[11382] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
IH 'Paving Over the Public' (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Arthur R. McGee)
Thu Mar 31 00:35:05 1994
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 13:42:47 -0800 (PST)
From: "Arthur R. McGee" <amcgee@netcom.com>
Reply-To: "Arthur R. McGee" <amcgee@netcom.com>
To: net-happenings@is.internic.net, com-priv@psi.com, communet@uvmvm.BITNET,
nii_agenda@civicnet.org, publib-net@nysernet.org, rre@weber.ucsd.edu
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 11:18:48 -0500
>From: Phillip B. Zerbo <zerbo@frs.com>
Subject: IH 'Paving Over the Public'
>From the March, 1994 issue of *Z Magazine*
The Information Superhighway: Paving Over the Public
Huge companies are doing the most natural thing in the world to
them; following their own corporate interest.
Open Magazine Interviews Herbert Schiller
OPEN PAMPHLET: Professor Schiller, right now the major media
are promoting, advertising, and exciting people with talk of an
"information super-highway" The corporate-owned media are doing
their best to dazzle us with all the new consumer opportunities
we'll have in an interactive 500 channel future which will enable
us to shop from our bedrooms. You, on the other hand, are among a
small group of scholars who scathingly criticize this portrait of
things. Instead of a "global village" you foresee a global mall
owned and controlled by corporations who are largely
unaccountable to the nation-states in which they operate. Will
you elaborate on this for us?
A- SCHILLER:: I would have no objection to a genuine expansion of
communication channels in this country or globally, if I had even
the slightest reason to believe that those channels would be used
in a social direction and address the staggering amount of unmet
needs that people have in the United States and around the world.
There are untold educational needs, health needs, and general
cultural needs of a wide variety. There are untold recreational
needs of a very different character. So, I don't have any problem
with the introduction of more channels for communication. But I
get very uneasy as I follow the discussions of control and the
beginnings of the implementation of policy in what is called the
electronic superhighway.
Nothing of what I am going to say is any secret. Most information
about this is available to the public. There's a great deal of
boastful commentary and promotional hype, and a lot of it clearly
reveals what the underlying plans and intentions are for this
highway. In fact, the best source of information is in the
documents expressing Clinton and Gore's views called the National
Information Infrastructure (NII) Agenda For Action.
Behind all the hype shaping the electronic highway are corporate
interests. These huge companies are doing the most natural thing
in the world to them; following their own corporate interest.
They're following their balance sheet requirements. They want to
find markets that will give them very lucrative rates of return.
This is how the corporate economy operates. They take their own
set of aims, doctor them up, and present them as the aims of the
entire society. But if we think about it, our interests are very
different from these corporate interests. As the NII policy is
being formed and implemented, the interests of the general public
are being marginalized. It is not for the public's sake, but for
the interest of this much smaller group of influential companies
that all of this discussion, all of these programs, and all of
this policy-making are moving ahead.
Q- Your article in the Nation (July 12, 1993) suggests that
commercial expansion is resulting in the extinction of the public
sphere. Can you comment more on this?
A- Yes. A clear example of this can be seen in the case of public
libraries. The public library has been one of the most democratic
institutions in American history. When you read biographical
statements of this country's most distinguished writers, many
times you'll find them describing what a tremendous debt, or what
gratitude they owe to the public libraries. It was a place they
entered without any real barriers, picked up a book, and read.
The public library has been one of the most progressive
institutions in American history. Yes, it's got deficiencies. No
one's saying it's a perfect institution. But, by and large, in
comparison, it's been a much more democratic institution than
others. And one of the cardinal principles of the public library
system is that information is to be available for everyone, and
it's to be available without cost. Free. Funding comes from the
community. Therefore, the principle of unlimited and free public
access has been the cornerstone of this democratic institution.
And what's happening now? As with so many other things in this
society, information is being turned into a good for sale. A good
that's made available on the basis of payment, a commodity. Of
course, information has always been part of commodities. Books
and newspapers were always sold. But a really massive change has
been under way due to the technologies that can transfer and
reorganize bits of data and information, and now an area that
never had the attention of private enterprise is being regarded
as source of massive profit.
An information industry has been developing since 1968. Companies
involved in the industry say they are doing very valuable things.
It's true that they are creating certain information services
that were never available before. One wouldn't argue with that.
But they're doing it on a commercial basis, which means that
information which once was or could have been available free, now
is available for a charge. If you have any experience hooking
your computer in with databases, you know that you have to pay.
Q- As with Lexis or the Internet
A- The Internet isn't too costly compared with Lexis, which is a
very expensive service. High-powered corporate law firms have so
much money that these services represent no large expense. If
you're in such a firm you can connect with the information at no
personal cost, but if you are outside the firm, as an ordinary
individual, and you want to access the material in Lexis or
Nexis, you will pay a very heavy charge.
The amounts of information available are increasingly refined and
sophisticated. For example, a person can search out how judges
voted on a given court case, and how many cases represent a
particular point of view. All of this information is available
"on line," but it's available commercially, and the costs can be
substantial.
Information is just one area where you see this happening, and,
of course, the information-area commercializing the fastest is
government, which has previously made its information available
for free. More and more of the government's data is being
funneled into private, commercial vendors who repackage it and
then sell it for profit to whoever can pay for it at the prices
that are commercially established. Putting basic items or basic
kinds of goods into a commercial format automatically creates
divisions in your society, because not everybody has the same
ability to pay. And this is what's going on. The entire education
system is experiencing this trend, from the public schools to the
universities. One of the greatest representatives of the
commercial trend is the Whittle Corporation.
Mr. Whittle, as you know, broadcasts his Channel One program into
approximately 1,000 high schools, delivering the commercial
message right into the classroom. It's the ultimate example of
what I'm talking about, where a public arena gets transformed
into a commercial pit. And what Whittle is doing to the classroom
is being done to people in every sector of society. Anywhere you
go in society, anywhere, your senses are invaded and intruded
upon.
The complete commercialization of space and information is
proceeding rapidly. A fundamental quality of American life is
being changed under our noses. Ironically, each one of these
changes is being hailed as a marvelous benefit to the population.
It's an unbelievable trick. Things that are fundamentally
changing for the worse, the limiting of access to information and
the commercialization of public space, are being presented as
wonderful benefits in the offing. It's a sickening con-game.
Q- In a scenario where large blocks of information are owned by
corporations entire classes of people will be excluded. The
emerging information superhighway will further alienate society
in so far as it'll be a pay-only access.
A- Part of the Clinton administration's job in building the
information super-highway involves auctioning off long-term
leases to frequencies on the radio spectrum. This is a tremendous
change. And it is happening almost without comment or debate. Now
what does this mean? It means they're taking a portion of public
property, the radio spectrum, justifiably considered a natural
resource, just like a timber stand, or a waterfall.
Q- Like a national park.
A- Exactly. All of these things are public property, national
resources. Radio was originally intended as a people's resource.
And, as such, it has been very badly abused and mismanaged,
there's no question about it. The people who have received
licenses to broadcast have failed in their commitment to the
public mandate. Radio broadcasters have screwed the public and
used the radio spectrum for their own personal profit while they
were under mandate to serve the public's interest.
Q- The 1934 Federal Communications Act required that broadcast
stations operate "in the public interest, convenience, and
necessity."
A- This Act protected the use of public property, the radio
spectrum. Up until the present time, public property was
considered, in a sense, inviolate. Now, the government is under
enormous pressure from a massive onslaught of corporate users,
who are no longer satisfied with getting short-term leases. ABC,
CBS, and all the other big networks have huge sections of the
spectrum licensed to them, not given to them. They have their
leases automatically renewed without having to conform to "the
public interest, convenience, and necessity" in any substantive
way. Now the government is actually auctioning off licenses to
the highest bidder. How do they present this to the people? They
say, this is a wonderful opportunity to raise billions of dollars
and bring an end to mismanagement of the spectrum. They tell the
general public that $10 billion will be raised. Most people are
impressed. The Administration sells off something that most of us
have little knowledge of. Where is it? What is it? It's very
intangible. The public loses access to a natural resource, and
the government gets $10 billion while saying that everybody will
be benefiting. That's the kind of baloney that's being passed on
to people these days.
Q- I remember the article in the New York Times (Sept. 24 1993)
that pitched the auctioning of the radiowaves as pro-consumer in
so far as Jane and Joe Consumer will be able to use cellular
phone services at a fraction of the present cost. That's how
we're sucked into it. Thinking that we'll again lower charges for
something like cellular phone usage while actually losing a piece
of a Yosemite or Yellowstone, you know, a national resource.
A- I think this is the most costly single example of conversion
of public resources into private resources, one which we will
have to pay for endlessly. The money the public will have to pay
to access the radio spectrum after it's leased off will far
exceed the money the government garners from selling the leases.
If it were otherwise, these companies wouldn't purchase the
leases to begin with. More importantly, we will no longer be able
to decide for ourselves - not as individuals, but as a community,
a national public - how this resource should be used.
Maybe we don't want to give the radio spectrum out to the
cellular phone industry. We have to ask, Who's going to use these
services? And for what purposes?
Once you hand this over to corporate control you alienate it from
the public arena, you lose your democratic rights over its
disposition. It's a profound decision we are facing as a society.
What's so upsetting is that it occasions no discussion.
Q- Why the sudden imperative to auction these long-term leases?
A- The argument of those who are happy with this new policy is
that the spectrum, up to this point, has not been used
efficiently.
What if, as a society, we had a very different set of criteria
for what is and isn't efficient and what is and isn't profitable?
How could you ever calculate the value of utilizing the spectrum
for the community's benefit? It's priceless.
A vast chunk of the channels are still held by the military, the
Department of Defense. They use it for all kinds of purposes:
navigational, satellites, spying, etc. I think the military still
controls half of the spectrum. If you want to look where the
spectrum is not being handled efficiently take a look there.
Q- You have written that you see the tangible ownership of this
new social network in communications, corporate mergers, and the
development of the "information highway" as ushering in the death
of the public sector.
A- Yes, unless one chooses to build the information highway on
the existing model of the Internet. The Internet was started with
military funds from the Department of Defense, but those were
public funds. And the military, obviously, had its own interest
in establishing an electronic network. Clearly, a lot of our
research in the last 50 years has been militarily funded and
targeted. Then the National Science Foundation (NSF) got into the
act, and they put up some funding. The amounts of money provided
by the NSF were not very great, but it was enough to start an
experimental network used primarily by university researchers.
People in academia began hooking into networks all around the
country, and exchanged research findings, questions and data. As
time went on, the network attracted more and more users. If you
were in a university, either as a faculty member, or even as a
student, you could hop on and use the system without cost, so it
functioned more or less as a truly democratic system, more like a
library than a mall. You can communicate with whomever you want
by way of electronic mail, E-Mail. But now the Internet is in the
process of being slowly converted into a more commercial system.
Q- How is the process of privatizing the Internet taking place?
A- I can't give you all the specifics, but, for example, as of
1994, the NSF will withdraw the $12 million that it annually
grants to the Internet. The money has to come from somewhere.
That's where the corporations rush in and the commercialization
begins. Quite likely, Internet's going to meet the same fate that
radio broadcasting met back in the 1920s and 1930s.
Q- To play devil's advocate for a moment, corporations like Chris
Whittle's and Dun & Bradstreet might ask why corporate and public
interests cannot exist side by side? They could argue that they
are providing substantially new information services. What do you
see as the contradiction there?
A- It's a Faustian bargain. You sell your soul for a temporary
benefit. Consider Whittle's infiltration of the public school
system. What are the implications?
Whittle's formula with Channel One is to package ten minutes of
news with two minutes of commercials. Kids in a Channel One
school are exposed to this every day, five days a week. What are
the implications of this? What are the consequences? Well, first
of all, you get a false notion that the kids are really
benefiting from the news. There's no reason to believe this
whatsoever. What are kids getting out of this? At the very best,
they get a superficial familiarity with a couple of names and
places. It's just mish-mash. Which is bad enough, but what's
worse is that the children become commercial targets for the
corporations that have the money to advertise on Whittle's
program. I don't see the kids getting anything whatsoever.
Whittle provides some of the most grotesque examples of present-
day commercialism.
In addition to Channel One, the Whittle Corporation brings in so-
called "educational posters" and "educational bulletin boards,"
and puts them in the classes or the corridors of the schools. The
section of the poster that's an advertisement is placed at the
kids eye-level. and the so-called informational component is
above the kids heads. It's obviously crude stuff, but it's a good
example of what they're thinking about, where their interests
are, and how their presence deteriorates the educational
environment.
Q- Another broad area to discuss is public resistance to all of
this, resistance to the penetration of public space by people
like Whittle with Channel One and the Star Broadcasting Network.
What kinds of venues do you think are best for people to explore
and defend against, Let's say, the selling off of the public
airwaves or the "mallification" of our social fabric, and the
development of an information highway that's not like a library,
but like a department store. What kinds of activist strategies do
you recommend in the months and years ahead?
A- Some of the possibilities for resistance will come out of the
contradictory situations that these developments produce. They
will produce certain kinds of discordances, certain kinds of
problems for groups or sectors in the society. I was in
Connecticut a couple of weeks ago, and nearby in Greenfield,
Massachusetts a couple of local communities had organized to keep
out Walmart, the giant chain store. Now, ordinarily an outfit
like Walmart is able to convince people that when it comes to
town everybody will benefit, people will get lower prices and a
larger variety. This is far from being a massive national
movement, but the Massachusetts community won, and Walmart was
forced out. The basis for the organizing was the protection of
local interests, and the protection of local autonomy. Community
resistance can prevent corporate giants from dominating
everyone's space.
Q- If the corporate media trivialize everything that they report,
and their only business is to buy and sell public attention to
corporate advertisers, how can we ever engage in the public
dialogue necessary for policy changes? How can we counter this in
real and meaningful ways other than through the change of
ownership. It seems like it comes to this. We always feel a
frustration with media watchdog groups, noble as their efforts
are to correct media biases in race and gender and class, the
underlying problem of corporate ownership is never really
engaged. Commercial ownership of the media is the source of our
problem; it's what we have to challenge, and it's a monolith that
few groups are willing to engage.
A- You're right on target with that. I don't think you can tackle
the media head-on. We need to go around them. The central
question is the structure of media ownership. You're not going to
get a discussion of this from the very institutions that are
organized in this way. In other words, you won't see CBS, or ABC,
or NBC actually exploring issues of hegemony and domination.
Q- But at the same time we're so paralyzed at exactly this point.
To go around the media monoliths is to leave unchallenged the
issue of commercial ownership, and then the only real alternative
is for us to challenge with independent media networks.
A- It's an unequal battle. Strengthening an independent media
system is something that needs to be pursued, because you know
you're not going to get access into the corporate media system. I
just don't see it happening at this particular stage.
We need to recognize that the whole system is riding very high
right at this particular time. Washington doesn't have to look
over its shoulder at whether or not there is a significant
socialist model to contend with; the Cold War destroyed whatever
there was out there. Just look at the unrelenting pressure put on
the people of Cuba. Washington doesn't want the slightest
possibility of a social alternative to exist. So, when I say
they're riding high, I mean that they no longer feel any serious
challenge to their expansion. They can always use what happened
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as their ideological ploy
against socialism.
The question is, what can we do in the meantime, until broad
movements can take on corporate power as a whole? I can't see
being able to get a fair shake in the media. However, it is at
least imaginable that political pressure could make our sclerotic
representative government pay a little attention to the needs of
people who are being ignored. When people are running for office
a crucial political question to ask now is: What are your views
on the media? In what ways do you plan to open up the media? Are
you going to press for the cable company in your community to
make ten channels available for public use? What are they going
to say? No? Why not? You can do that.
One of the biggest problems is that the entertainment and
information media want massive audiences, and they don't want to
run into any problems with any social questions. How many movies
did they make about the labor movement? After all, America is
made up of people who work. Where is the history of these people?
Where's the day-in-and-day-out history of the African American
population? Where's the day-in-and-day-out history of women? Not
just one program. Where's the whole history of the people?
Where's the whole history of protest movements in America? Can
you imagine the kind of dramatic material that could come from
American protest movements? The entertainment people are always
saying that they don't have enough dramatic material. Who are
they kidding?
We can begin by alerting the population on a national level as to
what is happening and begin stimulating debate. What are the
needs of this country? How will they be met? How are they going
to be met with the means proposed? These are the questions we
need to ask before society is rewired by a corporate-run
information superhighway.
Interview conducted By Greg Ruggiero and Stuart Sahulka, Open
Media, PO Box 2726 Westfield, NJ 07091; (908) 789-9608, Fax (908)
654-3829.
-----------------------------
Art McGee [amcgee@netcom.com]
-----------------------------
