacy is not a problem being articulated by well-placed commercial interests that the government urgently needs to solve. This, of course, is why intellectual property protection receives so much more attention than privacy protection.
To conclude, the Internet is no longer being seen just as a prototype for the more capable networks that have yet to be built. Increasingly, the Internet is the real world reference point for policy-makers. The Internet is also, happily, an ongoing conversation in which consensus is built around problems that its community of users see the need to address. In the first four years the Clinton Administration can claim success with the reform of telecommunications law, the privatization of the Internet, the electronic delivery of government information, and support for classroom connectivity and community networking and other things. But it generated at least as much unhappiness with its digital wiretap laws, encryption policies, and its attempt to regulate Internet content. What is different now is that the government is pursuing policies for a community in which the first settlers have already arrived and are organizing their collective life in ways that are sometimes at odds with the sovereign. And those citizens of cyberspace are increasingly resistant to policy- making that does not sufficiently include them. So the U.S. government is going to have to do something it never had to do before in its policies toward computing and communications: ask. When it does, it will find out just how unhappy the colonists are with the crown, and how close they are to rebellion.