| Legislatures, government agencies,
and interest groups want to regulate business activity to forward their own interests.
Business in general, more than other groups, uses lobbying efforts to obtain legislation
favorable to their competitive interests. Legislation Laws
generally attempt to protect:
 |
companies from each other to create
more competition and more value for the consumer |
|
consumers from unfair and sometimes
dangerous business practices |
|
society as a whole from practices
that endanger whole communities or other publicly owned resources such as rivers, forests,
and parks |
| In addition to the perennial issues of copyright, privacy, and security, three recent legislative issues are in the news: government regulation, freedom of speech, and taxation. Al Gore and other
politicians are trying to decide which ones to emphasize in the next presidential
election. Jerry Kang of UCLA Law School maintains the Top Cyberspace Law Cases of 1997
site for the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy. The twelve cases include
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association v. Pataki, and NBA
(National Basketball Association) v. Motorola. Each case has a brief explanation, as well
as links to the actual court ruling (when available) and other information about the case.
Enforcement The effect of laws
depends upon the emphasis given to enforcing them within the regulatory agency responsible
for administering the law. Regulation varies in intensity with political agendas of
sitting presidents and budget allocations. Public interest groups also affect the
degree of legislative activity and administrative enforcement. |
The Enigma
If our property can be
infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost,
without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How
are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid,
what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
Since we don't have a solution to what is a profoundly new kind of challenge, and are
apparently unable to delay the galloping digitization of everything not obstinately
physical, we are sailing into the future on a sinking ship.
This vessel, the accumulated canon of copyright and patent law, was developed to convey
forms and methods of expression entirely different from the vaporous cargo it is now being
asked to carry. It is leaking as much from within as from without.
from "The Economy
of Ideas" in Wired 2.03
by John Perry Barlow
co-founder and executive chair
Electronic Frontier Foundation |
|
WEBLEADERS
is a lightly moderated discussion list for anyone interested in
the direction of the internet. Owner: Hal Croasmun
The primary question is "WHO CONTROLS THE INTERNET and how?" Discussion topics
include:
|
What direction is the Internet
headed? |
|
Is it necessary that it be
controlled in some way? |
|
If so, who will control
it? |
|
Does the Internet need
to be regulated by governments and if so, how? |
|
What other forces are
attempting to gain control and how? |
|
Who will govern the net
and in what ways? |
|
Is it possible to create
a self governing system for the net? |
|
If so, what would it
look like? If not, why not? |
To Subscribe send mail to
list.manager@maillists.com
And in the body include only the command:
subscribe webleaders
Increased Emphasis on Ethics
At both the grassroots and corporate levels,
more US companies are showing a greater concern for more ethical conduct and more socially
responsible action.
Ethical companies often enjoy better consumer
relations and public image. When Johnson & Johnson behaved responsibly after the
Tylenol poisonings, they were able to recapture all of their market share when the product
was re-introduced.
Between the power of computers in our lives
and the jargon spoken by the people with power over the computers, computer ethics have
come to the fore. On the one side, prosecutors are reluctant to pursue crimes they know
little about. On the other side, organizations have acceptable use policies for the Web --
but I don't usually hear of any for the phones and VCRs.
The Computer Ethics Institute has an
often-quoted guide that should help in most cases of indecision.
Ten Commandments for Computer Users |
| 1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm
other people. |
| 2. Thou shalt not interfere with other
people's computer work. |
| 3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other
people's files. |
| 4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
|
| 5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
|
| 6. Thou shalt not use or copy software
for which you have not paid. |
| 7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization. |
| 8. Thou shalt not appropriate other
people's intellectual output. |
| 9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences
of the program you write. |
| 10. Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration
and respect. |
What's with the do's and don't's? Don't
ethics come down to how you feel -- or maybe, how your conscience makes you feel? Here's
an excerpt from Internet Ethics, by David
Lousecky and Thomas Zillner.
| Although it's certainly not nice to hurt
people's feelings, and causing unnecessary suffering is clearly wrong, doing ethics is not
a matter of figuring out how people feel about cases. How you feel about inefficient
computers and beating workers into increased productivity doesn't matter. Inefficient
computers get less done and beating workers violates their rights. There's nothing either
subjective or unclear about it. Free
trade might improve living conditions for everyone. What we need to find out is whether it
will, not how you feel about it. Clinton's health care plan might drive out small
business. We need to get clear about the consequences of the plan. We need to get clear
about whether people have a right to health care. We don't need a poll of people's
feelings. If people are sensible, then their feelings will be governed by the consequences
and rights involved, but it's the consequences and rights that make the ethical case.
Some of you may have extensive
personal experience with the Net. Others may have little. But none of us can have personal
experience sufficient to answer questions about, for example, the effects of
commercializing the Net. In order to answer that question, we will have to do some
research to gather evidence, even learn something about the dismal science of economics.
There's a lesson here. Since doing research is difficult, time-consuming, and boring, it
is tempting to jump to a conclusion on the basis of personal experience. Since the more
experienced may be more tempted, it's important to remember that no amount of personal
experience is adequate to answer broad questions of public policy. |
To get started researching
ethics, try the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Another good starter page is hosted by the Institute
for Business and Professional Ethics. The person who designed the the home page got a
little carried away. But the material is useful, so please overlook the design excesses.
For an international view:
Netherlands: Nijenrode Business Information Services
United Kingdom: Center for Computing and Social Responsibility
At some point the larger ethical
questions come down to codes of conduct. Folks on the Internet call this
"netiquette." If you use a search engine, add another search term, for example
"netiquette AND email", or you'll get too many responses. At Liszt, you'll find netiquette links at the top of the
home page.
An Intellectual Property Law Primer
for Multimedia Developers
by J. Dianne Brinson and Mark F.
Radcliffe
Licensing Still Images
Index Stock Photography treats
copyright and intellectual property issues facing multimedia developers.
Almost everything we think we know about intellectual property is wrong.
We're going to have to unlearn it. We're going to have to look at information as though
we'd never seen the stuff before.
from "The Economy of
Ideas" in WIRED 2.03
by John Perry Barlow
co-founder and executive chair
Electronic Frontier Foundation |
Government
Regulation
Microsoft's Adventures with the Feds
 By several measures, Microsoft is
the mightiest marketing organization that the world has ever seen. Sure, they do R&D. Sure, Bill Gates looks harmless on TV. But those folks have
you convinced that you have to have computers even though they are expensive, hard to use,
and harder to learn. They take gobs of time to the point where some find them addicting.
Even though press reports about the
issue are full of jargon, it's clearly Microsoft's
marketing tactics that get the rest of the industry so incensed. The word
monopoly keeps coming up because we don't know what else to call it.
Nicholas Economides' Economics of
Networks site has a concise resource
page with links to all the relevant primary documents such as Microsoft's and the
DOJ's positions and filings.
Perhaps with the new economics, we need new vocabulary. Every publication is
covering this story, but Red
Herring is a good place to start. That's Nathan Myhrvold on the cover of the February
1998 issue.
| A photoessay in the January 1998 Wired magazine notes that "networks tend to
leach power out of traditional institutions, including electoral politics and the
state." |
Wired goes on to recount the results of a poll taken at the 1996 World
Economic Forum.
| not at all |
3% |
| a little |
34 |
| quite a lot |
43 |
| to a great extent |
18 |
|
To what extent is the new digital
world eroding the power of the nation-state? |
In the year 2010,
to what extent will the power of the nation-state have been eroded? |
2% |
not at all |
| 20 |
a little |
| 52 |
quite a lot |
| 25 |
to a great extent |
|
|
Should governments attempt to
regulate digital networks? |
Freedom
of Speech
Smut 'n' Spam on the Web
Smut
Remember the kiddie-porn bill that Congress passed a few years ago? Well, it's
back. And the folks at the Center for Democracy and
Technology don't like it one bit.
Sounds to me like the folks who wanted to ban
automobiles because they would scare the horses. Well, if the horses could make room on
the highway, why can't the children?
Please take issue with that
paragraph.
You rip a pornographic
photo into a hundred pieces. A hundred friends each takes one piece across the border. You
reassemble the pieces. Who committed a crime? Isn't that what happens when the digital
version of that pornographic photo gets broken into packets? They are sent out to find the
path of least electrical resistance through the Internet to be reassembled only at the
host computer. Can any one packet be any more pornographic than one scrap of paper?
Other leading sites on the issue:
Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition
The Electronic Frontier
Foundation
Founded by John Perry Barlow, author of the Declaration of Independence
and other documents quoted on this course web.
The Cyberporn Debate
The Time magazine cover story that started it the
debate + links to the articles that revealed the hoax played on Time + links to
more accurate statistics.
What
to do?
What
else to do
The international W3
consortium is working on a set of technical improvements called PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection.
Also, Paul Burton's Controlling access to
the Internet site in England has links to material on Internet regulation and control,
including pornography, racism, and harassment.
Spam
Unsolicited commercial email. The online equivalent of junk mail, which at least costs
a quarter for postage. Plus printing. On the Internet, sending one costs the same as
sending to all nine million AOL accounts.
Most people don't like spam. Do you?
Personally, it doesn't bother me that much. I'm pretty quick with the delete key. However,
unlike the smut issue above, I have trouble seeing the other side.
The media's whipping boy is Sanford
Wallace of Cyber Promotions, Inc. Companies such
as Spamnet sell anti-spam software. The Realtime Blackhole List tells you who the worst
spammers are. Lots of web pages discuss how to protect yourself from spam.
Taxation
From your home in Buffalo, you dial
in to AOL in Virginia where you find an Iowa company's coffee-and-fruit basket on a site
hosted in Nebraska. You get UPS to ship it to relatives in Texas. How many states can tax
this transaction?
Some 30,000 tax jurisdictions can
tax interstate transactions, so we haven't even mentioned the locations of the banks
involved. For example, in how many states did the individual packets of these messages
momentarily reside in an Internet router? Can they impose a per-bit usage tax? The
questions:
|
Should electronic commerce
be taxed, and how? |
|
What should be taxed --
income, sales, bandwidth? |
|
Who should tax, the federal
government, the states, or both? |
|
Should a special excise tax
be imposed on selected aspects of electronic commerce, for example, depth of encryption? |
|
Is Internet taxation
politically feasible, that is, do enough folks care to fight it effectively? |
 Read about it in the May 1997 paper "Internet Taxation:
Economics, Technology, and Law" by Charles McLure, Jr., a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution. (Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format)
The Case
Against
The Clinton administration, in an attempt
to pave the way for mainstream electronic commerce, has introduced a bill to limit
taxation on Internet transactions. It is proposed by the Internet Tax Freedom Act to place
a six-year ban on states and localities passing new taxes aimed at online access,
e-commerce, and other Net services.
Lobbyists in favour of the bill believe
that inconsistent and inadministrable taxes
imposed on Internet commerce threaten to subject consumers and businesses engaged in
interstate and foreign commerce to confusing and burdensome taxation. ... Because the tax
laws and regulations of so many jurisdictions were established long before the Internet,
their application to the new medium in unintended and
unpredictable ways threatens every Internet user, access provider, vendor,
and interactive computer service provider.
"Web is not a
tax-free zone"
The Business Journal |
|
