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Perverts and Consumers
from the Here-Comes-The-Law dept.
Perhaps the luckiest break the Net and Web got was time: nearly a generation to grow and develop before journalists, legislators, lawyers or CEO's quite realized what it was, or accepted its political, economic and cultural importance.
Still, it's always been inevitable that politicians, corporations and media companies would try to regulate and control the Internet. It's becoming much too important and lucrative to be left alone.
Until this year, most efforts to control the Net consisted either of lunatic software or legislation advanced by opportunistic politicians -- decency acts from Congress, blocking and filtering programs from companies.
Rattled institutions refused to take the Net and Web seriously, or perhaps simply hoped it would just go away. Then they seemed to grasp in the mid- 90's that networked and linked computing somehow threatened the way they work.
So the largely mythical Net Pervert was invoked as a means of controlling this booming new sub-culture.
The pervert (and, to a lesser extent, the inaccurately-labeled "hacker") was the perfect late 20th century techno-nightmare, the ideal rationale for trying to stick a finger in the crumbling dike that was holding back the Information Revolution.
The Net was promoting isolation, addiction, loss of privacy - the end of civilization itself. Since the Internet was unsafe, and children were vulnerable to it, government agencies and law enforcement authorities had to regulate it.
So, as the media told it, the spectre of the online Pervert and his cousin, the Predator, grew. He lurked out there in the ether, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting children, to draw them into child pornography rings, to lure them into real-world encounters where they were kidnapped, murdered or raped.
There have been a handful of cases where this horrific scenario actually occurred. But given the number of interactions between children and the Internet, kids have always been statistically more likely to have jet planes fall on their heads than to be harmed online.
In fact, statistically, children are more likely - 300,000 times more likely, according to author Don Tapscott and Justice Department crime abstracts - to be harmed by the people they live with than by strangers they might encounter online.
Partly because real-world online crimes are so rare - despite the staggeringly disproportionate amount of media attention they receive - something gradually becoming obvious to computer-acquiring middle-class Americans, the invocation of the Pervert as a means of controlling the Net hasn't worked.
In the last few years, even the most mule-headed and reactionary corporations have figured out that they'd better learn to do business on he Net, if they're going to do business at all. So one way or another, the wild, unregulated frontier atmosphere that has characterized the Internet's first decades are coming to an end.
The good news about Judge Jackson's findings of fact about Microsoft is that the company's arrogant, rapacious and predatory behavior will be curbed. But that's the bad news too. We might be haunted one day by those voices wishing that the marketplace had been given the chance to do the job rather than the federal judiciary.
For the diverse and loosely-affiliated collection of sub-cultures we call the Net and the Web, a new era is definitely underway.
The Microsoft anti-trust action and a wave of legislation now before Congress heralds the beginning of a new, monumentally significant period in the history of the Net - the systematic effort by corporations, lobbyists and lawmakers to make it a safe, rational and, above all, profitable environment in which they can do business. The corporations that dominate media and commerce in America are the biggest, richest and most influential forces in recent U.S. history. And they're going digital.
To a one - lawyers, record companies, Hollywood studios, publishers, media conglomerates, politician institutions - the Net threatens their ability to set social and economic agendas, to dominate markets. There's plenty of debate about whether the Net can ever be harnessed by any the growing coalition of companies or government agencies wanting to do so, but there's no longer much doubt about whether they're going to try.
Their assault on the Net - sure to intensify over the next few years - marks an evolution in what will surely be one of the 21st century's slam-bang political struggles: that of individualism versus corporatism.
For much of the 20th century, political scientists and freedom-lovers worried about governmental tyranny - monarchies, fascism, Communism, Nazism as the primary threat to personal freedom. But increasingly, it's mass-marketing that threatens to kill off innovation, freedom, and individual expression.
Microsoft's history suggests a faint glimpse of what's to come.
These corporate and legislative political struggles make movements like open source and free software more vital by the day, not only in terms of freedom of speech and ideas, but of corporate flexibility and innovation as well. They may, in fact, signify the best chance of keeping the Net and Web competitive, innovative, cheap and lucrative.
At the moment, lawmakers are passing a growing list of measures that will put the federal government's stamp all over the Net. Many more are on the way. Perhaps prompted by all those lobbyists nibbling on their ears, congress has finally stopped worrying about whether Johnny will get on the Playboy website and gotten down to big issue worrying corporate America - how will they will do business on the Internet?
Congress now wants to create rules for selling Net addresses, define legal standing for digital contracts, ban some content and programming, including advice on legal contracts, medical research and information, restrict the spread of medical information, prohibit online gambling, curb the dissemination of music and sexually- explicit material, and regulate spam.
Much of this legislation is being initiated by companies, not members of congress who have, until now, been happy to view the Net from a wary distance, enacting the occasional, unworkable and totally decency act to keep up appearances.
But today, Internet legislation currently before Congress includes bills concerning digital signatures, cyber-squatting, database protection, Internet filtering, online alcohol and gun sales, Net gambling, online privacy, Net access, encryption and opening broadband cable Internet lines to competitors.
Many of these bills represent the handiwork not only of the usual clueless lawmakers, but of increasingly Net-savvy professional organizations and corporations who have hired lawyers and lobbyists to set this brand new digital congressional agenda.
In Washington, The New York Times reported on this week, "The Internet is an easy target." That's not really new, but it's significant that it's becoming big news.
In many cases, these companies are invoking protection of the Consumer - the successor to the lurking Pervert - as a rationale for controlling the Internet.
Rules, they say, are necessary to protect individuals in the booming era of Internet commerce. Stories about sexual predators online are being replaced by a wave of tales of consumer rip-offs.
When businesses invoke the protection of "consumers," it's a like lot politicians invoking the "morality" of children: grab your wallet and/or your kid and run for your life.
As is standard in Washington, the real shaping of such legislation occurs in ways completely opposite from Net conversations - it happens out-of-sight, in secret, at lunches and meetings, dinner parties and functions attended by lawyers, pundits, lobbyists and legislators.
The vast horde of reporters encamped in Washington still includes only a handful who know anything about the Net or technology. The press cover these issues only sporadically, as compared to stories they consider significant, like the nature of the oral sex the President received. That makes it even harder for the public - especially those much-invoked and mythic "consumers" in whose name new legislation is being proposed - to follow the debates and developments.
And it makes it much easier for the techno-blockheads in Congress to pass laws that corporations - the biggest political financial contributors in the United States - want passed.
There is also considerable hypocrisy involved: an increasing number of these bills originate with the very Net corporations and online services who have repeatedly called for the government to keep its hands off the Internet.
AOL is lobbying for laws that would force cable companies to open their high-speed Net lines to competition. eBay supports a database protection bill that many online fear could restrict access to information on the network. Powerful lobbies representing banking, law, publishing, medicine and the insurance industry also are players in this growing but quiet campaign.
More than any other single ethos, the Net has always embodied individualism. From the first BBS's to giant messaging systems, the Net has made it possible for people to communicate with one another in unprecedented ways, to build the infra-structure of a new culture and share it with one another.
The Internet is forcing business, education and politics to change. It's spawned countless new kinds of virtual communities, in which millions of individual people can express themselves in unfettered and unrestricted ways, and can access much of the archived information in the world for free.
Preserving those traditions isn't the goal of corporatism, or of legislators busy at working trying to fence off the digital frontier. Their real agenda is, in fact, just the opposite: reversing every single one of them.
% of perverts (Score:4)
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Nice job, but... (Score:4)
However, I think he may be a little too quick to scream "hands off!" to the government. (I'm sure he's read Hobbes, but if he has, either he saw serious problems that I totally missed or it just doesn't show).
But today, Internet legislation currently before Congress includes bills concerning digital signatures, cyber-squatting, database protection, Internet filtering, online alcohol and gun sales, Net gambling, online privacy, Net access, encryption and opening broadband cable Internet lines to competitors.
Why are these all bad things? Specifically, why shouldn't there be laws regarding digital signitures. Maybe he's referring to specific (and scary) proposals, but he didn't mention them. Digital signatures should be legally binding. Yes, that means a whole bunch of really complex laws will need to be passed, but without binding digital signatures, the internet will have a hard time evolving beyond it's current role.
I can see why Mr. Katz may think laws against cybersquatting are A Bad Thing, but to assume that most of his readership agrees is foolish.
The Internet, ideally, has no regional boundaries (I realize this is not really the case, but you get the picture). This raises tricky questions about gun and alcohol sales, as well as gambling. Personally, I would rather have laws passed then risk being prosecuted because the laws are fuzzy.
"Ah," but you say. "We're talking about the American goverment here (Yes, I realise that many of Slashdot's readers are not in the US, but Katz's article seemed to be only referring to US examples. If you have a problem with that, take it up with him.) and they're almost guaranteed to mess it up."
While I would certainly agree with that, just because the federal government might screw it up doesn't mean we should flip out if they try to get it right.
Easy target ? (Score:3)
IMHO, Congress, as individuals, are scared to death about doing anything adverse to the open 'standards' of the net. If there is one thing congress understands, it's backlash. They know about www.gwbush.com [gwbush.com], The Drudge Report [drudgereport.com], the death of DIVX, the death of the Communications Decency Act, and other movements that have been powered, at least in part, by the net. Congress is still trying to grasp what the net is all about, and until they think they figure that out, they will most likely keep their paws off of it.
Of course, I'm probably wrong.
In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:5)
Until 1995, 90% of the net was American. By 2005, more than 50% of the net will be Non-American. I make the changeover point sometime around 2002; Europe is about 12 months behind the USA and has 20% greater population, and the rest of the world (notably the Pacific Rim) is in there too.
The real action to keep your eyes on is not the speechifying in Congress, but what happens at the G8 summits and in the various low-key trade treaty meetings that happen from time to time. International treaties are effectively law -- once ratified they are binding, and they're a lot harder to make an end-run around than local ordinances. To this end, you really want to watch out for what is happening in the European Commission offices -- a market for national bureaucrats to talk shop -- and eye up what they agree with the US government about. Once the EU and the USA work out a common subset of ground rules, those rules will almost certainly stick.
Moreover, what the EU member states want and what the USA wants are very different. Take Germany's recent willingness to undermine the Wassenaar Agreement by providing public funds for GPG. Or France's current turmoil over a move to a maximum 35-hour working week (the leisure society coming home to roost as a way to abolish high structural unemployment). Or the EU-wide interest in privacy law, so totally alien to the US political process, but counter-balanced by a more overt US commitment to freedom of speech (at least in theory).
There will be interesting times ahead as a cross- border consensus gets thrashed out. And because the net knows no frontiers, you Americans can expect some European values to come home to you.
Mythical Men. (Score:3)
I'm not concerned one tiny little bit about the gyrations that congress or any other legislative body / group goes through. It does not concern me. If tomorrow they made it illegal to program with intent to create software for non-microsoft products, I would blatently ignore them, even if they made the punishment 40 years in jail.
Virtually everybody who's half-way intelligent in this country (that would be no more than about 20% of the population) has given up on the concept of freedom, justice, and the american way. Freedom died back in the 60's (Anybody remember that little skirmish in Chicago at the democratic convention?), justice has been dead since the 30's (Martin Luther King, the O-J trial, Monica Lewinsky, a plethora of political prisoners... the list goes on).. and the american way is a long infomercial these days.
Forget it. The law is no longer for the common man. Follow your own moral compass, and let the politicians and the "moral majority" (an oxymoron if you ask me) follow their own path. It's like trying to plan your diet - one week it's "ok" to eat eggs, the next week it isn't.
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Could the government be scared? (Score:5)
There were two issues that I found that the economists and the governments have with the internet. The first is that any transactions that take place on the web aren't taxed, and therefore the governments will get less money, and then the quality of the services the governments provide will go down. The second was that because the major divisions of the world (the boundaries between the countries) really have no bearing on the internet, the divisions will instead be based on interests, desires, needs, etc. This they fear because it erodes people's sense of community (the physical one, not the internet one).
A place like this, slashdot, is one of these "communities" that is a threat to a goverment. Because the members identify more with the other members of their internet community (sorry about the buzzwords here), and identify less with the community that they actually live in, they care less about what happens in that community.
One really good example is the number of young people in the US that vote, or have even bothered to register to vote. Many think that it doesn't affect them, or that they can't do anything about it.
I think we need to keep a very good eye on our government. It's shown its ability in the past at sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong, and it could really screw over what we now have with the internet.
Ok, this is a rather long-winded heads up for those of you who don't think that the government can do anything, look at what's going on with MS right now. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but the government could bend that into an excuse to heavily regulate the market. That could pose many obstacles to Open Source.
"The state is the pooper-scooper of capitalism" (Score:4)
In the late 19th century, the development of the Industrial Revolution and the market economy went hand-in-hand with increased government regulation.
Why? Preindustrial societies could usually control their members with social pressure, religious sanctions, and village-level regulations. Capitalism made it easier for people to evade (or stop caring about) these kinds of sanctions, and so in more and more cases, the State was called in to regulate commerce. Entrepreneurs under Gilded-Age capitalism had more freedom in certain areas (setting wages and prices, for example), but they also faced new regulations in other areas (such as food purity and workplace safety, if I remember correctly).
Karl Polyani, in The Great Transformation, has many interesting things to say about this.
I wouldn't be surprised if, by the same token, as the Net grows more popular and influential, the State takes on more and more responsibility to clean up after it.
The net doesn't need new laws (Score:3)
A good principle would be that technology (the means) should not be the target of legislation. It is unacceptable activities and results that should be outlawed. For example, Pres. Clintstone wants to protect privacy of electronic medical records. Why not protect privacy of all medical records? Why should it matter if a privacy invader uses an electronic computer, a hydraulic computer, or a pencil and paper?
The politicians are promoting themselves by posing in combat against the evil phantoms that the public imagines technology creates. Technology is not a source of evil, but amoral enterprises and amoral politicians can more easily fleece the public into submitting to domination by approved technologies by convincing us that the wired age changes everything, so we need all new laws.
Better that we should decide what is right or wrong, fair or foul, without getting distracted by hardware/software issues.
Now is the time..... (Score:3)
During this period of transition to our new government I have been appointed as interim king of the Internet. As such I am implementing a few new procedures in order to make this transition as easy as possible:
1. There will be a new closed domain (.perv) where like-minded people can play by themselves.
2. There will be a voluntary 1% tax on all Internet sales in order to fund our new government.
3. The implementation of an Internet review board to review physical non-Internet aligned governmental policies toward our world with the power to banish them from our domain after a full review process.
4. The Scheduled date for the internet constitutional congress will be January 15, 2000 if you are interested in attending or would like to nominate someone as a representative please contact my office at king_internet@hotmail.com
As with any such transition there is bound to be rumors floating about as to our ultimate goals. So please bear with us through this trying time as we establish the first government truly representative of its citizens.
If you have any questions or comments about this transition please contact me directly at king_internet@hotmail.com
Fugu King of the Internet
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:4)
(2) The real fear is that Internet types who don't like the present taxing regime will set up shop in Antigulla or similar countries, which have no tiresome income tax or regulations. Certainly if you have loose roots in your existing community, moving to Antigulla could be an attractive proposition. You'd probably miss the urban amenities of your present location, but I understand Antigulla has a pleasant Carribean climate. Watch out for the occasional tiresome hurricane, though.
(3) On the other hand, I have yet to find a government that provides quality services. Businesses have had to adopt to lower profit margins; I see no reason why governments can't adapt to lower revenues. In my view, anyway, there are enough goods that will be bought locally to prevent a collapse of sales tax revenues. For instance, fresh food will always come from grocery markets, and even Internet markets have to pay sales tax if they do home deliveries in your area. I buy a lot of books at amazon.com, but I still buy a lot of books from my local bookstore, too. What happens in my case is that publishers make more money, because instead of looking longingly at that $50 book in the store, I buy it at amazon instead of reluctantly passing it by as I did in the past. In the end, I spend more money on books, and maybe 10% less at bookstores than I used to - hardly a catastrophe for local tax revenues.
(4) Pretty much ever since I was born, I have never had any identity with my local community. Flatly, none. I don't think the Internet has created this situation - I think it existed long before the net and even pervasive personal computing. I haven't found a really good explanation for why this is, but I suspect the primary reason is that during the 60s and 70s, people started to fear each other. They started to be afraid of crime and people unlike them. So suburbs were formed, with the intent of isolating people in a safe environment. It worked in crime terms, but psychologically it seems to have been very isolating. Another factor is a basic feeling of futility about the workings of the political process - which seem to be way above the abilities of the average person to manipulate.
I think this way predates the Internet, so I can't say the Internet is to blame.
In my view, our local governments have dug their own graves. Here in California, we get poor-quality roads, long lines at the DMV, an indifferent police force that cares more about giving out parking tickets then protecting us, schools that don't educate, a dysfunctional welfare system, etc, etc, etc. So why should we pay an 8.25% sales tax plus $
I'll be darned if I know. You tell me.
Finally, it's worth noting that the most cohesive communities, the communities where neighbors are genuinely friendly and seem to care about each other, are the ones where they face a common foe. Malibu and Topanga, California, for instance, face tiresome natural disasters every few years, and I think it makes the communities and the relationships stronger. Perhaps that is, in an odd way, a path towards community building and success?
D
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Re:Mythical Men. (Score:3)
From another perspective, if a government were going to make a mistake as a matter of course (not a bold assumption) then would it be better to have it affect the whole nation, or one state? In the second case other states could examine the scenario and learn what not to do, or perhaps develop a solution to the problem. The internet has only made this process easier because it gives citizens an easy way to take there business and assets else where, thereby giving their government a sure sign that they do not like the way things are being run. This will only get easier as the net progresses.
The same situation exists between the nations of the world. In the most extreme situations, people who are displeased with their country emigrate, often to the US. Again the net will only facilitate this process by allowing the easy transfer of assets across borders. Politicians should be very worried about anonymous payments via ecash, when that becomes possible they will have to seriously compete to keep assets in their borders.
As for hating the US government even though other countries have it worse. This is one reason internal competition (between states) could only help us by giving us a better standard to judge our governments by. Also, as a previous poster replied, just because we don't think the US government is the best it could be does not mean we would rather live anywhere else in the world. In a small display of hubris I would say the US is the best place to be living at this time in history, by this I do not imply that Americans are better than everyone else, only that the political and social situation in the US is very favorable compared to other nations at this point in time. I certainly hope America is not the best humans can do as a civilization/society before their extinction.