"Yeah, they'd love to shut it down!
Carolyn"
I think you'd better take a deep breath before you read this:
First lady just doesn't get it
REBECCA EISENBERG
Sunday, February 22, 1998
©2000 San Francisco Examiner
originally printed by the Hearst Examiner
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1998/02/22/BUSINESS904.dtl&type=printable The Net needs "gatekeeping," said Hillary Rodham Clinton to a select group of important people and special reporters last week, demonstrating yet again the government's tendency to be wrong.
The subject came up at a press conference held to hype the White House Millennium Program, a multifaceted "initiative" to mark the momentous occasion. Hillary had been describing the activities, which range from space expeditions to TV variety shows, planned over the next few years to celebrate 2000.
The myriad plans include everything from national television spots highlighting "1,000 years of important events, people and achievements" to robotic missions to Mars, and even a solution to the nefarious "Year 2000 Problem," which could cause many computer systems to crash. The program also includes a number of Net-related projects, including the creation of a "national digital library," consisting of materials from the Library of Congress, and my favorite, a promise to connect every classroom and library in America to the Internet by 2000.
In particular, Hillary ballyhooed the "Millennium Evenings," a continuing series of educational lectures that launched Feb. 11. Themed "Honor the Past, Imagine the Future," the full series will be broadcast on public television - and cybercast over the Internet - from the White House. The next lecture will be held on March 6, according to the White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov). Because the very same Internet that is broadcasting the White House Millennium Evenings was also responsible for breaking the White House sex scandal, the reporters asked the First Lady if she had rethought the critical remarks she made about the Net's ability to spread "lies."
"We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this," she answered, "because there are always competing values. There's no free decision that I'm aware of anywhere in life, and certainly with technology that's the case."
Although technology's new developments are "exciting," Hillary continued, "There are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function. What does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?"
Hillary doesn't get it. The greatest value of the Internet is the way it provides an easy means of defending your reputation and responding to what someone says.
If someone sends an e-mail accusing you of being a vegan, you can distribute photos of yourself eating Spam. If someone builds a Web site favoring animal testing for cosmetics, you can post a Web site advocating the release of animal slaves.
Similarly, while Hillary condemned the Net for distributing lies "twice around the world before the truth gets out of bed to find its boots," she failed to mention that the Net allows the truth to travel just as fast.
What interferes with truth, in fact, is not the power of the Net to disseminate information, as Hillary suggests. Rather, it is the fact that we are not yet all connected.
It is the "gatekeeping" and "editing" function she hopes for that makes the "right to respond" lack meaning. Instead of worrying about restricting access, she should be worrying about providing it.
Even the promise to connect every classroom and library in America to the Internet by 2000 has been tarnished by the government's desire to filter information.
Two days before the White House cybercast, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee considered a new bill that would put a content-driven price tag on the promised "universal access."
Dubbed the "Internet School Filtering Act" by its sponsor, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the proposed law would deny federal Internet access subsidies to schools and libraries unless they installed software filters to restrict access to "inappropriate" information.
These are the same software filters about which I complained last December, which almost always refuse to disclose complete lists of sites they block, and often restrict access to any reference to homosexuality, feminism, drug use, criminal activity and - of course - negative product reviews.
Not only do some of these products block access to Web sites that provide information that can be found in school textbooks, the filters often block access to Web conference boards, Usenet newsgroups and even e-mail, if a letter is deemed to contain an offending word.
For those of us - including minors - who have grown accustomed to using the Net as one of our primary means of communication, the mandated use of filters does more harm than good.
"Restricting mass media is one thing," explained a programmer friend on-line. "But restricting personal correspondence - which so much of the Web is - is a step worse." Especially when the decisions of what to restrict are made by the government or, just as heinously, by profit-motivated, private companies.
"The Web makes media transparent," claims Justin Hall on his personal Web site (www.links.net). A teenager himself when he created his home page in January 1994, Justin uses the Net to share his personal experiences with thousands of readers daily.
"As best I see it, this is the least alienating incarnation of this medium," he writes. "No distance, no bullshit objectivity; I'm telling stories about my life, you can either take it or leave it. I'm not going to tell you you have to read it to be hip. I'm not saying I'm the authority on anything but what I been through."
Like most Web diarists, Justin encourages others to do likewise: "Individuals and community groups should post their perspectives; people without pecuniary purpose lend the Net its humanistic edge."
The Web serves yet another purpose: the archiving of information. As stated eloquently by Patrick Farley on his Web diary (www.abattoir.com / prime8) in 1995:
"If enough people load their lives onto the Web, in about 50 years, any person anywhere can peruse the personal histories of thousands, possibly millions of people. Individual lives will be stored electronically, layer upon layer depositing one atop the other like shells of crustaceans deposited on the ocean floor to form fossil records."
These ideas sound a lot like the purported goals of the Millennium project. According to the White House Web site, "White House Millennium Program is for the entire nation. To ensure that this is truly a national, grass-roots effort, the President and the First Lady are inviting all Americans - especially children - to participate, and to make their own gifts to the future."
If the White House meant what it said, it would favor providing computers and unrestricted Net access to all Americans. We cannot leave our marks on history if our words are being edited or blocked.
Declan McCullagh, Internet expert and journalist, explains this apparent contradiction:
"It's hardly surprising that our elected officials don't like the ability of the Internet to provide everyone with a platform," he writes. "Even Thomas Jefferson kvetched about the excesses of the press of his day and endorsed laws that permitted government prosecutions of the press for printing "false facts.' "
We don't need government regulation or censorware in schools to help us find the truth, he argues. We have a gatekeeping function already - our ability to decide for ourselves. We also have an "editor" - a chance to disagree.
It's not the Internet that needs rethinking - the Internet works fine. What needs rethinking is the drive toward closing gates, when what we need is to open them.