[9659] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
NII Mess & LA Times Column
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Rothman)
Sat Jan 15 15:55:06 1994
In-Reply-To: <9401151537.AA03294@psi.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 94 15:51:09 -0400
To: "John Rugo" <jrugo@nic.near.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, "COSNDISC" <cosndisc@yukon.cren.org>,
From: "David Rothman" <rothman@netcom.com>
Reply-To: rothman@netcom.com
>DATE: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 10:37:33 -0500
>FROM: John Rugo <jrugo@nic.near.net>
>
>Gentle Readers,
>
>I read this in a recent edition of a local newspaper and
>thought it presented an interesting perspective.
>
>Enjoy it, but please don't flame me, I'm just a messenger.
>
>- John Rugo
John, it's kind of you to share Michael Schrage's full column in a
public posting. This reader appreciates your efforts. If you didn't use
a scanner and instead retyped his words, then I'll offer my double
thanks. I missed that particular column. Your post is another example of
the glories of the old Internet ethos.
However, unless you won permission from the Los Angeles Times Syndicate
or from Michael Schrage if he himself owned the rights, you violated
copyright law.
We need a way for good folks like you to share information without
breaking the law, and while assuring fair compensation for publishers
and writers. *So far* the NII isn't addressing this question adequately,
though I hope that maybe a few good goverment-folks will pay attention
to some remedies I've proposed.
Meanwhile, don't worry about legal trouble since I'm sure you didn't
know what you were doing. This happens online constantly. When John
Schwartz of the Washington Post wrote a terrific article on children and
the Internet, someone asked him for permission to reproduce it on the
'Net. He graciously consented. And then, later, as I recall, he learned
that he should not have, that the rights crew at the Post had to do the
job.
Similarly I was fascinated to see Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Time Magazine
on the 'Net, asking people to please stop pirating his cyberspace story,
which he most definitely had *not* given permission to reproduce.
Without doubt, copyright law right now is a farce, a laughingstock. In
late '93 I myself downloaded an online, unauthorized version of William
Gibson's Agrippa. Then I blithely held up the disk before an interagency
NII hearing on intellectual property. Last I knew, the feds hadn't
arrested me.
Now, on to *some* of what Michael Schrage wrote:
>...The real risk we run is recreating a welfare state ethic in
>cyberspace. Of all the misconceptions surrounding multimedia innovation
>and digital superhighway metaphors, none is more misguided or
>misleading than the belief that access to new telecommunications
>technologies is somehow central to determining wealth and poverty in
>the Information Age. This is a pseudo issue that better reflects the
>paternalistic pretensions of a public policy elite than compassion for
>the less fortunate.
Michael Schrage could have given this matter a little more thought. The
same accusations of paternalism were undoubtedly made against Andrew
Carnegie when he was crusading for free public libraries.
Our students need information for school. Our workers need information
to find out better ways to do their jobs (amid fast-changing markets we
quite understanably hear talk about encouraging workers to be
self-starters). And our entrepreneurs, often cash-strapped, need
affordable information to create new wealth.
Schrage made some excellent points later in his column when he said that
books, magazines, and newspapers mattered more than subsidizing cable,
but I wish he hadn't harmed his credibility with his denial that telcom
could "determine wealth and poverty." The new telecommunication
technology needn't be just a way to spread around "I Love Lucy" on
500-channel cable TV systems. We could also use it to distribute e-books
and educational software, as I've made abundantly clear in my TeleRead
proposal (170K in its latest incarnation, available to you, Michael
Schrage, or anyone else via an e-mail request to me at rothman@netcom.com).
What's more, though multiple use of the same technology for electronic
forms and the like, we could more than cost-justify our efforts.
>Just what do we want to subsidize here, and why? Is it really, as
>the White House official said, information access? If that were true,
>it would be far more logical and cost effective to give people
>subsidies for newspaper and magazine purchases and keep the public
>libraries open longer. We would also run our society as if we cared
>about literacy.
Alas, the present philosophy in Washington seems to be, "Who cares if
it's a book or a TV program? It's just another collection of bytes."
TeleRead, however, would focus on literacy-promoting bytes.
So as I see it, Michael Schrage is getting close. Good for him.
I do notice he uses the word "subsidy" when talking about newspaper and
magazine purchases. Just what's meant here? Not "knowledge stamps," I'd
hope. We know that subsidies would be only so big. In effect we'd be
inflicting knowledge quotas on the poor. Beyond reasonable limits on the
number of books and magazines checked out at once, do free public
libraries have any knowledge quotas?
So the best solution is a national library online for rich and poor
alike, containing all newly releaed e-books, along with some other
material. Then everyone would have a vested interest in not replicating
online the "savage inequalities" of existing schools and libraries.
Caveats:
(1) For freedom-of-the-press reasons, the government should not pay for
*fresh* editions of magazines and newspapers, just for dialups from a
library of old articles. I do belive in lower costs for transmission of
periodicals. But that could easily be applied across the board, just
like postal rates. The effect would be to lower--at least slightly--the
prices that consumers paid for e-magazines and the rest. The government
could lease telcom from the private sector and than sublease it to
magazines and newspapers at favorable rates.
We'd all benefit. Americans would pay at least somewhat less for the
written word, and the written media and telcom folks could make out
quite well. How much better this would be than just the normal,
unimaginative, user-to-user subsidies, which would slice the information
pie more than enlarge it.
If anyone accuses me of a prejudice in favor of print (or the
equivalent), well, yes, I'm guilty as charged. We indeed should "run our
society as if we cared about literacy."
I couldn't agree more with Schrage when he writes elsewhere in the
column: "It's bizarre that certain pundits and prognosticators want to
focus on high-tech network access subsidies after the Department of
Education published a survey claiming to show that fully half of
American adults are close to functionally illiterate."
(Of course, I'll again remind him that high-tech nets can spread books,
not just prime-time trash on TV.)
(2) Business people should have the right to set up their own databases
and operate two-way services such as America Online and CompuServe. If
anything, they'd come out ahead, compared to now, since the proposed
TeleRead program would encourage Silicon Valley to develop
sharp-screened, affordable computers optimized for reading, writing,
e-forms *and* networking. TeleReader-style computers will be reality
sooner or later. But TeleRead would encourage the Valley to bring them
to market much faster than otherwise.
No magic involved. TeleRead would simply create a core market of schools
and libraries, which would lend the machines out to students and others.
This core market, in turn, would encourage the Valley to ramp up
production of *really* affordable machines for reading, writing,
networking, and smart, easy-to-use e-forms (to reduce the burden of
local, state and federal bureaucracy, which costs us hundreds of
billions of dollars a year in time and money).
(3) We might also want to make material in the national library
available to local libraries. In TeleRead I propose an encryption-based
scheme that would work with *free* books. Transactions could be tracked
in a way that would guarantee compensation for writers and publishers
from a national fund. This would happen whether e-books reached readers
via the national library, local servers, CD-ROM, or even BBS systems.
And, yes, I have suggestions for protection of privacy.
>What fundamental changes are occurring that, all of a sudden, make
>multimedia technology subsidies such good public policy? The coming
>convergence of cable TV and local phone companies? That's simply
>ridiculous: Is access to CNN or C-SPAN an essential public service,
>like dialing 911?
Bull's-eye, Michael Schrage!
>Well, while we certainly subsidized the growth
>of telephone systems, we chose not to subsidize sales of radios and
>television sets or VCRs or telephone answering machines.
>
>Has that promoted a two-tiered society of communications rich and
>poor? Should we now subsidize purchases of personal computers and
>modems to ensure access to interactive media on the networks?
As noted above, we wouldn't have to subsidize the entire computer
market--just a fraction. Wittingly or not, the feds did the same thing
when they bought thousands of laptops for Treasury, the military, and so
on. It helped legitimize the technology for users of all kinds.
Production increased and prices fell for consumers.
>Of course, this is a fully competitive marketplace where prices have
>been plummeting for years. You can go out today and buy for less than
>$200 a 14.4 high-speed modem - a technology that cost more than $1,000
>barely three years ago. You can get a slower, 2,400-band modem for
>under $80. And they will get cheaper, yet.
I've heard of 2,400-bps models selling for all of $35 new at one
discount chain (with MNP5, a West Coast friend tells me).
>So do we buy the high-performance Porsches for driving on the
>information highway, or do we buy the clunky jalopies? Where do you
>draw the line? In an environment of constantly declining prices, what
>subsidies make sense? Or should we expect people to by $500 computer-
>TV sets out of their own pockets?
>
They *have* TVs. Why not encourage the Valley to work toward affordable
tablet-style computers (with optional keyboards) for $200 or less? TV
and multimedia capabilities could come later. Basics first!
>If we're honest, we'll acknowledge that access to the latest media
>technology isn't nearly as important as access to the latest health
>care technology.
They're *both* important--and intertwined. One of the most gungho
opponents of stupid pay-per-read schemes works for Merck, the drug
company. No mystery. Overpriced journals cost Merck's people a bundle.
And he himself likes to stay current in his own field.
What's more, the new tech can be used to spread health information to
the masses. As I recall, the first Free-Net was started by a Cleveland
doctor who wanted to keep patients (or was it the public at large?)
well-informed.
Tom G., care to come forward?
> The real problem isn't access; it's some pundits'
>insistence that issues of social equity and economic opportunity are
>better shaped by investing in technology than in people. That's a bad
>idea, and it leads to bad policy.
>
If free or low-cost books online aren't an investment in people, then I
don't know what is.
Mind you, technology isn't a panacea. It can't replace the nurturing
that children get from good teachers (I *hate* the tech-obsessed
philosophy of "School's Out"). Nor can it can make parents respect
learning.
But at least the technology should be out there for parents and children
wanting it, just as free public libraries are--so far. Furthermore, if
families could dial up books from home, and read exactly what they
wanted, then we'd promote literacy rather than just technology. Easier,
more affordable networking would also aid the cause; I wish Schrage
would check in with the CoSN folks to see what happens when students
*write* on BBS system and the 'Net and read each other's messages.
At any rate, Michael Schrage ideally will be open-minded enough to
ponder the cosmic questions some more. Again, he's on the right track
when he talks about books, newspapers, and magazines being more
beneficial than just more TV.
Meanwhile, let me return to the point I made earlier about piracy. With
a well-integrated information system such as TeleRead, John, you could
have posted your message online and inclunded a link to the Times
article--so that people could easily and legally retrieve it. Moreover,
if the article were old enough to be in the national library, you could
have included the full text in your post, with the Times receiving
appropriate compensation.
**************************************************************************
David H. Rothman "So we beat on, boats against
rothman@netcom.com the current...."
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