This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age by the late communications theorist Ithiel de Sola Pool. It was, and remains, a remarkable book that is well worth your time whether you read it long ago or are just hearing about it for the first time. It was the book that inspired me when I first read in 1994 to abandon my chosen field of study (trade policy) and do a deep dive into the then uncharted waters of information technology policy.

A Technological Nostradamus

Long before most of the world had heard about this thing called “the Internet” or using terms like “cyberspace” or even “electronic superhighway,” Pool was describing this emerging medium, thinking about its ramifications, and articulating the optimal policies that should govern it. In Technologies of Freedom, Pool set forth both a predictive vision of future communications and “electronic publishing” markets as well as a policy vision for how those markets should be governed. “Networked computers will be the printing presses of the twenty-first century,” Pool argued in a remarkably prescient chapter on the future of electronic publishing. “Soon most published information will disseminated electronically,” and “there will be networks on networks on networks,” he predicted. “A panoply of electronic devices puts at everyone’s hands capacities far beyond anything that the printing press could offer.” As if staring into a crystal ball, Pool predicted:

Separate nations will have separate networks, as they do now, but these will interconnect. Within nations, the satellite carriers, microwave carriers, and local carriers may be—and in the United States almost certainly will be—in the hands of separate organizations, but they will interconnect. So even the basic physical network will be a network of networks. And on top of the physical networks will be a pyramid of service networks. Through them will be published or delivered to the public a variety of things: movies, music, money, education, news, meetings, scientific data, manuscripts, petitions, and editorials.

Remember folks, he was writing this in the early 1980s, when VCRs and the Sony Walkman were still considered cutting-edge electronic technologies! His predictions, which must have sounded like science fiction in 1983, are today’s reality. Few scholars or futurists were more accurate in their forecasts about the world of electronic commerce or online communications that was emerging. It’s worth reading the book just to see how much Pool got right about the future because it is absolutely astonishing. [ Note: You might also want to check out how he almost perfectly predicted the copyright policy wars of modern times in his posthumous book, Technologies without Boundaries.]

A Passionate Defense of Free Speech & Technological Freedom

But what made Technologies of Freedom truly special is that Pool did not stop with predictive judgments and scenarios about future tech developments. He continued on to offer a passionate defense of technological freedom and freedom of speech in the electronic age. Pool worried that technological convergence would lead to the convergence of regulatory policies unless action was taken to quarantine electronic publishing and digital networks from analog era regulatory policies:

In the coming era, the industries of print and the industries of telecommunications will no longer be kept apart by a fundamental difference in their technologies. The economic and regulatory problems of the electronic media will thus become the problems of the print media too. No longer can electronic communications be viewed as a special circumscribed case of a monopolistic and regulated communications medium which poses no danger to liberty because there still remains a large realm of unlimited freedom of expression in the print media. The issues that concern telecommunications and now becoming issues for all communications as they all become forms of electronic processing and transmission.

“The specific question to be answered,” Pool asserted, “is whether the electronic resources for communications can be as free of public regulation in the future as the platform and printing press have been in the past.” In his closing chapter on “Policies for Freedom,” Pool discussed possible futures for the emerging world of electronic communications and argued that:

Technology will not be to blame if Americans fail to encompass this system within the political tradition of free speech. On the contrary, electronic technology is conducive to freedom. The degree of diversity and plenitude of access that mature electronic technology allows far exceed what is enjoyed today. Computerized information networks of the twenty-first century need not be any less free for all to use without hindrance than was the printing press. Only political errors might make them so.

Guidelines for Freedom

To guard against those “political errors,” Pool set forth ten “Guidelines for Freedom”:

1. The First Amendment applies fully to all media.
2. Anyone may publish at will.
3. Enforcement must be after the fact, not by prior restraint.
4. Regulation is a last recourse. In a free society, the burden of proof is for the least possible regulation of communication.
5. Interconnection among common carriers may be required.
6. Recipients of privilege (monopolies) may be subject to disclosure.
7. Privileges (copyrights and patents) may have time limits.
8. The government and common carriers should be blind to circuit use. What the facility is used for is not their concern.
9. Bottlenecks should not be used to extend control.
10. For electronic publishing, copyright enforcement must be adapted to the technology.

Pool’s vision was quite libertarian for his time, but his embrace of minimal interconnection / common carriage regulation shows this he was open to some forms of regulatory oversight. Nonetheless, the role of law in Pool’s paradigm was tightly constrained to ensure new electronic networks developed free of the regulatory burdens of the past.

Importantly, Pool also identified regulation as the source of many of the “monopoly” problems that drove traditional communications and media policy. “The force that preserves most monopoly privilege is the law,” and “most monopolies exist by grace of the police and the courts,” he noted. Further, “most would vanish in the absence of enforcement.” This reflected his general concern about regulatory capture in tech sectors.

Toward Tech Liberty

So, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, I strongly encourage you to give Pool’s Technologies of Freedom a second look, or a first look if you haven’t had the pleasure of taking it all in before. I think that, like me, you’ll find his predictive powers breathtaking and his principled policy vision refreshingly bold and enlightening. And I challenge you to find another Internet policy book since Technologies of Freedom that has contained more elegant, inspiring prose. It is a beautifully written polemic. Toward that end, I leave you with the final passage from the book and hope that it inspires you as it has me to keep up the good fight for tech liberty:

The easy access, low cost, and distributed intelligence of modern means of communication are a prime reason for hope. The democratic impulse to regulate evils, as Tocqueville warned, is ironically a reason for worry. Lack of technical grasp by policy makers and their propensity to solve problems of conflict, privacy, intellectual property, and monopoly by accustomed bureaucratic routines are the main reasons for concern. But as long as the First Amendment stands, backed by courts which take it seriously, the loss of liberty is not foreordained. The commitment of American culture to pluralism and individual rights is reason for optimism, as is the pliancy and profusion of electronic technology.

I’m very excited to announce that I now have a regular Forbes column that will fly under the banner, “Technologies of Freedom.” My first essay for them is already live and it addresses a topic I’ve dealt with here extensively through the years: Irrational fears about tech monopolies and “information empires.” Jump over to Forbes to read the whole thing.

Regular readers of this blog will understand why I chose “Technologies of Freedom” as the title for my column, but I thought it was worth reiterating. No book has had a more formative impact on my thinking about technology policy than Ithiel de Sola Pool’s 1983 masterpiece, Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age.  As I noted in my short Amazon.com review, Pool’s technological tour de force is simply breathtaking in its polemical power and predictive capabilities. Reading this book almost three decades after it was published, one comes to believe that Pool must have possessed a crystal ball or had a Nostradamus-like ability to foresee the future.

For example, long before anyone else had envisioned what we now refer to as “cyberspace,” Pool was describing it in this book. “Networked computers will be the printing presses of the twenty-first century,” he argued in his remarkably prescient chapter on electronic publishing. “Soon most published information will disseminated electronically,” and “there will be networks on networks on networks,” he predicted. “A panoply of electronic devices puts at everyone’s hands capacities far beyond anything that the printing press could offer.” Few probably believed his prophecies in 1983, but no one doubts him now!

Far more importantly, Pool did all this while also providing a passionate defense of technological freedom and freedom of speech in the electronic age. In his closing chapter on “Policies for Freedom,” Pool discussed possible futures for the emerging world of electronic communications and noted that:

Technology will not be to blame if Americans fail to encompass this system within the political tradition of free speech. On the contrary, electronic technology is conducive to freedom. The degree of diversity and plenitude of access that mature electronic technology allows far exceed what is enjoyed today. Computerized information networks of the twenty-first century need not be any less free for all to use without hindrance than was the printing press. Only political errors might make them so. (p. 231)

Pool went on to outline his “Guidelines for Freedom.” #1 was that “the First Amendment applies fully to all media” and #2 was that “anyone may publish at will.” Regarding economic regulation of tech markets, Pool stressed in principles #3 and #4 that “enforcement must be after the fact, not by prior restraint” and that “regulation is a last recourse. In a free society, the burden of proof is for the least possible regulation of communication.”

This framework for freedom and innovation has governed everything I have done over my first two decades in the field of technology policy and it will shape everything I pen for Forbes, much like it has here at the TLF through the years. I can’t pretend to possess Pool’s predictive powers, but I can and will commit myself to espousing and defending his beautiful vision of technological freedom and progress.

This is what I wake up and go to work for each day.  The fight for technological freedom!

In his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morozov aims to prick the bubble of hyper-optimism that surrounds debates about the Internet’s role in advancing human freedom or civic causes.  Morozov, a native of Belarus, is a tremendously gifted young cyber-policy scholar affiliated with Stanford University and the New America Foundation.  He’s an expert on the interaction of digital technology and democracy and writes frequently on that topic for a variety of respected media outlets.

In Net Delusion, as with many of his previous columns and essays, Morozov positions himself the ultimate Net “realist,” aiming to bring a dose of realpolitik to discussions about how much of a difference the Net and digital technologies make to advancing democracy and freedom.  His depressing answer: Not much.  Indeed, Morozov’s book is one big wet blanket on the theory that “technologies of freedom” can help liberate humanity from the yoke of repressive government.

Morozov clearly relishes his skunk at the garden party role, missing few opportunities to belittle those who subscribe to such theories.  If you’re one of those who tinted your Twitter avatar green as an expression of solidarity with Iranian “Green Movement” dissidents, Morozov’s view is that, at best, you’re wasting your time and, at worst, you’re aiding and abetting tyrants by engaging in a form of “slacktivism” that has little hope of advancing real regime change.  The portrait he paints of technology and democracy is a dismal one in which cyber-utopian ideals of information as liberator are not just rejected but inverted.  He regards such “cyber-utopian” dreams as counter-productive, even dangerous, to the advance of democracy and human freedom.

Against Cyber-Utopianism

In the opening pages of The Net Delusion, Morozov explains it is his mission is to beat back “cyber-utopianism,” at least as it relates to international affairs and diplomacy.  He defines cyber-utopianism as “a naïve belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge its downside.” He blames “the starry-eyed digital fervor of the 1990s” and the “former hippies… [now] ensconced in some of the more prestigious universities in the world” for giving rise to the notion that “the Internet could deliver what the 1960’s couldn’t” in terms of building a better, more peaceful world. (p. xiii)  He also aims to counter what he has elsewhere referred to as “the public’s penchant for fetishizing the engineer as the ultimate savior.”

Much of the scorn he heaps on the cyber-utopians is well-deserved, although I think there are far fewer of them around than Morozov imagines. Nonetheless, there certainly is a bit too much Pollyanna-ish hyper-optimism at play in debates about the Net’s role in advancing liberation of those peoples who are being subjected to tyrannical rule across the planet.

But Morozov simply doesn’t know when to quit. His relentless and highly repetitive critique goes overboard when it veers into all-too familiar territory already plowed by other Internet pessimists and cultural critics beginning back in the 1980s with the late social critic Neil Postman.  Indeed, what Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) and Technopoly (1992) were to early discussions about information technology and culture, Morozov’s Net Delusion is to modern debates about the Net and political change.

Like Postman, Morozov wants us to believe that increased access to entertainment and communications technologies breeds societal indifference, and that increased consumerism breeds civic lethargy.  Morozov paints a portrait of world affairs in which the Internet inevitably pushes us into something akin to Idiocracy; it’s a world in which all these digital gadgets, communications devices, and entertainment options turn us all into unthinking, anti-intellectual, apolitical pawns who can be easily manipulated by the State.  “Where new media and the Internet truly excel is in suppressing boredom.  Previously, boredom was one of the few truly effective ways to politicize the population denied release values for channeling their discontent, but this is no longer the case.” (p. 80)  He continues on: “Those of us rooting for the further spread of democracy around the globe must stop dreaming and face reality: The Internet has provided so many cheap and easily available entertainment fixes to those living under authoritarianism that is has become considerably harder to get people to care about politics at all.” (p. 81)

Morozov thinks that the “ridiculously easy group-forming” that his leading nemesis Clay Shirky described in his recent book Cognitive Surplus is, in reality, leading largely to cognitive crap, at least as it pertains to civic action and political activism.  Indeed, at one point in Chapter 7 (the creatively-titled, “Why Kierkegaard Hates Slacktivism”), Morozov speaks of the development of what we might think of as a “tragedy of the civic commons” (my term, not his).  He argues that:

When everyone in the group performs the same mundane tasks, it’s impossible to evaluate individual contributions, and people inevitably begin slacking off… Increasing the number of participants diminishes the relative social pressure on each and often results in inferior outputs. (p 193)

It’s an interesting theory, as far as it goes, but Morozov doesn’t muster much more than a handful of anecdotes in support of it.  He notes, for example, that even back in the Berlin Wall era, young East German students were more likely to know intimate facts about popular American dramas like Dallas and Dynasty than current political affairs.  And, echoing the recent laments of Andrew Keen (Cult of the Amateur) and Lee Siegel (Against the Machine), Morozov worries about the “narcissism” and “attention seeking” of social networking denizens. “There’s nothing wrong with the self-promotion per se, but it seems quite unlikely that such narcissistic campaigners would be able to develop true feelings of empathy or be prepared to make sacrifices that political life, especially political life in authoritarian states, requires.” (p 187)

But this ignores many legitimate forms of social organization / protesting that have been facilitated by the Net and digital technologies.  Despite what Morozov suggests, we haven’t all become lethargic, asocial, apolitical cave-dwelling Baywatch­ rerun-watching junkies.  If all Netizens are just hooked on a cyber-sedative that saps their civic virtue, what are we to make of the millions of progressives who so successfully used the Net and digital technologies to organize and elect President Obama? (Believe me, I wish they wouldn’t have been so civic-minded and rushed to the polls in record numbers to elect that guy!)

Similarly, Morozov belittles some of the online communities that have formed to support various charitable or civic causes by arguing that if you divide the number of members of such online groups by the aggregate amount of money they raise, it comes out to mere pennies on the dollar per community member. But so what?  Do we know if those communities or causes would have come together at all or spent more money without digital communications and networking technologies?  It is certainly true that merely setting up a new cyber-cause and giving a few bucks to it isn’t the same as going on a mission to Africa to build homes and water systems, but does Morozov really want to us to believe that more of that sort of thing would happen in the absence of the Net and digital technology?  Were African relief charities better off in the days when Sally Struthers lectured us on late-night TV about giving more to such causes?  I find that very hard to believe.

Regardless, here’s where we can all agree: Technology is just one of many tools that can be harnessed to keep the power of the State in check or advance important civic / charitable causes.  I am entirely sympathetic to Morozov’s argument that other factors and forces play an even more important role in promoting democracy and, in particular, ending tyranny. (Personally, I think we’d do more to assist repressed dissidents by sneaking them copies of Guns and Ammo or Soldier of Fortune instead of Wired, but I digress.)  “The calculus of measuring quality of life demands a few more steps than simply adding all the efficiencies and subtracting all the inefficiencies,” he says, “it also requires a good understanding of what particular values are important in a particular context of human relations.” (p. 198) Who could disagree with such a statement?

Yet, in his zeal to counter those who have placed too great an emphasis on the role of information technology, Morozov himself has gone too far in the opposite extreme in The Net Delusion by suggesting that technology’s role in transforming States or politics is either mostly irrelevant or even, at times, counter-productive.  I’m just not buying it.  I think you’ll find a more nuanced and balanced set of conclusions in this new white paper, “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing,” by Bruce Etling, Robert Faris and John Palfrey.  In it, they conclude:

The Internet has an important role in increasing information sharing, access to alternative platforms, and allowing new voices to join political debates.  The Internet will continue to serve these functions, even with state pushback, as activists devise ways around state online restrictions.  Conditions that contribute to success are likely determined not by the given technological tool, but by human skill and facility in using the networks that are being mobilized.  …  It is less clear how far online organizing and digital communities will be allowed to push states toward drastic political change and greater democratization, especially in states where offline restrictions to civic and political organization are severe.  As scholars, we ought to focus our attention on the people involved and their competencies in using digitally-mediated tools to organize themselves and their fellow citizens, whether as flash mobs or through sustained social movements or organizations, rather than the flow of information as such.

In other words, we should view information as one of many means to the end and not the end in and of itself.  But we also shouldn’t discount its importance too lightly.

But What’s the Ultimate Goal Here?

There’s a more profound problem with Morozov’s thesis. If he is correct that the Net poses such risks, or undermines the cause of democracy-promotion, isn’t the logical recommendation that flows from it technology control or entertainment repression?  If, as Morozov implies, Netizens are spending too much time viewing Lolcats and not enough in the streets protesting or running down to the Peace Corps to sign up for a tour of duty, then what would he have us do about it?  Shall we restrict access to the growing abundance of technological / entertainment choices that he laments?

Amazingly, he never really clarifies his views on this important point. Like so many other cultural critics before him, Morozov finds it easy to use caustic wit to tear apart inflated arguments and egos on the other side while also conveniently ignoring the logical consequences of their critiques or bothering to set forth a constructive alternative.

About the closest he comes is to detailing his views is Chapter 9, which focuses on the danger of the Net and modern digital technology being used to spread extremist views.  Even though he refuses to get more specific about potential responses, what, exactly, are we to conclude when we hear Morozov speak of the need for “measures to mitigate the negative side effects of increased interconnectedness.” (p. 261) And what are we to make of his claim that “More and cheaper tools in the wrong hands can result in less, not more, democracy.” (p. 264)  Or, his argument that:

The danger is that the colorful banner of Internet freedom may further conceal the fact that the Internet is much more than a megaphone for democratic speech, that is other uses can be extremely antidemocratic in nature, and the without addressing those uses the very project of democracy promotion might be in great danger.”(p. 265-6)

Or, finally, his conclusion in that chapter that:

If the sad experience of the 1990s has taught us anything, it’s that successful (democratic) transitions require a strong state and a relatively orderly public life. The Internet, so far, has posed something of a threat to both. (p. 274)

Reading those passages — especially the words I’ve highlighted — it’s hard not to conclude that Morozov would like to put the information genie back in the bottle.  To be clear, he never says that directly since he simply refuses to be nailed down on specifics.  But, again, his tone seems to suggest that some form of technological control or information repression may be necessary.  I hope that in coming essays Evgeny will be willing to clarify his views on this issue since The Net Delusion leaves us scratching our heads and wondering just how far he would go to counter the supposed “danger” or “threat” posed by digital technology.

On the Voluntary Surrender of Privacy via Social Sharing Technologies

Morozov is on somewhat stronger footing in highlighting the paradoxical danger of voluntary information exposure in an age of ubiquitous digital connectivity and communications. “While it is tempting to encourage everyone to flock to social networking sites and blogs to avoid the control of the censors, it would play into the hands of those in charge of surveillance and propaganda. The more connection between activists it can identify, the better for government,” he notes. (p. 83) “[I]n too many contexts,” he argues, “it empowers the strong and disempowers the weak.” (p. xvii)  In another creatively-titled chapter, “Why the KGB Wants You to Join Facebook,” he goes so far as to argue that “membership in a [social] network is a double-edged sword: Its usefulness can easily backfire if some segment gets compromised and their relationships with other members become common knowledge.  Before the advent of social media, it took a lot of effort for repressive governments to learn about the people dissidents are associated with,” but “today, they simply need to get on Facebook,” Morozov argues. (p. 156)

This is a fair point, and one that is much harder to know how to deal with.  But let’s say it is true that social networking tools and other digital technologies which allow greater online personalization and socialization also potentially facilitate increased government surveillance by the State.  What are we to do about that?  Again, we’re right back at the specter of information / technology repression and, once again, Morozov largely dodges that discussion. (Instead of direct regulation, I would think the better answer would be to educate users about sensible use of those sites or technologies and then work to empower them with more tools to better manage their privacy and/or evade surveillance).

Moreover, Morozov once again overplays his hand here.  He spends so much time arguing that digital technologies have made our lives more transparent to the State that he underplays the myriad ways it has simultaneously made government activities more visible than at any point in history.  It is extraordinarily difficult for even the most repressive of States today to completely bottle up all its secrets and actions.  Morozov says modern China, Putin’s Russia and Hugo Chavez are embracing new digital technologies in an attempt to better control them or learn how to use them to better spy on their citizens, and he implies that this is just another way they will dupe the citizenry and seduce them into a slumber so they will avert their eyes and ears to the truth of the repression that surrounds them.  Sorry, but once again, I’m not buying it.  Repressive regimes really do face a tension when they embrace modern information and communications technologies. It does force them to make certain trade-offs as they look to modernize their economies.  Morozov thinks this so-called “dictator’s dilemma” hypothesis is largely bunk, but he seems to expect this process to unfold overnight once new technology moves in.  In reality, these things take more time. The general progression of things in most states is toward somewhat greater transparency and openness, even if it does not magically spawn regime change overnight.

Importantly, he never really offers a credible cost-benefit analysis of the life of citizens in those regimes today relative to the past. Are we seriously supposed to believe that information-deprived Chinese peasants of the Mao era were somehow better positioned to influence positive regime change than the more empowered modern Chinese citizen?  It’s a tough sell.  Are their downsides associated with those new technologies (especially the potential for citizen surveillance)?  Yes, of course.  But let’s not use that as an excuse for marching backwards, technologically-speaking.

On America’s “Contradictions,” and Morozov’s

Chapter 8 of the book focuses on what Morozov describes as the “Cultural Contradictions of Internet Freedom.” He again scores some points for rightly pointing to the hypocrisy at play in the United States today — by both government and corporations — when it comes to the promotion of Net freedom globally.  He correctly notes that “while American diplomats are preaching the virtues of a free and open Internet abroad, an Internet unburdened by police, court orders, and censorship, their counterparts in domestic law enforcement, security, and military agencies are preaching — and some are already pursing — policies informed by a completely different assessment of those virtues.”  (p. 218)  Similarly, Morozov castigates many of America’s leading high-tech companies — Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, etc. – for preaching the values of Net freedom but then all too willingly handed over information about dissidents to repressive State actors, or playing ball with foreign thugs in other ways.

Morozov is right; American leaders in both government and business need to better align their actions with their rhetoric when it comes to the interaction of government and technology.  Too often, both groups are guilty of talking a big game about the Internet and freedom, only to later take steps to undermine that cause.  As Morozov asks in a recent New York Post column, “Shouldn’t America’s fight for Internet freedom start at home for it to be taken seriously by the rest of the world?”  Yes, it should.

Morozov’s critique of these “cultural contradictions” continues on, however, and it leads him to a surprising conclusion that is contradictory in its own right.  He says that the real problem here is that we’re all being seduced by those silly libertarian types with their crazy ideas about keeping the Net largely unfettered.  He says, for example:

The way forward is to acknowledge that the public pressure to regulate the Web is growing and that not all of the ensuing regulation should be resisted because the Internet is the favorite sacred cow of most libertarians.  The only way to get it right is to avoid holding on to some abstract truths – e.g., that the internet is a revolutionary force that should be spared any regulation whatsoever — but rather to invest one’s energy into seeking broad public agreement on what acceptable, transparent, and just democratic procedures by which such regulation is to occur should look like. (p. 218)

Thus, on one hand, Morozov laments the fact that U.S. politicians and corporations are far too willing to cave to political pressure, which results in the undermining of online freedoms.  On the other, he says that we all need to just chill out and accept the increasing politicization of the Net.  He never identifies the potential contradiction in his own thinking here.

Will increased meddling will the Net really help advance his cause?  I can’t see how but, then again, I’m one of those cyber-libertarians that Morozov would dismiss as unrealistic or “utopian.”  Morozov apparently thinks there is some process out there that will help us determine the “acceptable, transparent, and just democratic procedures [for] regulation” yet, once again, he never lets us in on the details.  All we know from his book is that the way the past three U.S. presidential administrations have approached Internet policy is not to his liking.  And even though it would be hard to call any of them “libertarian” in their approach to Net policy, Morozov clearly thinks the days of “Hands Off the Net” are over and were overrated to begin with.

Conclusion

To summarize, Morozov is quite right about the excessive euphoria currently surrounding the relationship of the Net to politics and regime change, but I think he’s gone a bit overboard in The Net Delusion. I realize how much fun playing the role of cranky contrarian must be for him since he’s addressing a target-rich environment, full of irrational Internet exuberance.  But Morozov just lays it all on a bit too thick for my taste.  “[T]he important thing is to acknowledge that the debate about the Internet’s effects on democracy isn’t over and to avoid behaving as if the jury is already out,” he argues.  (p. 241)  Fair enough.  The problem is, based on the tone of The Net Delusion and some of its conclusions, it appears that Evgeny Morozov has already sent the jury home and rendered a guilty verdict against the Net.

Additional Reading / Links:

• Evgeny Morozov’s homepage, his blog, and some of his other writings
• The official book site for The Net Delusion.
• Jerry Brito’s podcast interview with Morozov about the book
• Morozov’s TED Talk on “How the Net Aids Dictatorships” (also embedded below)
• The London Review of Books review of the book + Kirkus Reviews.
• Milton Mueller’s review.
• Cory Doctorow’s review.
• … and follow Evgeny on Twitter here.

We often talk about the problem of having all 50 states impose different regulatory requirements on the Internet, with the most restrictive standard effectively applying to all Internet actors.Fortunately, in the U.S. such efforts can be stamped down either by invoking the “Dormant Commerce Clause” (DCC) in court or by passing “preemptive federal regulation.”  (Unfortunately, most who complain about patchwork approaches, both in industry and the advocacy community, usually forget about the DCC and move right to federal legislation.)

But what about the 195 independent countries in the world (to say nothing of their regional/local subdivisions)? What if they each tried regulating Internet activity? Our friends at the Center for Democracy at Technology report on a scary precedent set by a Belgian court in March when it ruled that Belgian law applied to Yahoo! merely because Belgian citizens could access Yahoo! Mail. Thus, the court ruled that Yahoo! violated Belgian law when the company refused to hand over user data in response to an email from a Belgian prosecutor. CDT rightly applauds Yahoo! for insisting that the Belgians “follow established diplomatic and legal processes in order to gain access to user information.” But as the post notes, the really scary prospect is that of one country asserting authority over every site or service on the Internet that can be accessed in their country.

If this precedent stands, it’s likely to cause, at the very least, many companies to limit access to their sites or services by persons from countries with burdensome regulatory approaches. Even if those foreign laws are well-intentioned and laudable—such as efforts to punish fraud (as in the Belgian case) or to crack down on, say, child porn or protect user privacy)—the result could be to balkanize Internet services.  This would be especially unfortunate, given the incredible importance of services that might previously have seemed “un-serious” like Twitter or Facebook as “technologies of freedom.” CDT notes the danger to Internet freedom:

To understand how problematic this ruling is, we need only imagine how the governments of China, Iran, Vietnam or other repressive regime of your choice may decide that the precedent set here is one well worth following. Such actions undermine Belgium’s moral authority since, after all, it would only be hypocritical for Western democracies to criticize such radically overbroad assertions of jurisdiction by other nations.

Stephen Schultze is an up-and-coming technology policy analyst who is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is also finishing up his Masters of Science in Comparative Media Studies up at MIT. He’s been kind enough to stop by here at the TLF on occasion and comment on some of the things we have written — usually to give us grief, but we welcome that too! He’s very sharp and always has something of substance to say, and he says it in a respectful way. So I look forward to many years of intellectual combat with him. (Incidentally, we also share a mutual admiration for the work of Ithiel de Sola Pool, especially his 1983 classic, “Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age , which I have noted is my favorite tech policy book of all-time.]

Anyway, Stephen has just posted his master’s thesis: “The Business of Broadband and the Public Interest: Media Policy for the Network Society.” It’s a noble attempt to defend and extend the “public interest” concept in the Digital Age. Stephen attempts to “identify the several dimensions in which it remains relevant today.” In his thesis, Stephen cites some of my past work on the issue since I have articulated a very different view on the issue. Specifically, he cites a line of mine that I have used in multiple studies and essays on the issue:

“The public interest standard is not really a “standard” at all since it has no fixed meaning; the definition of the phrase has shifted with the political winds to suit the whims of those in power at any given time.”

I stand by that quote and down below I have pasted a lengthy passage on the mythology surrounding the public interest standard, which I pulled directly from my old 2005 “Media Myths” book. It explains in more detail why I feel that way.

“Right now is a critical point of media in transition that will affect the shape communications ecosystem going forward,” Stephen states in his thesis. I couldn’t agree more, but I completely disagree that that somehow justifies breathing new life into a standard-less standard that justifies open-ended, arbitrary governance of the Internet and digital media. Read on to understand why I feel that way…

[The following passage is cut from Chapter 4 of Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership, 2005, p. 97-100]

[M]any policymakers continue to prop up public interest notions and regulations in the belief that they are directing the content or character of media (and broadcasting in particular) toward a nobler end; a sort of noblesse oblige for the communications age. At times, their rhetoric takes on a fairy-tale quality as lawmakers and regulators speak of the public interest in reverential and fantastic terms, all the while deftly evading any attempt to define the term. For example, while testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee in January of 2003, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps paid homage to the public interest standard:

At all times, I strive to maintain my commitment to the public interest. As public servants, we must put the public interest front and center. It is at the core of my own philosophy of government…. The public interest is the prism through which we should always look as we make our decisions. My question to visitors to my office who are advocating for specific policy changes is always: how does what you want the Commission to do serve the public interest? It is my lodestar.

That is nice rhetoric, but Commissioner Copps’ public interest “lodestar” ultimately provides little practical guidance. Public interest proponents assume that their values or objectives — which, in their opinion, are consistent with the needs and desires of the public — should ultimately triumph within the public policy arena. Consequently, volumes of government rules and speeches have been penned advocating a large and expanding role for government in terms of defining “the public interest.” But while public interest regulation has been the cornerstone of communications and media policy since the 1930s, enabling regulators to control industry structures and outcomes, at no time during these seven decades of public interest regulation has the term been defined.

Even today, efforts are made to read new powers or responsibilities into the term in order to provide regulators with the flexibility to control modern electronic media (i.e., broadcasting, cable) in ways they could not control older print media (i.e., newspaper, magazines). For example, during the late 1990s, the Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters was formed by an executive order of President Bill Clinton to investigate expanding public interest obligations for television broadcasters. The group came up with numerous recommendations to impose new burdens on broadcasters, even as broadcasters struggle to remain competitive with other media outlets that are not burdened with similar public interest regulatory requirements.

Similarly, many academics have advocated a much broader role for government in dictating media outcomes. For example, even though they admit that “One of the dangers in evaluating the media in a public interest framework is that it can easily take on an elitist tone,” David Croteau and William Hoynes go on to pen an entire book dedicated to expanding public interest regulation of media. Among the expanded public interest responsibilities Croteau and Hoynes and other regulatory supporters endorse: public service announcements; expanding coverage of political campaigns, debates and developments; free (or lower-cost) campaign ad time; expanded “educational” or cultural programming (especially aimed at children); and expanded coverage of community affairs.

The problem with all this “public interest” thinking, as Ben Compaine aptly notes, is that “In democracies, there is no universal ‘public interest.’ Rather there are numerous and changing ‘interested publics.’” The viewing public is likely to have a broad array of interests and desires that cannot be adequately gauged by what five FCC commissioners believe to be in the public interest. Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase argued 40 years ago that “The phrase… lacks any definite meaning. Furthermore, the many inconsistencies in commission decisions have made it impossible for the phrase to acquire a definite meaning in the process of regulation.” That is still true today. The public interest standard is not really a “standard” at all since it has no fixed meaning; the definition of the phrase has shifted with the political winds to suit the whims of those in power at any given time.

If you are interested in reading the rest, jump to @ page 105 in the Scribd version….

… environmental attorney Dusty Horwitt, who recently published this outlandishly stupid and highly offensive editorial in the Washington Post calling for an information tax to reduce the supply of information in society. “[I]n our information-overloaded society,” he argues, “the concept of [too much information] is no joke. The information avalanche coming from all sides — the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels — is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience.” His repressive solution?

It’s possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information. If Americans are finally giving up SUVs because of high oil prices, might we not eventually do the same with some information technologies that only seem to fragment our society, not unite it? A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

Mike Masnick of TechDirt and Richard Kaplar of the Media Institute do a fine job of ripping Mr. Horwitt’s absurd proposal to shreds. As Kaplar argues, it is “sheer lunacy” to “tax the technologies of freedom.” Unlike gasoline, there are no good reasons — not one — for government to ever take steps to reduce the supply of information. Mr. Horwitt is calling for public officials to use their taxing powers to destroy or limit opportunities for human communications and the free exchange of speech and expression. It is completely antithetical to a free society.

Moreover, if Mr. Horwitt really thinks there is too much information in this world, then perhaps he should lead by example and take his own site offline first! The rest of us will take a world of information abundance over a world of information scarcity any day of the week.