[10494] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Debating the NII "Truisms"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (The future Ross Stapleton-Gray)
Fri Feb 25 12:10:45 1994
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 13:02:54 -0700 (MST)
From: The future Ross Stapleton-Gray <STAPLETON@bpa.arizona.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Courtesy of last Thursday's Advisory Council session (but predating that
meeting, certainly), we have several statements about the NII that ought
to get chewed on a bit:
"If intellectual property rights aren't preserved, no one is going
to put any information on the 'information superhighway.'"
"If information is made free, you'll end up getting what you pay for."
(sort of a corollary to the first)
"We are in danger of becoming a nation of information 'haves' and
'have-nots.'"
The first statement is patently (no pun intended!) false, at least as
reflected by the growth in the content of the Internet alone. That
said, there is a considerable threat to the established information
services industry as an erosion of the barriers that have made
information more a "packaged" commodity than can be fairly tangibly
handled. The interpretation of that statement tends to suggest "the
future ought to look just like the present," though, and that's all but
impossible. Even if IPR *weren't* preserved, the "information
superhighway" would likely end up looking like a very rich craft fair,
rather than an enormous mass market, or a barren wasteland.
The government *does* make a lot of resources for education free, and
some are quite wonderful. Most, alas, don't travel well, e.g., the
many museums and exhibits just a few miles from me here in D.C. Once
the wires are there to use, we'll see lots of "free" (paid for by tax
dollars, but now reaching only a fraction of the possible audience)
goods. For my part, I think we really *ought* to profit by economies
of scale, though...imagine if the Dept. of Education chartered a
national free encyclopedia, and built its content through annual
competitions for what would turn out to be very modest contracts when
weighed against the whole of the population that might benefit.
Is the problem really the danger of information "haves" or "have-nots,"
or is it something more fundamental? All the information in the
world won't do you a bit of good when the crack dealer next door
decides to rob you for money to get a fix; all of the interactive
training videos in the world won't help if there are no jobs, and
if you've got to hold several minimum-wage ones all of your waking
hours just to afford to eat, let alone watch TV. (I'm actually more
inclined to take Neil Postman's position, that there's a glut of
information in danger of swamping any of us...)
Some thoughts...
Ross
