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The candidates who didn’t invent the Internet

5 comments on The candidates who didn’t invent the Internet

The candidates who didn’t invent the Internet
: Dave Winer sent out an email to some folks this morning pushing his presidential campaign agenda: a call to get the candidates to endorse the idea that we need to keep “the Internet free from media companies.”

Dave, I just spent last weekend in big rooms filled with big media and, believe me, I saw little cause for alarm.

They’re more scared of the Internet than the Internet should be of them.

Before we launch into a Lessigesque bout of media paranoia and hatred, I’d like to see more evidence of why you think this is so necessary, Dave. I don’t see that in your brief essay.

And, besides, such negatives — such prohibitions against anticipated but unrealized behavior — aren’t very productive. I don’t want to see McDonald’s take over Taco Bell, either, but I’m not ready to get candidates to make statements about it and then pass laws and regulations about it. (And I’m surprised that Prof. Almost-a-Libertarian is so quick to endorse such added regulation, by the way.)

My conflict of interest here is clear; I’m a big-media guy (and a big media-guy, too). But I don’t see the clear and present danger that necessitates such campaigns.

Instead, I’d far rather see the candidates make positive promises about expanding and encouraging the Internet. I’d like to see them present plans to:

: Expand broadband Internet access ubiquitously to every home and school. The more access there is, the more our digital economy will grow and the better equipped we will be to compete.

: Encourage wireless access and hand over more of the spectrum to open development. Let a thousand wi-fis bloom!

: Kill spam. Protect my children. Protect my resources. Get these intruders and fraudmen off my lines and out of my machines. I’ll say it again: Kill spam!

: Minimize government regulation of the Internet (including taxation). Forget big media trying to take over the Internet; it’s government I fear here.

: And here’s one for local candidates: Extend shield laws and other protections and rights given to official press to weblog press, to citizen journalists.

Now that’s a five-point Internet plan and platform I can get behind.

5 responses to “The candidates who didn’t invent the Internet”

  1. David Pinto Avatar
    David Pinto

    Jeff, I had exactly the same thoughts you did after I got the letter, and was equally surprised to see Glenn Reynolds going along with it. It’s not at all clear what Dave Winer’s point is.

  2. Kevin Marks Avatar
    Kevin Marks

    Have a look at the Broadcast flag mandate, the DMCA’s restriction on ‘non-professionals’ having vide recorders that don’t mess up the signal, and the ongoing lawsuits by the RIAA & Diebold against common carriers and those who link.
    Repealing the egregious parts of the DMCA would be a splendid thing. A commitment to not sign legislation giving media companies a veto over the future of technology would also do so.
    After all, if there is nothing to worry about, why nto give such a commitment?

  3. hackjammer Avatar
    hackjammer

    Good point about broadband access. A U.S. Department of Commerce study (don’t have a link–I read it a long time back) estimated that making broadband available throughout the country would increase our GNP by $500 billion. Sounds like a worthwhile investment to me. Broadband isn’t all about online gaming and file-sharing and faster surfing…all reasons why I wish I had broadband, but not as compelling as the boost it would give the economy.

  4. Richard Bennett Avatar
    Richard Bennett

    The broadcast flag doesn’t have the potential to harm the Internet in any way; it’s simply content.
    Winer’s rant is hysterical nonsense.

  5. mary hodder Avatar
    mary hodder

    Take a look at Ed Felton’s post on the problems the Broadcast Flag presents: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000469.html as well as Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s SJMerc editorial today: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/7281987.htm.
    Yes, the BF is a DRM technology for controlling content, but the adopted order allows the FCC and the copyright industry to control innovation and development of consumer electronics technologies. Like that cool new Treo 600, and other wireless devices, as well as other digital media players, controllers, processors, etc., not to mention routers and other carriers of broadband and wifi.
    Maybe Dave didn’t specify the exact problem, and he is very much in a partisan position (as he admits) with technology, but he does make a good point. Locking down the internet with DRM, like the just adopted BF regulations, as well as using the DMCA for all sorts of ridiculous anticompetitive and otherwise destructive stuff (think Chamberlain v. Skylink over garage door openers, Lexmark and printer cartridges, Diebold and voting software memos) that incumbents love to use to maintain their positions, and you can see why he cares about this. It’s not that I think incumbents all should be undermined, but I disagree with an Internet that only protects them, and makes it hard for innovators to develop the digital technologies that will shift everything. It’s understandable that they are scared, because they have a lot to lose, but we all are participants in the internet, and there is a public good in keeping it open and free, both for our own economic health and politically.
    Lock the internet up, lock content down to much, and I think it will be less than 20 years before the free internet, still existing in the rest of the world, will lead to the loss of US leadership with technology, content and innovation. Seems counterintuitive, and in the short term yes, but long term, it will hurt us badly.