[10582] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY ROUNDTABLE LIST (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Love)
Sun Feb 27 08:46:48 1994
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 12:57:49 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@essential.org>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Distributed to TAP-INFO, a free Internet Distribution List
(subscription requests to listserver@essential.org)
TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
February 12, 1994
TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY ROUNDTABLE CREATES OPEN
INTERNET LIST TO FACILITATE DEBATE OVER
TELECOMMUNICATIONS ISSUES
To become a subscriber to the Telecommunications Policy
Roundtable list, send a note to LISTPROC@CNI.ORG, with the
message: subscribe roundtable your name
[The following was written by TAP, and is not a
Roundtable press release.]
BACKGROUND ON THE ROUNDTABLE
The Telecommunications Policy Roundtable (TPR) was organized last
summer to provide the non-profit and public interest community
with a forum for telecommunications issues. Since its creation
the Roundtable has grown rapidly. The group holds monthly lunch
meeting in Washington DC (the first tuesday of each month), which
are routinely attended by 50 to 75 persons. It has formed a
number of ad hoc and standing committees to work on outreach,
reports on pending legislation, a public interest summit with the
administration, and the development of model telecommunications
legislation, among other topics.
As the group has grown, it has struggled with issues concerning
organization and structure. The only current membership criteria
for TPR is that a group endorse its principals, which are fine as
far as they go, but so general that one telephone lobbying group
recently claimed that the Bell Atlantic/TCI merger could be
justified by the TPR public interest principles. At a meeting in
January the group rejected a motion to elect one or more chairs
for the group (at present the chair rotates every meeting), and
the only present officer is Emily Littleton of the Center for
Media Education (CME), who serves as secretary.
The Roundtable's greatest asset is the "big tent" feature of the
group. Anyone is allowed to join, and membership and
participation have been extraordinary, causing a crisis in the
costs of communications within the group (for mailings and
broadcasts faxes) and a difficulty in finding rooms large enough
for Roundtable meetings. The Roundtable represents very diverse
interests, including some groups which often disagree with each
other. For example, the Alliance for Public Technology, a group
largely funded by the regional bell operating companies, and the
Consumer Federation of America (CFA), an organization
representing the interests of low income consumers, disagree
vigorously about the degree to which consumers should be required
(as consumers of telephone services) to finance the new broadband
networks.
The weaknesses of the group are related to the largely
unstructured governance of the group (no one can say who if
anyone speaks for the Roundtable), and the reluctance of the
group to define either its mission or its membership criteria
(Time-Warner or AT&T could join tomorrow).
ROUNDTABLE AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST SUMMIT
The problems with the group were revealed recently in the
Roundtable's efforts to host a "public interest summit" with the
Clinton/Gore Administration over telecommunications issues. The
idea for the public interest summit first surfaced when the
Clinton/Gore Administration announced its industry "summit" which
took place in Los Angles, featuring top cable, telephone,
computer, and entertainment executives talking about the new
information superhighway. Embarrassed by the increasing
criticism of the Administration's obvious closeness to industry
groups, the Administration sent signals that it was interested in
a follow-up session with public interest groups. The Roundtable
decided at its December meeting to take the initiative, and
organize a public interest "summit" itself, giving the group more
power in setting the agenda. Moreover, the group felt that it
needed to be as pro-active as possible, to prevent the
Administration from playing groups against each other, by
rewarding "happy talk" about the administration's high minded
goals with greater access to White House meetings and the like.
The Roundtable created a group to pursue the public interest
summit.
The Clinton/Gore Administration coordinates its efforts on the
summit through the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), which is headed by Assistant Secretary of
Commerce, Larry Irving. NTIA was reportedly uncomfortable about
dealing with the Roundtable, in part because several key
Roundtable members, such as Jeff Chester of the Center for Media
Education (CME) and Marc Rotenberg of Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility (CPSR) were outspoken critics of the
Administration's work on the NII. NTIA then negotiated an
agreement with Andrew Blau of the Benton Foundation, giving Blau
the authority to organize the public interest summit. The
Roundtable was then characterized as one of several coalitions
who would participate and plan the summit, and it the same status
as several smaller groups, such as EFF's open platform coalition,
and others. As a result, the Benton Foundation, rather than the
Roundtable, was given the responsibility to determine the agenda
for the summit, and arrange the speakers.
The Benton Foundation has recently changed its status from a
grant giving foundation to an operating foundation, and received
major funding from the McArthur Foundation to organize the non-
profit community. In this role Benton has become both a
competitor to other groups (Roundtable members) who are seeking
foundation support for work on telecommunications issues, and
also a group with considerable influence on foundation grant
giving. Blau, who recently came to Benton from EFF, also serves
as the Chair of the Roundtable Committee on Legislation.
There were some hard feelings within the Roundtable about
Benton's agreement with NTIA to organize the public interest
summit, but regardless of what Benton or anyone else does, the
Roundtable continues to be an important forum. Because the
Roundtable is wide open in terms of membership, and fairly open
in terms of its committee structure and the like, it has become
the most inclusive and important forum on telecommunications
issues for non-industry groups. At its best, the Roundtable may
act as an "honest broker" of differences between its members, and
give groups opportunities to stay informed and be included in
meetings on a wide range of important topics.
ROUNDTABLE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS LEGISLATION
While the Roundtable, as a group, has generally avoided taking
stands on just about any issue other than its public interest
principles, the groups is used as a sounding board and resource
for many smaller organizing efforts. The library community, EFF,
CFA, CPSR, TAP and many other groups bring ideas and issues
before the Roundtable, seeking endorsements for one issue or
another. While the Roundtable Legislation Committee does not
take positions on legislation, it often facilitates critiques of
bills, with presentations from Roundtable members, who are
available to answer questions from the membership at the monthly
meetings.
The Roundtable has also authorized a committee to consider the
development of model legislation, which is chaired by James Love,
from TAP. The decision to work on the development of model
legislation was somewhat controversial, since the highly diverse
membership of the Roundtable was unlikely to agree on a single
bill. However, the group finessed this problem by allowing the
Roundtable to consider and debate provisions of a comprehensive
bill, with the understanding that the Roundtable was largely
facilitating the discussions, and would not necessarily ever
endorse the final product. In the months of January and
February several sessions were scheduled around various specific
topics, such as civic discourse, common carriage, rate
regulation, universal service, privacy, small business entry into
information markets, equal opportunity in employment, and
financing non-commercial information services. Roundtable
members with special expertise served as resources for these
meetings, such as Marc Rotenberg of CPSR on privacy, Brad
Stillman and Marc Cooper of CFA on universal service and rate
regulation, Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project (MAP)
on civic discourse, Jeff Chester of CME on financing non-
commercial information services, Tony Pharr on barriers to small
business entry, and Debra Berlyn of NASUCA on consumer
protection. All the meetings on model legislation have been
noticed in advance by the Roundtable, and open to all Roundtable
members.
CREATION OF ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG
When the Roundtable was first organized TAP suggested that it
create its own Internet list, in order to broaden involvement
beyond the Washington, DC area. When this suggestion was first
made, there was some opposition within the group from those
persons who did not use the Internet, and considered email a
technology used by elites. Over time many people came to realize
that the Internet offers about the only feasible technology to
engage the grass roots in policy making, and that it would make
the Roundtable more democratic. There was also interest in
allowing online discussions of issues that could not be discussed
in depth during the monthly roundtable meetings, as well as
providing a forum whereby Roundtable members could share press
releases and other information about their activities.
In January the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
generously agreed to provide an open list for the Roundtable. At
present only some of the Roundtable members are subscribers, as a
number of key members have never used email. As more of the
Roundtable discussions go online, we expect the more reticent
Roundtable members to "take the plunge" and buy a modem and
internet access (which is cheap in Washington, DC). We also
expect that as the Roundtable list becomes better known, citizens
from the grass roots will begin to influence the views and goals
of many of the national organizations who make up the current
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