UNITED STATES ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE Tuesday, September 13, 1994 The meeting was convened, pursuant to notice, MESSRS. DELANO LEWIS and ED McCRACKEN, Co-Chairs, presiding. APPEARANCES: MR. DELANO E. LEWIS President and Chief Executive Officer National Public Radio MR. EDWARD R. McCRACKEN Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Silicon Graphics, Inc. MR. MORTON BAHR President, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO DR. TONI CARBO BEARMAN Dean and Professor School of Library and Information Science University of Pittsburgh MS. MARILYN BERGMAN President ASCAP MS. BONNIE L. BRACEY Teacher Ashlawn Elementary School Arlington County Public Schools MR. JOHN F. COOKE President The Disney Channel MS. ESTHER DYSON President EDVenture Holdings, Inc. MR. WILLIAM C. FERGUSON Chairman and Chief Executive Officer NYNEX Corporation DR. CRAIG I. FIELDS Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. MR. JACK FISHMAN Publisher, Citizen-Tribune MS. LYNN FORESTER President and Chief Executive Officer FirstMark Holdings, Inc. HONORABLE CAROL FUKUNAGA Senator State of Hawaii MR. JACK GOLODNER President Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO MR. EDUARDO L. GOMEZ President and General Manager KABQ Radio MR. HAYNES G. GRIFFIN President and Chief Executive Officer Vanguard Cellular Systems, Inc. DR. GEORGE H. HELLMEIER President and Chief Executive Officer Bellcore MS. LaDONNA HARRIS President American for Indian Opportunity MS. SUSAN HERMAN General Manager Department of Telecommunications City of Los Angeles MR. JAMES R. HOUGHTON Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Corning Incorporated MR. STANLEY S. HUBBARD Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Hubbard Broadcasting MR. ROBERT L. JOHNSON President Black Entertainment Television DR. ROBERT E. KAHN President Corporation for National Research Initiatives MS. DEBORAH KAPLAN Vice President World Institute on Disability MR. MITCHELL KAPOR Chairman Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc. MR. ALEX J. MANDI Executive Vice President, AT&T and Chief Executive Officer, Communications Services Group DR. NATHAN P. MYHRVOID Senior Vice President Advanced Technology Microsoft Corporation MR. N.M. (MAC) NORTON, JR. Attorney-at-Law Wright, Lindsey, and Jennings MR. VANCE K. OPPERMAN President West Publishing Company MS. JANE SMITH PATTERSON Advisor to the Governor of North Carolina for Policy, Budget, and Technology State of North Carolina MS. FRANCES W. PRESTON President and Chief Executive Officer Broadcast Music Incorporated MR. BERT C. ROBERTS, JR. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer MCI Communications Corp. MR. JOHN SCULLEY Former Chairman Apple Computers, Inc. MS. JOAN H. SMITH Chairman Oregon Public Utility Commission MR. AL TELLER Chairman and Chief Executive Officer MCA Music Entertainment Group MR. LAWRENCE TISCH President and Chief Executive Officer CBS, Incorporated MR. JACK VALENTI Chief Executive Officer and President Motion Picture Association of America ALSO PRESENT: MR. DAVID BECKER MR. KENNETH KOMOSK LINCT MR. ANTHONY LINDSEY IBDS Corporation MR. BARRY LASKY Access for All MS. LAURA POWERS Access for All R. DAVID GREEN AntsWire MS. MONA SHEMEZ Media Alliance INDEX CONVENE GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING DELANO LEWIS AND ED McCRACKEN, CO-CHAIRS 7 FRAMEWORK FOR THE NIIAC 18 REVIEW OF PROGRESS ON MEGA-PROJECTS MEGA-PROJECT CO-CHAIRS 63 NII PROGRESS REPORT RON BROWN, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE 127 CRITICAL ISSUES SOCIAL APPLICATIONS OF THE NII 184 CRITICAL ISSUES GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN DEVELOPING THE NII 219 CRITICAL ISSUES INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 247 PUBLIC COMMENTS, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 275 P R O C E E D I N G S CONVENE GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING DELANO LEWIS AND ED McCRACKEN, CO-CHAIRS (Tape #1.) MR. LEWIS: And I trust that all of you are well. We had a session at Mega-Project sessions yesterday and entered by our New York member supporters. I am appreciative to seeing you this morning. We have a lot of work to do. We are going to begin and try to move right through the agenda. And we will go over the agenda shortly and also, adjourn on time as best we can. This is a beautiful facility. We want to introduce to you the person who is responsible along with his team, the President of the New York Public Library. He has is going to give us a few words. Say a few words. And welcome. DR. LECLAIR: Thank you very much, Ed. I am really happy to be here with you and look forward to seeing the Secretary of Commerce when he arrives. Actually, the last time I saw Ron Brown was in January of 1989. I was then the President of Hunter College and he was the head of the National Democratic Committee. But he was also a graduate of the Hunter College Elementary School, which is a school reserved for the most profoundly gifted youngsters in New York City. It was my privilege to confer upon him as an alumnus an honorary doctorate. It was the first time that I conferred a doctorate on anybody. And that set a standard that I maintained during my next six years at Hunter. So I am anxious to welcome Dr. Brown here to the library this afternoon. I think we are also setting standards here today in significant and interesting ways in the meeting of the NII Advisory Council. The NII is, I am convinced, one of the most important initiatives of this Administration. And hanging on its success is the kind of society that we in America are shaping. Ours is a society that already has I think too many distinctions separating its people. What we can ill afford from a policy point of view is another kind of distinction that between the so-called information haves and the have nots. The single greatest defense against the development of such a fragmentation of our society is an NII that recognizes the role the libraries, particularly public libraries can and must play in an information enriched society. Libraries have, since ancient Alexandria and even before, been in the business of acquiring and storing and providing access to information. But what makes American public libraries unique is the universality of access that we provide. For us, there is no criterion for one curiosity. And there is no (Inaudible) to access to information as a fundamental human right. The light of what you are meeting today is I think one of the most remarkable examples of that commitment to democratic access in America. The public libraries are really a network of 86 libraries, four world class (Inaudible) centers, and 82 branch circulating libraries and three of the boroughs in New York City. Our total collections now number 50 million items. More than 8 million persons come through our turn stalls each year. And there are approximately 2 million searches of our electronic catalogue by the INTERNET in any given year. Some of what we are doing in the technology can be seen the demonstrations that are upstairs on the second floor. And if the members of the Council and public haven't already seen them, I invite you to do so. Please, beyond these demonstrations, look into the reading rooms. And the Economic and Public Affairs Division, for example, you will see users lined up to use such CD rom services as business periodicals indexed, the national trade data bank, Standard and Poor's corporations, and so on and so forth. A key element to promoting electronic literacy we believe is the core role of the librarian as a facilitator and enabler for finding and relaying information. The human element remains critical, even in the electronic environment. Your public library is currently investing substantial resources. And we are going to invest a whole lot more, millions of dollars really in training our staff in the search and the navigational techniques that are going to be necessary to identify and retrieve information in resources. Without this training, our staff couldn't do their jobs. And we believe that without well- trained librarians, the American public won't be able to get access to all the information they need to make this society as creative and as competitive as we think it has to be. Finally, in the midst of dynamic developments and systems in telecommunications, the near public library has launched a new project designed to fully exploit their potential, the science industry and business library which when it opens in 1995 will be the nation's largest public information center devoted solely to science and business. This is, as I mentioned last evening, a $100 million project, the biggest library that we've built since we built this building 80 years. Contained, accessible will be 2 million books, 18 million patents, 150,000 periodicals in the areas of business and science, and all the back issues, and especially importantly, an electronic information center with 100 multi million work centers. These will connect on site and remote users to a full range of internal and external electronic resources, including INTERNET data bases, electronic (Inaudible), and bulletin boards. An electronic training center will be in a specially designated area to train users in the full range of electronic tools and materials. SYBIL as we call the library now, until we find a donor to name it after, SYBIL will provide seating for up to 500 users at a time, each place to provide support readers lap top computers. We expect in its first year of operation 1 million readers to come SYBIL and at least that many. And many, many more I think to use it from remote sites. Libraries bring both content and access to the content to the NII. As such, libraries are a critical part of all of the issues before this Advisory Council, from copyright to infrastructure needs, from application requirements to addressing authentication issues. Realizing the usefulness of a successful NII for America with public libraries serving this major democratic access point will obviously require a partnership between government and libraries, between government and the private sector across the country. We are delighted that you are at the New York Public Library. We invite you to use this as a test bed site for some of the most creative things that you contemplate doing on NII. We really don't want anybody left behind in your efforts, not the libraries but the broad general public that we believe that we serve. The warmest of welcome to you on behalf of all of the 3,400 employees of the New York Public Library. Thank you very much. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, Dr. Leclair. We appreciate those kind of remarks. And thank you for your hospitality here. This is a wonderful setting for us. And we really appreciate it. Thank you. Ed McCracken may have some opening comments before we begin. Ed, any comments. MR. McCRACKEN: Sure. I would also like to add my thanks to the New York Public Library for these facilities for this meeting. I was reminded of our meeting in the Department of Agriculture. And it seems a little different somehow. (Laughter) MR. McCRACKEN: And what a wonderful environment. Thanks for each of you for being here today. We have some of the busiest people in America around the table here. Each one of you made some personal sacrifices to be here. And I think it indicates the importance that we all believe is represented by the national information structure and the impact that it will have on society and what we can do to speed the positive impacts and to create a society around this that makes sense for America. This is a working session today. We have gotten to know each other over the last six months. In most cases, it is a working session. I had a chance to sit in just briefly yesterday on a few of the Mega-Project sessions. And I have had to review a lot of the work. I'm really impressed with a lot of the activities that have gone on. And I think today is the time that we really put a lot of that work on the table and get very serious about what can be done and our advice to the Administration. So again, welcome to everybody. Thanks for making time in your schedule for this meeting. And let's get to work. MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Ed. What I would like to do to start off is to go over the agenda. We have made some slight modifications. And hopefully we can stick to it. It is in your binder. We started a few minutes late, but we have convened our session. We are going to spend a few minutes, maybe about an hour or a little bit less on the framework for the NIIAC. And that was the memo that was sent to you by fax a few days back. And Ed and I will walk you through that. And hopefully, we can get some consensus on our work program. I'm excited about that prospect. We'll take a break probably about 9:40, 9:30, 9:45 or so. And we will come back and review the progress on the Mega-Projects by the Mega- Project co-chairs. And we want to take a break before Secretary Brown comes. So we will figure out a break time there. And when we come back, we will have a NII progress report from Secretary Brown. Lunch is here and will not be a working lunch. So we may be able to move rather quickly. Ed and I may be involved in a press conference. And we will join you later for lunch. We hope to begin around 1:30 instead of two. So we will try to move that up as best we can. Ed is going to lead our discussion. And I will participate on the critical issues. And we will talk a little bit about that. But I think before that starts, Bob Kahn will be introduced by Ed on a particular paper that he has prepared. And we will move into the critical issues. We will have public comments, questions and answers, and other business matters and logistical matters that we want to talk about. And then, closing remarks and adjournment, and we will do that as close to four as we can, knowing your busy schedules. Any comments or questions? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Okay. Hearing none, we will move ahead. If you would turn to the framework for the NIIAC, I will begin the discussion. And hopefully, we will arrive at some consensus. FRAMEWORK FOR THE NIIAC DELANO LEWIS AND ED MCCRACKEN, CO-CHAIRS MR. LEWIS: I'd like to give a little background on that first. After our Minnesota meeting, Ed and I got our heads together. And I said to Ed, you know, this is a big, big task. We have a very diverse group. We have several new members. We've got Mega-Projects that are beginning to move forward. We are trying to get this busy group together as best we can to have some discussions on issues and consensus. But it just doesn't seem to be moving forward. Maybe we need to put a little stratagems together and our direction and focus. And Ed agreed. So with the help of our staffs who did a tremendous job, Ed and I met in Chicago for a full day and tried to hammer out our view of how this could work for the next year and a half. And this is part of the work product that you see here. We took the liberty of giving a draft of this, not physically but verbally to the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown. Ed and I met with the Secretary and gave him a general sense of our work plan. And he thought it was in the right direction. So we were pleased that we were going in the direction that the Commerce Secretary felt was appropriate. And then, we met with the Mega-Project co- chairs. I think we had almost full attendance. Maybe one person might have been absent. And we met for several hours to discuss it with the co-chairs. And we have gotten valuable input on the direction. And what you see is the synthesis of our discussions. So that is the background. And what we want to do is to sort of walk it through. And if you have some questions or comments, let us hear from you. The first was an overall framework for the NIIAC. And that was basically pretty obvious. Phase I was the fact finding. And we are currently into that. Our Mega-Projects have been doing a lot of environmental scans and fact finding on various questions that have come up. And it will probably continue through December. You have already engaged in a productive use of that, but we wanted to highlight that that was important for us to frame the issues and to enhance our knowledge. So this is, as I said, will probably continue to the end of the year. Phase II which we will spend some time on this afternoon, and Ed is going to lead that discussion, was the critical issues bridging. Now, those words were carefully chosen. Number one, what are those critical issues that have come up in the Mega-Project's discussions or in your own discussions that probably have a pro and con or a middle ground or they have some dissension or tension? What are those critical issues? And we put the word "bridging" in there because if there are such issues, our job is going to figure out how, as a Council, we can bridge those and come up with some consensus. So the full Council consideration of critical issues need to be addressed and hopefully bridged for us to develop the key principles which we will go into next. Now, we gave some guidelines as to what some of this might entail. It could include, but certainly not limited to, social applications of the NII which sort of fit right into Mega-Project I with Vance and Jane as they look at visions and goals. What are some of the social ramifications of whatever this is we call NII? Government's Role in Developing the NII. All of us have some sense of what federal, state, and local and their input and their role as the projects develop. Personal Privacy Issues, a very key question. It obviously fits with Mega-Project III, Control and Use of Intellectual Property, the same project III, Mega-Project III. Rules and Responsibilities and Using the NII, again, a very substantive critical question. And again, that is because there are some principles held by many of you that might be on one side or the other. So we need to talk about them. Ensuring Access to the NII. I like Ed sat in on the access Mega-Project meeting yesterday. And they are working toward trying to get the hearings around that very critical issue. And as I travel around the country, and I am sure you have, that is the first question comes up: who will have access? And can I afford it? And is it convenient? So the whole access question is a real one. The Global Uses of the NII, all Mega- Projects. Again, Ed and I talked about this one briefly. It is something that we think there is a role for this Council. And we need to figure out what that role might be. We discussed this with the Mega-Project co- chairs. And the question was: is this appropriate for this Council to get into the global aspects? Well, I'm not too sure how far we would go. But Ed and I believe that at least we ought to make some initial moves because what we're doing here does have ramifications for global implications. So at least, we ought to begin thinking and having some discussion. So that is the critical issues piece. Ed, comment? MR. McCRACKEN: One of the reasons I think it is important to do this is that I've gotten inputs from many of you that because of our Mega- Project orientation, we've been split up into these three Mega-Projects. And you all have opinions things going on in the other Mega-Projects. And you would really like to know what is going on. We are going to do a little bit of that today with the reports from the Mega-Projects. But I think by having a total Council discussion of some these really critical issues, even though we have been discussing them in the Mega-Projects themselves, we will get a chance to get all of our ideas on the table and bring the real issues out and deal with them. I think it is time to do that now that we've gotten to know each other a little bit. And I think it is time to really start addressing the things that are important. So this is very much in reaction to the kinds of inputs we have gotten from you. MR. LEWIS: Why don't I stop there? Any reactions? I know you all had a chance to look at this. And I've gotten some preliminary feedback that you thought that we were on the right track here. Any comments as far as I've gone so far? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Silence means consent, right? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Page 3, the Principles of the NII, a little tougher. The first work product that counts will be the development principles in the six critical areas. And the thought here would be that we need to begin to have some things that we are assuming will be what we would call principles, sort of a base case. And we are pressing our group to be thinking about we call them principles, but base case ideas and concepts in the six critical areas. Now, there may be some other areas that come to mind for you that we ought to be thinking about some basic principles. But here is our first crack at it. Principles of the Vision, Mega-Project I. Principles of NII and Education, Mega-Project I. The same for electronic commerce, Mega-Project I. Those are the -- those applications we talked about early on because they were practical, real. Those of you who visited the Bunch School with us yesterday or saw it on the live interactive, that was what was real, these fifth and sixth grade students involved with communicating in the country and around the world, and using it as a tool for learning, very real. Principles of Access to the NII, Mega- Project II. Principles of Privacy and Security, Mega-Project III. And Principles of Intellectual Property, Mega-Project III. In other words, as you deliberate and develop -- come to some consensus on the critical issues, there are some things that you hold that you have have agreement on that we would call basic principles. It was anticipated that the principles be brought by the Mega-Projects to the full Council for formal consideration at the October and December meetings. Once the Council has approved the six set of principles, they would be issued as a publication of the Council in early 1995. So this would be one of our first work products that would come out. The timing, we would certainly have to deal with as we progress. But this will be a work product of the Council, the principles of the NII. Comments? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: This is going to be easier than I thought, Ed. MR. McCRACKEN: Good, good. MR. LEWIS: Stakeholder Outreach. This is a real priority of mine. Let me try to explain it. I had talked to Ed about this and I have been screaming about this for some time. We have got to build this in. And I had a long -- we had a short talk with the Secretary about this. And he was in agreement. I felt that from a practical credibility standpoint, we would find ourselves in trouble if we develop interim reports, work products, a final report and did not get input from constituencies. That would be a glaring, glaring mistake. That we need to have an outreach component of this organization. And I know you have experienced it because I have experienced it. You go around and people say, I had no idea what NII means. I have no idea what you are about. I've got some thoughts. I've got some ideas and concepts. How can I let you know what I'm feeling and thinking? Who are you? And I how can I have some input? And if we did not listen and take those ideas, we would be lacking. So this is a Stakeholder Outreach. And we are beginning to think about how this should work. The Secretary was very supportive. We are even talking about getting one or two full time people if we could, if the budget would allow for us to coordinate this because you can't coordinate it. We find ourselves difficult to coordinate it. This is an interest of our citizens across the country. And so we are going to need some help. But it is critical that the Council receive adequate input from a broad range of potential stakeholders before it completes its work. Once its principles have been compiled, they can serve as a starting point for a dialogue with a wide array of communities of interest. Once we have a sense of where we are going, we have some base case. We can then have some discussion with these constituency group and hopefully get their ideas and input. During this phase of the Council's work, the Council will identify and reach out to a broad array of communities of interest. And you can start looking down this list. And you may add some more to this list. As Ed and I started talking about this in Chicago, we just kept moving. And this is part of the -- this is what we came up. It could grow. We were trying to get them of some critical mass in terms of the groups themselves. But you can probably add to this. Small business, minorities, disabled, the elderly, health care constituencies, rural constituencies, universities and libraries, students and teachers, state and local governments. The federal government obviously involved today, the IITF. Corporations, business both large and small. Foreign governments, arts and culture, the financial community, scientific community, media, and broadcasting. You could probably think of others. But it is important to get the input from these groups. And maybe what they be telling us could overlap or may overlap, but I think it is important to have input. The questions we might be asking them: what do you need from the NII? Do the Council's principles address the needs of your communities? How can you help implement and develop the NII? And what obstacles exist to the successful implementation of the NII? Now, the last phase that we will talk to on this memo deals with public education. I will talk about that later. But it certainly has some relationships with education. But this is more of an input mechanism. This is the -- the education piece is at least talking about what we believe and what we think. But this is an input mechanism getting some dialogue started and some input from constituencies because we won't be doing in our work in a vacuum. That is what this one is about. So that is what the outreach means to me. The effort will be implemented by staff specifically devoted as outreach liaisons that would serve as points of contact for the Council. They would be charged with developing an outreach plan to include specific outreach -- G-10 specific outreach plans and events for 1995 that the Council could review and amend at its meeting in December. Well, I'm not sure about the timetable here because we are just getting this thing going. But I think the concept is certainly on target. VOICE: (Inaudible). MR. LEWIS: Good question. That is why I stumbled over it. I need some help there. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Do you know what that is? VOICE: I'm sorry. What did you say? MR. LEWIS: It is a typo. That's why I stumbled. I didn't know what it was. VOICE: I have no idea. VOICE: Eleven plus three. (Laughter) MR. LEWIS: Very good, very good. I started to leave it out, Bert. But I said, well, maybe it is -- I didn't put that one in there. So it's probably a typo. In other words, we want to do -- develop an -- outreach plans as soon as we can. This timetable, we will have to deal with. VOICE: Del? MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: On the point of the outreach, I would hope that you would use the people on this Council because it seems to me that we have had the advantage or the disadvantage of the discussions and inputs and the debate. And therefore, maybe we could help interpret and communicate things to the various constituencies, with the disabled or so forth and so on. MR. LEWIS: Yes. I am going to mention that. The thought was definitely we could use the members of the Council. We definitely will. And that has come up before because we need a view known as members of the Council, as you do your own work and travel around the country. We ought to be able to coordinate that and use the dialogue and outreach. VOICE: Yes. Not that we necessarily represent that constituency here, but we can still help facilitate the discussion. MR. LEWIS: You are absolutely right. I think that is on target. Yes, Toni. DR. BEARMAN: In the category universities and libraries, I hope we will also include colleges because some of the most exciting work is at the community college level, two year colleges, four year colleges. They are not universities, but they are a very, very important part of higher ed. Also, I see a lot of overlap among the groups. For example, universities, libraries, arts and culture, scientific community. So I realize this is the first cut, but I think we might want to look at how we can coordinate some of the different categories. MR. LEWIS: Right. Good points. The thought we had was if we found a person or persons that would coordinate this, they would develop a plan for us. Ed and I will work with them on that plan, consult with you, and start moving. This is just a preliminary draft of the ideas. And we will definitely note colleges. VOICE: Are these publications one of the ways in which we are outreaching to the public. And we really would like to have comments because once we see what they like about it or don't like about it, that will allow us to do our job better, those two publications. MR. LEWIS: Which two? VOICE: The two publications from the National Institute of Standards, Dr. (Inaudible) books. Who has the -- does anyone have one of them with you? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Okay. Thank you. Yes, George. DR. HELLMEIER: In the discussions with the various outreach communities, do you think there ought to be a point of concern about priority? Should we ask these various groups what their priorities are? Because obviously, there is going to have to be compromises among the various groups, it would be helpful to know what the priorities are among the various groups? MR. LEWIS: Yes, I -- as you would imagine, I'm not so sure we are going to get consensus. They set their own priorities as they see them. And that might be helpful to us. But obviously, they think that theirs is the highest of priorities. But you're point is well taken. It will help us. The whole idea here is to get input. And for us to not be afraid of it, to listen to it, and to digest it and to make it -- use it for our own work as we proceed. VOICE: I have always found it effective in dealing with the various groups of this nature to ask them the following question. If you could get only one thing out of all of this, what would it be? MR. LEWIS: Well taken. VOICE: It's important I think that we are doing this at the time that we have outlined here after the principles are in place, the first draft of the principles so that we can get input on the principles. If we had done it before the principles, I think it would have been much more loose and not quite as valuable. MR. LEWIS: Yes, Vance. MR. OPPERMAN: I don't want to needlessly add to the list. I'm sure we can all do that. But I think, at least from our point of view, there is a glaring omission. Certainly, one of the stakeholder groups that ought to be involved I think are content providers. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Thank you. Yes. VOICE: I'm sure it is just an oversight that the legal profession -- (Laughter) VOICE: Thank you. VOICE: Can we vote on that? VOICE: It was an oversight. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Yes, Frances. MS. PRESTON: I think we might add intellectual property holders such as authors, composers. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Thank you. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Very good. Anything else? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Well, thank you. Yes. VOICE: I'm just curious. How do you envision this happening? It seems to be that it would be quite worthwhile for the entire Council to hear as much as possible from these groups. But it strikes me as a pretty large undertaking to have meaningful discussion with such a wide range of different constituencies. MR. LEWIS: We are going to have to think that through. As I said, I'm looking for someone to give me some outside advice in putting a plan together. But Ed and I and the staff already have some thoughts. And one of those, one possibility is regionally. And we have our future meetings planned and a schedule. We will be moving around the country. As the inputs start coming in and the groups start fashioning themselves, they probably would lend themselves to some geographic fix. And we could probably have them meet -- some representations of those groups meet with us as we travel around the country. And so I think there is a way to do that. But you are right. The whole point here is to get as much input from a most diverse group as we can. And as we have our meetings, we might have them coordinate with us. So it is possible to do, but you got to look at our time and just the magnitude of all of this. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Thank you. Yes. VOICE: Del, we might point out that those people who are already hooked up to the INTERNET, they still have the capacity to reach us. And they can communicate with us through the INTERNET. MR. LEWIS: An odd question. VOICE: Well, we would like to make during this time period, make some time available on the agenda of the NII Advisory Council in total to get some reports from some of these constituencies. MR. LEWIS: We certainly will. Well, thank you. I think it is a very critical piece for us. And I am pleased that we have a consensus. Phase V, this was one that is going to need some work. I mentioned it last night. And we have talked about this. There have been some things that we have been going along at the Mega-Projects. Some things have been looming large. And one has been schools and libraries, that there is a network of a library system. Toni reminds us at every meeting. And it comes out. It came out from our host last night that this may be a network that is already in place that we might take advantage of. It has come out at the access meeting groups as some possible community access vehicle. It seems to be something that is sort of developing a life of its own. The concept of a community access or NII in the neighborhood is an important one. The Council will focus special attention on importance of public access to schools and libraries and will formally adopt and propose an action agenda on how this can be accomplished. This is with your concurrence. The Mega- Project co-chairs felt it made sense. Ed and I also feel it makes sense that we might be able to fashion an action agenda around the schools and libraries. We want our work to be real and practical. This might be just the vehicle. We are not sure about how. We are not sure what form this is going to take. We are not sure of the implementation of it. But it certainly seems right for us to consider. Do you want to add anything, Ed? MR. McCRACKEN: Just and I know as I have gone around the country giving talks about the NII. I am sure you have as well. The thing that always seems to come up is the application in education. It is on all of our minds. It is something that everybody gets excited about. Everybody in the room seems to wake up. And I think it is just something that seems to have come up as something that is so important and the opportunity is right there that in the spring and summer of next year that we want to -- well, the suggestion is that we spend some really special time to really focus on that one area. VOICE: Speaking of waking up. I would like to just make a comment on that section. First, a question. Our group, our Mega- Project group is dealing with this issue. And we have been discussing whether the mandate is really private or public in this or both. And so that is kind of a question that I think anybody who would like to lend clarification to the discussion would be useful. The second point is we have also been focusing on the fact that education is something that is lifelong and that clearly the institutions involved in education as it relates to the NII are those that start at the pre-school level and continue on to the college, community college levels, levels where people might be coming back for career training and enhancement and so forth. So I just wanted to make sure that that was included in your definition. MR. LEWIS: Yes, very much so, your latter point. Would you go back and explain to me about the public private issue? I wasn't sure I understood that. VOICE: It says importance of public access to schools and libraries. Are we talking about public schools only? MR. LEWIS: Oh, I see. VOICE: Are we talking about public and private? MR. LEWIS: Okay. Got it. Good comments. VOICE: Del. MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: I would just add, I think from the point of view of the public at large this is one of the critical areas. And (Inaudible). But the public rallies around this issue. (Inaudible). I would add one part. When we talk about lifetime learning, Susan mentioned, once you go to lifetime learning you are talking about the work place today as well rather just pre-school to college. MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Marty. You are absolutely correct. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Any other comments? VOICE: I just wanted to say that yesterday when we watched those children with their small fingers reach out to the world, we were seeing what is going to be the beginning of our new change in education. And this change is going to take all of us, not just teachers. It is going to take you the public, looking at visions those reports and seeing if those things do. And if they don't tell us how they fit, one of the things that happens is we don't really investigate. Yesterday, we got to see. And I hope that those of you who have not been in classrooms will walk into a classroom and see what is there and see what needs to be done. Those are virtual cells of isolation. And I am out here to tell you about. MR. LEWIS: Thanks, Bonnie. That was a very exhilarating experience for us at Bunch. And I would certainly endorse that, to see those youngsters dealing with using the tools for learning, developing poems and projects. And I had been with one student. And she told me about all -- she was just beginning school that day, but all of the projects that she had completed last year. And it came up on the screen. And we talked about one or two of them. Just incredible activity. So it is certainly workable and doable. Very good. We agree that that will take an action item on schools and libraries. And we will work that through and be in touch with you as we develop it. Phase VI, Action Agendas. Just to give you a little background here, we, Ed and I tried to think about how we would frame what we are doing as we get closer to an interim report and final reports. What form will it take? And we like the word of "action" agendas. Yes, there will be principles. Yes, there will be guidelines, concepts. And there will be a written word. But we really wanted it to have meaning of an actionable sort. So this is how we began to frame it. Based on the input we received from outreach phase, as well as full Council deliberations in the spring and summer of 1995, the Council would (Inaudible) adopt specific action agendas for the institutions and groups that are essential to the development of the NII. Now, as we went back and forth, as you can imagine, it was sort of a simple revelation to us. It is not that complicated, that things began to unfold that were pretty obvious to us in fairly broad categorical groups, except for the last one which is pretty broad. But we were saying that we are not limited to this. But as you would deliberate, as we would deliberate we would say, what would we ask the federal government to do? Or what would we recommend that the federal government do? So the one action agenda would say, we would have a recommendation to the federal government that you ought to consider doing X, Y, Z. The same for state and local governments. I was talking to Susan earlier. I was on (Inaudible) interactive teleconference on communications with John Sculley. And John did a super job talking about education technology. He left the tough questions to me. And they beat me up all over the place on what are you doing, Council, on state and local governments? We are being written out of legislation. We don't have input. And I was sweating. So I told Susan, next time, you are going to join John Sculley and me as we deal with this. VOICE: They will be nice to me though I'm one of them. (Laughter) MR. LEWIS: But again, what are we recommend that state and local governments do as a recommendation? Business, large, small, medium, the corporate world, the business world, what kind of recommendations, what kind of inputs. What are we going to ask them to consider. And communities of interest are sort of all of the above. Obviously, our state (Inaudible) outreach would give us some help there. But there are a wide range of community categories and stakeholders. What are we going to recommend that they do? And I think that is valuable. So those were the areas we were considering. And these will become interim reports to the Council to be issued upon approval. Any comments, Ed? MR. McCRACKEN: No. MR. LEWIS: Any comments here? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: What this is is trying to develop what a work product is going to look like, what an interim report going to look like, what is a final report going to look like. And we think we can frame them in those categories. We are now coming down to the final deliverables, Phase VII, July to December '95. During the second half of 1995, the Council will begin work on a final set of deliverables. These will include at least three key elements. And I think that this really sets the tone for what we are about. I was excited about this as we hammered it out. The final report, on December 13, 1995, the Council will present the Secretary -- that is a pretty definite date, isn't it? VOICE: Yes. (Laughter) MR. LEWIS: We will present the Secretary of Commerce with its final report. Ed says he hopes it's not Friday. Which will include the following elements. Obviously, we are building on this now, the first critical issues, principles, stakeholder input. And obviously, we will have in that product maybe some -- our discussion, our consensus and obviously our conclusions. It would include appendices which can be our work products and dissenting views if necessary. So that is a final report deliverable which will just include all of our work product. The second, we just talked about, action agendas. The Council will issue a final version of its action agendas developed during Phase V and VI of its activities. We obviously have agreed on schools and libraries. There may be other action agendas that will unfold that makes sense for us and will be included in this category. The third, Ed might want to speak to this because this was one of Ed's ideas. And I think it is exciting. I will let him take that one. And we will see your thoughts. MR. McCRACKEN: The idea on the third is that we have a two year term here, but we all have a lot of interest in the NII that goes on after that time. And as we have talked at various times, various of us have had specific ideas about how we might contribute to carrying on the work of the Council after that time in our own personal lives and our own personal businesses, whatever it is we are doing. And the idea of the legacy is to think about creative ways that each one of us could help out in the work of the Council in the year after the Council goes out business essentially. Sign and volunteer to continue to promote the work of the Council during the 12 months following the report. These might include agreements by individual members or groups of member to engage in a variety of the following activities. And think about these on your own during the next year. Think about things your business or you or your groups might do that would be relevant in the areas of public education, public appearances, speaker kits perhaps. Many of you have access to other types of media where you might do things of relevance, development of educational materials, for example, for classroom use or any other projects that you personally or your constituency could do. I think that this is something that there has been a lot of input on from you. What do we do after this Council is over? And I think it can have a big impact. We reviewed this as well with the Secretary of Commerce who was very excited about the possibility. So think about this. Personally, I want to talk to you some time during the next 12 months about how you might contribute. VOICE: May I ask a question? Would it be possible instead of talking about education to have some demonstration projects or places where people can see in geographically areas the same thing that we saw, maybe not the same equipment, but how it really works? Because what happens in education is we get papers, but we don't get to see how it works. We may see it as one setting. Maybe what we could do is get contributions or something from somewhere. Or we can show how this works in geographically diverse areas where people can come in, like we did yesterday, and see the process. MR. LEWIS: I think that is exactly what we had in mind. And we wanted to do that, Bonnie, on a volunteer basis. We wanted to put the idea -- plant the idea and the seed out here today and going forward, not only for this Council, but maybe for others that we know that would step forth. And if I ran a media company, we could put together a media slide or tape or whatever which would do just that. Or we would put together a demonstration that we could carry on the road from our business or from our association or organization. So we wanted to say that on a volunteer basis for those of us to think about how we can actively do this going forward. So it is the same idea. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: The Secretary was very pleased with that, as Ed said. He thought that this would really be a manifestation of our work after the Council's time had ended. Comments? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Yes, John. VOICE: I would just like to commend our co-chairs on an excellent job on this work plan. And I think it really ties in very well with the work that is going on so far. And it looks like it is a good set of deliverables. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, John. VOICE: Del. MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: I would just like to add as I did at the very beginning, there is no mention in this document of multi lingualism. The legacy that we leave, Ed, should be at least hemispheric, not world wide. And so we need to include -- MR. LEWIS: Good point. VOICE: Non-English speaking. MR. LEWIS: Good point. Thank you very much. You are absolutely right. Which would tie into the global aspects that we talked about earlier as well. We have two more points. Any other comments? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Two more comments here, one more before we conclude is the Phase VIII, Public Education/Public Information. And its place in this memo does not signal the fact that it is not that important. It is very important. As you know, Jonathan Silek came. He is a policy advisor to the Secretary, came to our Minnesota meeting and discussed this. I had a conversation with Jonathan last night. And we would like to follow up to sort of coordinate our -- (Changing Tape #1 to Tape #2.) VOICE: And these will become interim reports to the Council to be issued upon approval. Any comments, Ed? MR. McCRACKEN: No. MR. LEWIS: Any comments here? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: What this is is trying to develop what a work product is going to look like, what an interim report going to look like, what is a final report going to look like. And we think we can frame them in those categories. We are now coming down to the final deliverables, Phase VII, July to December '95. During the second half of 1995, the Council will begin work on a final set of deliverables. These will include at least three key elements. And I think that this really sets the tone for what we are about. I was excited about this as we hammered it out. The final report, on December 13, 1995, the Council will present the Secretary -- that is a pretty definite date, isn't it? VOICE: Yes. (Laughter) MR. LEWIS: We will present the Secretary of Commerce with its final report. Ed says he hopes it's not Friday. Which will include the following elements. Obviously, we are building on this now, the first critical issues, principles, stakeholder input. And obviously, we will have in that product maybe some -- our discussion, our consensus and obviously our conclusions. It would include appendices which can be our work products and dissenting views if necessary. So that is a final report deliverable which will just include all of our work product. The second, we just talked about, action agendas. The Council will issue a final version of its action agendas developed during Phase V and VI of its activities. We obviously have agreed on schools and libraries. There may be other action agendas that will unfold that makes sense for us and will be included in this category. The third, Ed might want to speak to this because this was one of Ed's ideas. And I think it is exciting. I will let him take that one. And we will see your thoughts. MR. McCRACKEN: The idea on the third is that we have a two year term here, but we all have a lot of interest in the NII that goes on after that time. And as we have talked at various times, various of us have had specific ideas about how we might contribute to carrying on the work of the Council after that time in our own personal lives and our own personal businesses, whatever it is we are doing. And the idea of the legacy is to think about creative ways that each one of us could help out in the work of the Council in the year after the Council goes out business essentially. Sign and volunteer to continue to promote the work of the Council during the 12 months following the report. These might include agreements by individual members or groups of member to engage in a variety of the following activities. And think about these on your own during the next year. Think about things your business or you or your groups might do that would be relevant in the areas of public education, public appearances, speaker kits perhaps. Many of you have access to other types of media where you might do things of relevance, development of educational materials, for example, for classroom use or any other projects that you personally or your constituency could do. I think that this is something that there has been a lot of input on from you. What do we do after this Council is over? And I think it can have a big impact. We reviewed this as well with the Secretary of Commerce who was very excited about the possibility. So think about this. Personally, I want to talk to you some time during the next 12 months about how you might contribute. VOICE: May I ask a question? Would it be possible instead of talking about education to have some demonstration projects or places where people can see in geographically areas the same thing that we saw, maybe not the same equipment, but how it really works? Because what happens in education is we get papers, but we don't get to see how it works. We may see it as one setting. Maybe what we could do is get contributions or something from somewhere. Or we can show how this works in geographically diverse areas where people can come in, like we did yesterday, and see the process. MR. LEWIS: I think that is exactly what we had in mind. And we wanted to do that, Bonnie, on a volunteer basis. We wanted to put the idea -- plant the idea and the seed out here today and going forward, not only for this Council, but maybe for others that we know that would step forth. And if I ran a media company, we could put together a media slide or tape or whatever which would do just that. Or we would put together a demonstration that we could carry on the road from our business or from our association or organization. So we wanted to say that on a volunteer basis for those of us to think about how we can actively do this going forward. So it is the same idea. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: The Secretary was very pleased with that, as Ed said. He thought that this would really be a manifestation of our work after the Council's time had ended. Comments? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Yes, John. VOICE: I would just like to commend our co-chairs on an excellent job on this work plan. And I think it really ties in very well with the work that is going on so far. And it looks like it is a good set of deliverables. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, John. VOICE: Del. MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: I would just like to add as I did at the very beginning, there is no mention in this document of multi lingualism. The legacy that we leave, Ed, should be at least hemispheric, not world wide. And so we need to include -- MR. LEWIS: Good point. VOICE: Non-English speaking. MR. LEWIS: Good point. Thank you very much. You are absolutely right. Which would tie into the global aspects that we talked about earlier as well. We have two more points. Any other comments? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Two more comments here, one more before we conclude is the Phase VIII, Public Education/Public Information. And its place in this memo does not signal the fact that it is not that important. It is very important. As you know, Jonathan Silek came. He is a policy advisor to the Secretary, came to our Minnesota meeting and discussed this. I had a conversation with Jonathan last night. And we would like to follow up to sort of coordinate our outreach role and our education. We felt that for the most part, we would be supportive, and want to recommend to you that we would be supportive on the education, public education and public information role. But we would encourage the Commerce Department to take the lead. And we would work along side. Not that we would say that we wouldn't be an advocate, we definitely would. But we thought that educating the public on the importance of the NII and informing the public on the work progress was very, very important. The public education campaign should be driven by the Department of Commerce with the Council's advice and input. And the Council and the Department of Commerce will work together on outreach activities online in Phase IV. They have obviously done a lot inhouse, the Commerce Department has. And it is (Inaudible) we are involved in developing our own principles and work program going forward. We just think that we could be adjunct to their lead. The Council must take primary responsibility for providing public dissemination of Council activities and Council work products. So I think that is agreeable with the Commerce Department. It is just an important piece of this work. And we want to be supportive. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Any questions? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: That is -- sums up our work product for the next year and a half or less. And it is an ambitious effort that all of you have given of your time so freely and have committed to seeing this through, but a very important effort. And I think we are going to -- this work will stand large as an important contribution to this Administration. And I want to publicly thank our staffs who helped the two of us kind of sort this through. We wouldn't have had this kind of guideline if we didn't have a good staff force. So I really appreciate that effort. Any final comments, Ed, on our plan? (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Nothing. MR. LEWIS: Okay. Anything from the group? (No response.) MR. LEWIS: Well, we will consider this our work program. And we obviously know that there are a lot of parts to fill in here, a lot of work to be done. But I appreciate your support. And it is going to be an exciting time for us. Why don't we take a 10 minute break? Thank you. (Whereupon, the meeting was recessed.) AFTER RECESS REVIEW OF PROGRESS ON MEGA-PROJECTS MEGA-PROJECT CO-CHAIRS MR. LEWIS: Let's get started. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: I learned during the break that a few of you didn't actually get the Framework for the NII Advisory Council until yesterday. Both Del and I thought that you got them about a week ago. We apologize for that. As you have a chance to study it further over the next few days, if you have additional inputs for either one of us, please get them back to us. It is our objective to get those kind of relevant things out to you at least so you have a week to work on them. So we apologize for that. Let's go ahead and get started with really the meat of our meeting here in New York City. And that is the work of the Mega-Projects. We have heard a lot of input that all of you are interested in what is going on in these Mega-Project activities. That is where the real work of the Council is happening. And now is the time to report on that. We'd like to ask the Mega-Project chairs to do that. We'd like to have discussions in each. If the discussions take longer than is allocated on the agenda, we will carry them on into the afternoon session as well. So let's get started with Mega-Project I. And to do that, we need our Mega-Project Chair who is running across the room. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Vance, give us a feeling for what is going on in Mega-Project I. MR. OPPERMAN: Excuse me, Ed. I was running back. If you look at your book under tab 1, you will see our complete report of activities. I won't repeat it. We have been concentrated on three activities: first, drafting a set of principles, overall principles to address the issue of vision for the NII. Those have been discussed. We have circulated a variety of drafts. We would urge all members of the NII to take a look at the overall principles. They are asking for final comment no later than October 1st because we want to present back to the NII at our October meeting, our final draft of these overall principles. The -- and that will require that we meet for final approval within Mega-Project I on October -- I believe it is the 13th. I don't have the schedule, but it is the day before our next NII meeting. The second basic document that we have been working on are the draft principles for electronic commerce. And again, what you will find in your book are our efforts at drafting those principles. We have what is not in your book. We have for discussion among the Mega-Project I members action items, the major issues, and the guidelines. Those are under active review. There is quite a bit of drafting going on. Again, I would ask you to review those again. We are asking for comments by October 1st. The third document that we have been working on are the lifelong learning principles. And again, the same schedule applies. Again, you will find those also on your -- under tab 1. Once again, we have asked for comments on those principles and again for action items, major issues, and guidelines no later than October 1st so that we have the October 13 -- and I'm looking for my schedule to see if I have that date right. But that is the -- VOICE: The 18th. MR. OPPERMAN: 18th. I'm sorry. Yes, in California. We need those by October 1st to meet our schedule date of October 10 to meet our meeting on the 18th so we can come back to you on the 19th with our final draft. We could have discussion on these matters now, but I think our schedule probably does not allow that. Furthermore, some of the issues here are raised in the bridging principles we will be discussing here in the full NII. We have discovered that you can discuss these principles for many hours. There is a lot of -- we know that from experience. And I bet some of the other Mega-Projects have had their pet discussions, too. An awful lot of discussion, an awful lot of drafting, and a tremendous amount of thought have gone into these preliminary drafts. I would ask that the members of NII Council take a look at them and please give us your thoughts by October 1st. We would appreciate that a great deal. That would then allow us to have an informed discussion the day before the next NII meeting in October. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Vance, as you have developed these principles in the Mega-Project I, are there issues that come out that should be kind of put on the list here? Are there -- is there any more content that you'd like input from, you know -- kind of a specific area that you would like input on from the Council in total? MR. OPPERMAN: In the area of -- I don't want to address that in terms of the overall principles because I think our discussion of what you have in Phase II and Phase III will discuss some of those same items. In electronic commerce -- and other members of MPI here. In electronic commerce, one of the key discussions and one of the key perhaps total opposites are those who feel that in electronic commerce, there is a role for proactive governmental involvement in stipulating, nudging, pushing, buying or however you wish to phrase it, development of the NII in commercial applications and those who believe that the government frankly ought to stay out and the market place ought to be dominant. The tension between those two different views produce I think a great deal of the discussion and a great deal of the -- well, it animates a great deal of the discussion. The -- and that -- and along that principle, along that division will come various ways that you will discuss questions of guidelines, major issues, and action items. For example, those who believe that there should be a proactive stance will have action items that require governmental action. And obviously, the guidelines will flow from that or the implementation of those governmental proposals. And one doesn't have to think much beyond the debates of the wage rate years and the telecommunication wars to be informed as to what some of the items may be. In the education area, I think the education area poses a few more principled discussion. One item, if I could try to summarize the flavor of the debate yesterday, one of the concerns that is raised whenever we discuss the education issue is the question of allocation of resources. Where additional resources or where redirected resources will come from or the nature or magnitude of those resources? We have a report that has been submitted to us that goes into some detail of the various expense factors, the various allocation factors, depending on the various scenario you adopt with regard to certain kinds of hardware and certain amounts of NII implementation schools across the board. And I think that -- I think the principle that animates that discussion is whether or not we are talking about new resources, whether or not we are talking about reallocation of existing resources. And if reallocation of existing resources, where does that come from? What have you reallocated? And I think that has animated a great deal of discussion, a great deal of our report so far. I think the resolution of those two items does a great deal to resolve where we go on our finer principles. MR. McCRACKEN: Does the Council have questions about Mega-Project I, any other insights that you -- MR. OPPERMAN: Well, if I have misstated that, there are plenty of -- we have very vigorous debate. As John knows, we have very vigorous debate on MPI. And if I have misstated in summary fashion the nature of those philosophical disputes, I apologize. MR. McCRACKEN: John. VOICE: I have no disagreement with what Vance said. I just want to add a few other comments to it, if I may. First of all, on the electronic commerce, we had a discussion yesterday about the difference between the launch of a technology and the adoption of a technology and that these two events don't necessarily occur at the same moment that it often takes people a longer period of time to understand how to use a technology, fit it into their lives, and to make it successful. An example being an ATM machine. They have been around for over 15 years. But the first five years, they weren't particularly successful. Today, they are well integrated into most of our lives. So we had a discussion about the role of a kiosk both from an information and a transaction standpoint in order to give people the experience of using new interactive technologies either before they were going to invest it or before they could afford it. Some people may never be able to afford it on their own. And we felt that there were a number of different opportunities where the private sector and even the public sector would find advantages to be able to deliver information or deliver transactions over next generation ATM type machines, whether it was smart card enabled or over some intelligent network. The second area which I think generated the most discussion was around education. And we felt there that this was the one area. And I think Ed McCracken cited this in his comments where the public we believe really expects this Council to take a strong position and lead to some positive action. And in this regard, we had some discussions about what kinds of things might be done. Having Bonnie Bracey on our panel is obviously a great advantage for us because of her first-hand experience. And she was telling us that teachers are so overloaded today with mandates, everything from AIDS education to substance abuse, teenage mothering, all of these different things that are required that there is not much time left over to really focus on education. And so one of our discussions was around the idea of could we use the NII technologies to enable some of these, if not all of these mandates to be off loaded out of the classroom, either to extend the hours, extend the days of the school, keep the school open where people could use either laser disk or CD Roms or networks, whatever the appropriate technology. We were not into technology discussions. So that the teacher could be freed up to spend time in the classroom on things that really focused more on the education goals that the country has adopted. The second thing was we felt that there had to be a real focus on the teacher per se. And while we want to see a shift from teaching in an old model of memorization to a new model where there is hands on experience, where the kids get involved in projects, where technology could enable them, and we saw many examples of this yesterday at Columbia, both in the demos that were set up as well as obviously what we saw at the Ralph Bunch yesterday afternoon, that we felt that there had to be a special effort to help enable teachers through training and through the availability of technology tools so that they could get more control of what went on in the classroom. And that was another part of our discussion. And then, we also talked about other resources that would include libraries in community colleges and others which could fit into this whole concept of education that would benefit not only K- 12, but also benefit lifelong learning. And then, the fourth area that we talked about was the role of the home. Maybe everyone cannot afford a home computer system or home terminal, whatever that final device ends up being. But we felt that the home was going to play a role that the schools were not going to be just defined by the bricks and mortar. So we wanted to get some reaction, both from within our own Mega-Project group on those ideas, as well as the full Council because we think the education area in particular is one where the Council needs to take some very definitive action statements as the work plan proposes. And therefore, getting the input from the Council on these ideas as well as ones you may have on your own by October 1st would be very beneficial. VOICE: I'd like to follow up a little bit on that. John, thank you. There is a report from the Department of Education for those people who might think it is just my individual experience that I'm talking about that talks about the way in which we use time in the classroom. And there also is a report from the NEA Princeton which tells you of the availability, what we have in the classrooms or lack of it. And one of the things is is that we do not have enough computers to start. But we really to get thinking about training teachers. I think one of the things that was really frightening yesterday was to stand there and watch these small children do things that many teachers have no clue. They haven't even started to examine these high level applications. And we do need -- if you are going to teach the kids, you need to know how to do it yourself. (Pause) VOICE: As long as Mega-Project I is developing these principles for electronic commerce, it seems to me it would be very useful if a dialogue was opened up somehow. I don't know if it is just from the chair or however. A set of people in Washington who are concerned about international trade, I am astounded at how little of the electronic methodologies have really penetrated their thinking. I have been to several meetings dealing with follow-on to the GATT, the Uruguay Round, the World Trade Organization. And for the most part, all of the focus is on physical aspects of international trade. And there is very little awareness of much less concrete proposals for dealing with the world in which there really is a global infrastructure. And a lot of commerce is done in electronic form. And I think I could almost see the possibility of a principle coming out that deals with the importance of having the international trade world understand the importance of this electronic commerce. So I would like to specifically suggest that Mega-Project I consider opening up a dialogue with some of those folks to see what phase their consciousness to that issue. VOICE: Some of that is addressed in the National Institutes of Standards. The Committee on Applications has two reports that have some of those things that we can extract or take a look at and sort of share our vision with them because they have done some beautiful work. That was the report I was talking about earlier that I couldn't think of the name of. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Well, I like Bob's suggestion. And we will follow that up. But there is expertise around this table. There is a considerable amount of electronic commerce that takes place already in international markets. And it may be quiet and it may not be packaged that way, but there is considerable expertise on that. And we will open up some dialogue on those issues. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: And the idea of Mega- Project I in the beginning was a feeling that across the country there was a lot of confusion about what the NII is and what the goals and vision for it should be. And so the idea of Mega-Project I was to try to define that. I think we have gotten off to a good start. And one of the ways to do that was to choose two application areas on kind of opposite ends of the spectrum: electronic commerce on one end and education on the other. We also listed health care. We listed criminal justice. There are many other applications of the NII as well. But we felt that by looking at education and looking at electronic commerce and looking at the similarities, we could then develop some overall principles that we could use to ascribe for ourselves and for the American public what the NII could really do for the country. So we have gotten off to a good start on that. Vance. MR. OPPERMAN: Ed, if I could try to give - - I agree with Ed. And I think that they were excellent choices in which to (Inaudible) the various principles and the various philosophical issues. At the risk again of indicating consensus where we have not yet achieved it, in the electronic commerce area, if you look at the discussion and if you look at the principles and if you sat in any of our meetings either at this group or our other meetings, it seems to me that much of the development of our discussion in those areas are frankly ways to keep government interference out of commerce and to allow the tremendous success that has occurred in the commercial area to continue without the difficulties posed by governmental intervention. On the other hand, in the education area, many of us feel that it is quite the reverse. That is where society ought to have a tremendous amount of input in addition to financial input and that that is an area where there ought to be a great deal of citizen, governmental, and societal input. And so if you look at the two different sets of principles and the two different types of discussions, they come at I think pretty much from that point of view. VOICE: I just have one question. How do you plan to handle going forward, the health care and public safety and criminal justice? I know time is of the essence. And we can't do everything. Did your group decide to make some priorities here? Or exactly what are you thinking? VOICE: We have not discussed that at the last two meetings. And we did not discuss that at our Chicago meeting. Without discussing it with my co-chair, my view would be that we should be able to deliver to this Council hopefully at the October meeting and certainly if not at the October meeting, by a November drafting session in time to make the discussion of November and December. We should be able to finish our work in education and commerce. And at that point, I think we ought to reshuffle our groupings and take a look at one or two of the other areas. And we have not prioritized those. I think that some of us feel that health care is an important item. But whatever it is, we will prioritize among the remaining areas that initially we discussed back at the April meeting. VOICE: Thank you. MR. McCRACKEN: Thanks, Vance. At the October meeting, we would like to go through step by step, principle by principle, a kind of review of the activities here. So you will have a chance to study the draft here. And we would like to come out of the October meeting with a pretty definitive set of principles in these three areas. Mega-Project II, Bert, Carol. MR. ROBERTS: We started off. And then, any of the Council members on the Mega-Group II's task force, please chime in. I will say that our group is not passive. And toward that end, we would like to welcome Mitch to the -- Mitch Kapor to the group who caused some additional stimulating discussion yesterday. Not that it was Mitch's doing, but at one point, some of the group decided that we needed to change the Constitution and change the antitrust laws to achieve whatever we were trying to achieve at that point on access. It is apparent that we -- VOICE: (Inaudible). MR. ROBERTS: It is apparent from the review of Mega-Project I that there is going to be some overlaps in terms of what each of these groups are doing. And hopefully, at the October meeting, we will be able to get enough dialogue with respect to what the groups have been doing to see where these overlaps are particular in the area of funding which is obviously going to be a key part of what we are doing. By way of background and to just reiterate a couple of comments I made last time, our activities to date have really focused up until yesterday's meeting on two areas. One is what we have dubbed environmental scans. And it was an effort to reach out and to try to put together a co-opinion of information about what was out there, what existed today. And obviously, there is a lot of reports and other things floating around. but it was curious as well that it had never been in many cases consolidated into a particular place. And we thought we needed to understand the starting point across a number of areas, at least as a background place before we jumped into the subject of access and universal access because if one doesn't understand the starting point, it would be difficult to understand what we were leaping into. The second effort that we have taken on since the panel started and again it was an effort to try to get our arms around what is a very complex and diverse subject was to focus on how access might be related to something that exists today. And that is the INTERNET. And we are not suggesting that the INTERNET is the NII of the future. But the facts are, it is there. People do not have universal access to it. It crosses education, home, and business usage. And trying to come up with at least some factual understanding of things like what it would cost to provide access to the INTERNET and how that might evolve could give us some basis for moving forward with the more complex issue, as you start to look at the NII in the future. And I would be quick to point out here that it is much broader than the INTERNET because the INTERNET is a singular network which has gotten a lot of publicity, singular meaning one talked about. But there are a lot of other networks out there that are in existence today, growing today, whether it be cable for entertainment or other things. And it is important when you talk about access you don't look at a singular objective. Toward that end, we developed a series of what we call four tracks that worked in parallel. And they were looking at INTERNET accessibility and cost options, trying to come up with some understanding of government support and subsidies with respect to what was going on inside the INTERNET. And as you begin to give some level, quote, universal access, unquote, what would that do to the cost structure in subsidies. The third track was to take a look at online information services. The feeling is that at least part of the funding areas going forward would have to do with what commercial services in terms of advertising and promotion of services might in fact offset in terms of cost because of the commercial enterprises. And the fourth track was to look at current funding options. There is a lot of money flowing around out there for libraries and for education. And to try to come up with an understanding of what was going on today in terms of funding options and how those funding options might be diverted into access to the NII future if you looked at the evolution perhaps of a library instead of dealing with books, dealing with digital media. Yesterday, we got in -- and I would also say parenthetically as I mentioned last time, we tried to as a Mega-Group utilize different technologies in terms of our meetings. I mean, we are talking about a world out there which we are going to have to make recommendations and commentary to the government on. And getting hands on use of some of these technologies, we all thought would be a good idea. We obviously had the standard face-to-face meetings and conference calls. But we extended that to the use of center- to-center video conferencing. And in the last interactive meeting we had, we distributed a bunch of desk top, either hooked to the PC or separate units where we were able to do video conferencing among the panel members as a test, if you will, to see if that was an effective vehicle for carrying on our work. And generally, they were with some hiccups. And we will continue to use that in the future. At the end of this, the goal in terms of technology of our task force is to get Jack Fishman a computer and make him visit at one point in time. We know we will accomplish access to the NII if we can accomplish that. The session of yesterday began to focus on what I would call the critical issues in trying to frame principles and come up with recommendations that we can begin to come forward to this panel and be prepared to do in October with respect to some of the really fundamental issues relating to access. I would say that I want to be sure that when we use the word "access", we perhaps have slightly broadened the scope of this Mega-Group. It is true that one piece of the activity is that we are looking at universal access and access in the sense of the physical facilities, the enabling facilities, which might be a computer at the end of a broad band or a telephone line that will enable access to the various networks, the national information infrastructure. But we have also taken a look at the subject of information services because that in itself is going to be a question of what services can be accessed free. What services can be accessed for a fee that may be subsidized commercially. And what services can be accessed for no fee that may also be subsidized commercially. I don't know that we will have all the answers on that, but it becomes a very inherent part of the question of access. When you start to look at once you have enabled access to the NII, then you have the other question of services. We are careful not to use the word "universal" service in that sense because it has such an overhang from the telephone industry. And we are talking about something different here with respect to the second item. The other thing that became very apparent to us and I think is an appropriate thing for the Advisory Council as a whole, but certainly our Mega- Group to look at, we will be coming forth with what I would suggest are short-term and long-term kinds of recommendations. Deborah Kaplan made the cogent point yesterday that it doesn't take long for kids to grow up. And for us to come with some recommendation with respect to how you evolve from here to (Inaudible) universal access to the NII, if that is something that takes effect 10 years from now, we have lost half a generation. And you will find that we will make short- term recommendations with us in terms of how I would hope we could move quickly, but not ignoring the long-term subject as well when you get to issues of evolving technology and other things. And again, I think that might be appropriate as we look at some of these things somewhere in our recommendations that we -- if there are short-term actions that can be taken, state, federal government level, commercial level, that we recommend them if it looks like things can be done in terms of shifts of funding or stimulation of funding into some of these areas that would drive the process. So yesterday, we began a good dialogue. The result of yesterday's session is going to be that we are going to very quickly put together a series -- I think it was five or six of couple page strawman position papers which will be distributed amongst the members of the Mega-Group on a series of topics. From that, we will have a one or two video desk top conference sessions to try to come to our own conclusion of what those issues are. This will be building up toward our October 18th meeting which we would hope to at least finalize directionally what the principles are and what our initial conclusions across many of these topics when we report to the Council as a whole. So that is my report. Carol or anybody else on the panel like to add anything? (No response.) MR. ROBERTS: Any questions from -- VOICE: Yes, I have a question, Bert. In the regulated environment that we have had up until now, the cable MSOs have been paying a royalty of about five percent in return for a virtual monopoly. The Telcos are getting -- have been subsidizing some residential customers in return for a near virtual monopoly. But as we move into a deregulated, competitive world at the local level, will there be the affordability to go in and support different groups? In the case of the MSOs, the money is going in through local government. And they may or may not spend it for different services. In the case of the Telcos, they are directly through the rate charge subsidizing residential customers. What will happen in schools and libraries in disadvantaged areas? Does your committee believe as we start to move into this more competitive service world at the local level -- have you been thinking about that? And will you be bringing forth recommendations to -- MR. ROBERTS: We did, John. That is very much on the topical agendas that we are groping with. And not to -- we have not come to a consensus and not to predict what that would be. But I think there is at least some feeling on the part of the panel. Again, if you look at this in terms of the short-term and long-term issues, if you get out far enough, far enough might mean seven, eight, nine, 10 years, there is a strong feeling on the panel that the commercial forces will have promoted access, including cost that will have been driven down that the, quote, affordability, that might allow extension of universal access to the home or to every place is going to be a much different set of economics than we are looking at today. And I think it is not just in the raw transmission facilities that I would say that in terms of telephone or cable cost or other networks. And it won't be as simply defined as that because you have wireless, changes in broadcast and other things that are happening. But looking out into the future, I think we will see a nosedive on that. But it is also true in the enabling technologies today to put a computer in the home that perhaps gave you relatively good access to something like the INTERNET. Maybe you are talking about 1,000 or 1,500 bucks. That may be on the high side. But if you extrapolate that across the number of households in the United States, you very quickly come to a number that could well be prohibitive in terms of universal access. But if you look at the technology trends and whether the access vehicle is something that is an extension of a TV or what we know as a PC today, if you look at the technology trends you will find if they follow anywhere near what we have seen in the past, you will have perhaps that same capability that we talk about for $1,000.00, $1,500.00 today that -- (Changing Tape #2 to Tape #3.) MR. ROBERTS: I think there is at least some feeling on the part of the panel. Again, if you look at this in terms of the short-term and long-term issues, if you get out far enough, far enough might mean seven, eight, nine, 10 years, there is a strong feeling on the panel that the commercial forces will have promoted access, including cost that will have been driven down that the, quote, affordability, that might allow extension of universal access to the home or to every place is going to be a much different set of economics than we are looking at today. And I think it is not just in the raw transmission facilities that I would say that in terms of telephone or cable cost or other networks. And it won't be as simply defined as that because you have wireless, changes in broadcast and other things that are happening. But looking out into the future, I think we will see a nosedive on that. But it is also true in the enabling technologies today to put a computer in the home that perhaps gave you relatively good access to something like the INTERNET. Maybe you are talking about 1,000 or 1,500 bucks. That may be on the high side. But if you extrapolate that across the number of households in the United States, you very quickly come to a number that could well be prohibitive in terms of universal access. But if you look at the technology trends and whether the access vehicle is something that is an extension of a TV or what we know as a PC today, if you look at the technology trends you will find if they follow anywhere near what we have seen in the past, you will have perhaps that same capability that we talk about for $1,000.00, $1,500.00 today that could be $100.00 at that point in time in the future. So the enabling technologies then, and you extrapolate $100.00 across all of the households that haven't yet purchased it for commercial reasons, you all of a sudden are in a window of opportunity that you are talking about a different set of dynamics. When you talk about schools and libraries, you will find that on our -- again, not to predispose the end point. But on our recommendations, there is going to be a focus that we can't wait to do something on that. And that has got to be addressed short term. And it probably is going to have to deal with the technology cost today. But we have come up with some very interesting kinds of things. Craig actually was the focal point on bringing this forth to the panel. But if you see the funding mechanisms out there -- I'm not saying there is enough money or that there is too much money. But if you look at the funding mechanisms that go into the library infrastructures around the country, that go into the school systems around the country, it is massive numbers. And it may well be that building on that through some stimulation of some injection of government funding to get things done at the school and the library level. You could get a level of universal access to something that could be very meaningful today in the case of education and so on. And you run into, just parenthetically -- Mitch brought it up yesterday. But you run into other problems. In fact, if you go into an inner school to take an example of the cost of the computer equipment or even the cost of the installation of the telephone lines may be far dwarfed by just getting electric outlets rewired into the room to be able to provide simple things like that. So it is complex equation today. But you will find that short-term, I think we are going to really try to drive the point that we got to deal with that and we can't wait for the technology cost to drive the situation down. Anything, Craig? MR. FIELDS: Yes. I want to -- I would like to add a little more to the answer, but completely agree with the part that has come on the table so far. While I think there is good agreement that with enough time, both market forces and technology forces are going to make the telecommunications part of the equation come out reasonably well, if bit waves were absolutely free, which they are not now and probably never will be, there is still a very large issue associated with the cost of the services, the contents, the data bases, the education around them to know how to use, etcetera, etcetera. And we may as well anticipate that issue now rather than get to the point where we have an illusion of -- I guess we are not supposed to use the word "universal" -- more widespread access to services, but not the actual access to services because getting the bits from here to there and not being able to afford to turn on the computer program is not a satisfying end point. VOICE: I would like to follow up on that. I have attended a couple of your sessions. And I am sure you are going to get to it. What has been the thought, I'm sure it's coming, about the not-for-profit, the public institutions? Obviously, I'm interested in the public broadcasting side. What about the not-for-profit access and how that would be structured? Has it been in any detail? VOICE: We really haven't gotten into that as such. We have really focused on the public and the other aspects of this. MR. ROBERTS: It is a valid point. But on the other hand, I think there is going to be -- let's see. Again, not to predispose, but it is a partial answer to what you're asking. Coming up with -- I don't want to get into a massive -- let me just back off on that. Otherwise -- VOICE: You don't have to back off. MR. ROBERTS: We can spend the rest of the day on this subject. (Laughter) VOICE: Don't back off. VOICE: One of the nuances that we began to raise yesterday, we certainly haven't explored is whether we felt more comfortable talking about schools and libraries per se or about community based local institutions which is more generic and actually gives more room for exploration of considering a greater diversity of types of institutions. So that would be a logical place to take up that, your point. VOICE: But one thing about it is that we can use the schools. We don't have to close the schools at 4:00 o'clock. And one of the problems is four percent of teachers -- this is the National Education Association Communication Survey. Four percent of teachers have a computer modem in their classroom. Four in 10 can use the modem somewhere in the school site. Twelve percent of teachers have a telephone in the classroom. Hardly any teachers, one percent have a classroom telephone equipped with voice mail. And we are going to connect the community, the schools and all of the business people, we've got to be able to talk. So maybe one of the things we will do is change schools into learning places where the library, some of these things can be combined. MR. ROBERTS: I think the theory just laid out for the Council to focus on and Mitch's point is right, that a lot of the directed funding that takes place is controlled at the local and state level. I, of course, voted to preempt all the states. And I was shot down by Carol and -- (Laughter) MR. ROBERTS: And therefore -- and there are a lot of very specific demographic and geographic differences in terms of how you would solve this problem. And in some way if you broaden the question of -- to say something other than public education facilities and public libraries to community based facilities, you may find that in Arizona, as we use as the example, you may find a different solution in terms of how you develop those public community centers than a library which may or may not exist and/or may not be adequate as a starting point. So that is the kind of issues that are going to have to be driven down even with respect to the short term. VOICE: I don't want to belabor it, but Mitch, I think you are absolutely right. Somewhere along the line, that is going to come -- that should come in your discussions because as soon as we develop the outreach components of this NIIAC, we are going to hear from a lot of those communities of interest of the non-profit world. And they are going to ask that question of us. And they are going to ask some specifics as to what is our view as to how that is going to look and how do we connect the cost of that. So it is going to come. VOICE: The other aspect of that issue in particular has to do with universality and opportunity to become an information provider, which I think is something we all on our Mega-Project recognize as an issue we have yet to really deal with. But there, I think the issue is very acute for non-profits. And there are great opportunities for non-profits to do what they already do differently, more efficiently, reach more people. And I think that is something that will come up. VOICE: I would add on the opposite end of that spectrum, we are going to also have to deal with the private institutions that well could be for profit. In many cases, they are not public today. They are funded. They exist. They've got great facilities on -- it could be anything. It could be a club. It could be a school. But they may well represent a starting point in some of these local areas that could be better, but we kind of push aside, looking at the public side for now. VOICE: What is the progress on the environmental scan? Is there a set of data that has been collected as of yet? VOICE: Yes. And what we -- I didn't bring it with me. But we have is a set of something like 10 different areas that we basically achieved input. I can't say that it is totally comprehensive yet. But to give you the simplistic example on one end of this spectrum, it was just trying to understand facts like the fact that Bonnie raised: how many schools have telephones? How many classrooms have telephones? How many libraries and schools have computers? What is the starting point? How many households and computers have TVs? How many computers have modems? A whole series of factual data like that. But it also extended to another end of this spectrum and that was what is the current state of the laws and regulations with respect to the subject of universal service and access, what exists out there, what is going on today. And that would be although a data gathering but not the numeric facts as we have indicated. And I would look at those eventually as being streamlined to some degree, but put as part of an appendix part of our submission that was built as a starting point. The problem is you've got to eventually and we had eventually cut that off because facts will flow and ever. And they are generally changing anyway, depending on the source. But if you can directionally get to the point, it is -- I think it has a (Inaudible) starting point. (Pause) VOICE: It would be very helpful if we could see some of those environmental scans. I see an obvious overlap with Mega-Project I. And perhaps a list could be available. And we could ask for copies for those that would be to our work. VOICE: We will distribute those to date. Okay. VOICE: Thanks. (Pause) VOICE: I'd like to say -- Bonnie won't like some of what I'm going to say. Don't (Inaudible) at me, Bonnie. MS. BRACEY: That's okay. MR. HUBBARD: I don't know that it makes sense to suggest that all classrooms should have to be interactive or have a telephone. The reason I say that is in this country, we have a big problem of people learning how to read and write and do basic arithmetic. And I don't know if interactivity is going to be necessary to teach people how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. So what I come to is a far cheaper, maybe a more practical solution that every room should have perhaps an interactive room or an interactive rooms where students move from the basics, reading, writing, and arithmetic into rooms to use the interactivity that may be available at a certain time of day for geography or talking to the astronauts or whatever it might be. And I think if we go off on that tact, we are going to save a lot of money. MS. BRACEY: Stanley, that is exactly one of the types of things that I am going to talk to you about later. I want to set up some projects that show many ways in which we can enact, using technology, many different styles. The first thing is if we get rid of some of the time out of the classroom, you can actually teach the children. The second thing is if we use multi media platforms, using many different types of styles of learning and teaching, yes, we can teach people to read and write and use this information to teach bilingual students and also to empower students with the feeling that learning is important, that they really do like that, that it is something they want to do for the rest of their lives. So, no, we are not in disagreement. There are just many ways to do this thing. VOICE: Now, let me support on that. I am not an education expert by any means. But at the Bunch school yesterday, I did talk to one of the teachers, Stan. And she brought up the same point. What has been so exciting is that the tools of the computer and this intellectual -- these communication tools we are talking about stimulates kids to learn. So it is not necessary that you segregate these to say I learn over here with basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, and I go into another room, and I learn how to use the computer. The computer can help you learn basic arithmetic and basic science and basic reading and writing. And that is what is so stimulating about it that people learn differently and stimulates different parts of our brain. So it is really not the segregation of those two for learning. It is the combination of them. So I would support Bonnie on that score that there is a lot we can do. We use the technology to teach the kids. MS. BRACEY: Stanley has something that people probably haven't seen employed in classrooms. And that is the use of distance education where you take teachers who can do these things very well. Like for instance, there is a Jason project which I will be working on. And what we want to do is to model for schools and for teachers best practices and to use wireless or whatever the technologies are to spread this learning in many different ways. So I have not excluded you. VOICE: I am all for that. And that is the cheapest. By far, the cheapest way to do it is to access schools with information coming from satellites because there is no wires, no local infrastructure. It is very expensive. It is very cheap. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Obviously, when we talk about schools, everybody wakes up. It is great. I think we should probably -- thanks Bert. Thanks Carol. I think we should probably get on with Mega-Project III, as you can tell, the universal access is high on everyone's list. John, would you like to give us an overview of what is going on Mega-Project III? VOICE: I would indeed. We really have two products that we are working on right at the moment. That is one, principles of intellectual property. And the second one is a response to the green paper issued by the Intellectual Property Working Group of the IITF. Now, what is interesting about this and since we have met in St. Paul, our members have met three times on the subcommittee on intellectual property. And we have had a substantial amount of discussion about the green paper. And we have had experts and authorities on copyright and intellectual property come in and talk to us. The progress, including yesterday's meeting, we can say was substantial enough that we are really in a position to say that a written document to the Council on the green paper, our comments on the green paper, and a written document reflecting our principles on intellectual property will be made available to the entire Council two weeks prior to the October meeting. And saying that, we would like to encourage you. And I have inside in your books today, you have the green paper. And those of you who are interested in commenting to our Mega-Project regarding the green paper, we would really encourage you and love to have your comments in to us by September the 26th. If we could do that, we could take your comments into account and incorporate them into our comments, our written comments that come to the full Council two weeks before the October meeting. In addition to the intellectual property issues that we are discussing, you know, of course, that we have a charter to create principles on privacy. You should be reassured that those principles will be forthcoming from us in November, two weeks prior to the December 6th meeting. And we will be again submitting those and writing to you and be talking to ahead of time before we submit them. I want to add one other piece of information regarding this fact finding and not only we are doing, but also, if you will, others in the government are doing. You may be aware that on July 15th, Mega- Project co-sponsored a public hearing on security with the security issues forum. And Sally Katzen, Chair of the BITF Information Policy Committee in the security issues forum has invited us again to participate with her and with the government in additional public meetings. And there will be six public meetings that would address different sectors of the economy and would really look at their security needs and their policy concerns regarding the NII. The first of those meetings that Sally has proposed and she has proposed for the Mega-Project help her with and, if you will, co-sponsor will be held somewhere around our meetings in October in California. We are looking at dates now, such as the 20th of October. That particular public meeting, hearing would concern the entertainment, computer software, and publishing industries issues regarding the NII issues as intellectual property, security, and privacy. Other meetings, other hearings would deal with health and education, finance and insurance, transportation, energy, and commerce, government to citizen operations and public commercial network systems. Now, Sally's goal and the government's goal is to work with the Mega-Project to get input, if you will, from these various sectors of the society to help us better draw our conclusions for the Council and the government to have a better feed back as to what these sectors have to say about these important issues, privacy, security, and intellectual property. I have to say in summary that our work plan is available inside the book. I believe I speak for our committee that we are reassured that we are well on the track we are supposed to be on to do what we are supposed to do for the entire Council as regards to a written document that you can deal with. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Comments, questions for -- Yes, Vance. Do you want those questions sent to you? Or comments by the 26th? MR. OPPERMAN: I would. If you would please. That would give us plenty of time to look at them and put them in our own -- with our own. (Pause) VOICE: (Inaudible). MR. OPPERMAN: Yes. The first one, of course, you knew was entertainment and computer software and publishing industries. The others were health and education, finance and insurance, transportation, energy, and commerce, government to citizen operations, and public commercial network systems. We will certainly all the Council members aware of the dates of every one of those hearings and their location. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Any other comments or questions? (Pause) VOICE: I have a question. In the hearings, one of the things we talked about was teacher use. And I hate to keep coming back to education, but I get asked these questions on the list. Is there a working group of teachers looking at how it is used in education? Or are they included in someone's study? VOICE: Well, I can -- there are two things to say. One of these hearings that we are talking about will deal with education. And, secondly, yesterday in our -- if you will, our subcommittee meeting, we talked about the idea of having further conversations about the education sector and these issues about intellectual property. VOICE: Thank you. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Very good. Thank you. I think this last session where we have had a chance to review the work of the three Mega- Projects is indicative of how we would like to spend more of the time of the Advisory Council in our meetings in the fall. So I think it does give us a good chance to interact with what is really happening in the Mega- Projects where all the real work is happening. MR. LEWIS: Just quickly, I just want to thank the members of the Council for all their work on the Mega-Projects. You are spending a lot of time really getting down to the details and specifics. And we have a lot to go. So I just want to say thank you. The other part of it is there has been a question raised about the work program going forward and the role of the Mega-Project teams. I think it is going to be ongoing. So if there is any question that your work is going to subside three or four months from now, I think we will have another question coming. There will be ongoing questions for us, even though we get this in a little more defined form. I think there will be room for us to continue these discussions. So thank you very much for what you are doing. MR. McCRACKEN: Let's take another 10 minute break. (Whereupon, the meeting was recessed.) AFTER RECESS MR. LEWIS: We just have a little bit of a schedule change. The Secretary is on his way. We are going to take up two other items before he comes. One is, would you turn to your future meetings tab? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: And just a little housekeeping item right quick, for the balance of 1994, we have October 19th in Silicone Valley, California. I know Ed was looking forward to our visit. And December 6th, Washington, D.C. I know many of you plan to have some Mega-Project meets and hearings and etcetera around those meeting dates. 1995, we have two proposed changes in there with an asterisk, proposed date changes. And I hope it meets with your approval. January 26th, and we don't have all of the places definite at this point. We are working on a few. January 26th, March 10th, April 12th, June 14th. August 9th was a change. October 11th and December 13th. So that original schedule I think we sent out on 1995, the two changes, proposed changes are March 10th and August 9th. And I don't know if we are at liberty to say any places. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Right. And October will be firm on the locations. We are working with the Commerce Department and other logistics. So in October we will be firm on the locations for the '95 meetings or at least a majority of those '95 meetings. But October 19th is firm Silicone Valley. December 6th Washington, D.C. And we will inform you as to specific sites. Any questions, valid disagreements? I hope we can hold to it. Going, going, gone. Thank you very much. Ed. MR. McCRACKEN: Yesterday, more than 40 leading communication computing and services companies proposed a consensus vision of the architecture required for tomorrow's information super highway. It's called the Cross Industry Working Team. A detail on the example -- also, a detail on the example of a key component of the national information infrastructure digital cash. We are fortunate to have the chair of the Cross Industry Working Team as one of the members of our Advisory Council. That is Bob Kahn. We asked Bob to give us a little overview of those papers and to hand them out as well. So, Bob, can you tell us what the Cross Industry Working Team is and what the papers are all about? DR. KAHN: Thank you very much, Ed. In fact, Mr. Chairman and members of the (Inaudible) will be happy to present you with the initial papers that have come out of this Cross Industry Working Team. These were formally released yesterday. And the press release, which I am going to pass around, specifically mentioned that it was handed out at this meeting today. This is an organization whose (Inaudible) of more than 40 of the leading communications, computing, and service companies in the United States. And they really do have a consensus vision of the technical architecture for this national information infrastructure. And they have also outlined one of the key service components, namely digital cash. If you have the press release. The first thing we are going to send around is the press release that went out yesterday. Do you have one for the other direction? (Pause) VOICE: Yes, I do. DR. KAHN: And one of the reports that was issued is entitled "An Architectural Framework" for the national information infrastructure. And we will send copies of that around to serve as -- VOICE: (Inaudible). DR. KAHN: The second one is on digital cash. VOICE: (Inaudible). DR. KAHN: You sent the digital cash one, too? VOICE: (Inaudible). DR. KAHN: Okay. I guess they are both going around. These two white papers really address some of the discussions that have been underway by this working group over the past year. They provide both a technical vision and a set of goals that cut across a range of industries. And they provide a common foundation for thinking about the objectives and technical requirements for the NII. This Cross Industry Working Team was formed a little over a year ago in response to a perceived need within the private sector to share viewpoints and where possible to develop consensus views on the technical aspects of the NII. And so this is a distinguishing characteristic of this group form all of the other groups that have formed. It is not dealing with policy. It is not dealing with economics. It is not dealing with a legislative or lobbying agenda. It is a set of companies getting together to understand what the technical implications are for the NII. Participation in this organization is basically open to all U.S. organizations that have either technology or services to provide. It is intended to be the providers of the technology to somehow form consensus. And I think the national Advisory Council is a very good adjunct to it because it allows this group to also get inputs from a much wider community that don't have direct representation in that Cross Industry Working Team. The Executive Director is Chuck Brownstein. He was sitting over here to my left. Chuck is on loan to the Cross Industry Working Team from the National Science Foundation. And he has been working with the members of the Cross Industry Working Team as I have for some time now. These two reports that were just handed out are both available in hard copy through Chuck for those people who would like to get copies of it. We will be happy to provide additional copies. It is also available on the NET. And there is a citation to it. So you can pull up from your FTP or (Inaudible) or whatever. Many of the participants in this Cross Industry Working Team are also actually represented here on the Council. And the Cross Industry Working Team has been an active participant in some of the other activities. It in fact was one of the supporters of the NIS workshop that was mentioned earlier on research topics. And it has worked with a variety of the other groups that have been involved in this activity, such as the Council on Competitiveness, the CSPT, ANSI and some other standards activities, as well as the federal government. In fact, many of the government participants in this project have been participating in Cross Industry Working Team meetings for over a year now. The model of the NII that is outlined in the architecture paper has three basic components, namely an applications component, an enabling services component, and a physical infrastructure component. Together they really include all of the NII's information and transportation machinery. The networking software and tools that facilitate the manipulation movement and just access to information and all of the activities of the NII users. We think that these documents are going to be very helpful. They don't necessarily represent the view of any single member. They really are a consensus view. Many of the members began with quite a different notion of what the architecture should look like and converged on this. In any event, it has a number of different components of functionality, trust, and control that it outlines as well. The referenced architecture model of the NII really addresses four key functional elements. One of which are the appliances on the NET: number two, the networks themselves, number three, the resources on the network, and number four, are the various the control points. And there were seven categories of interface that are defined. Those of you who saw the CSPP report earlier would recognize this is an augmentation of some of those notions that developed there. The digital cash report defines ways in which the NII will facilitate existing and new forms of electronic commerce. It describes the functional requirements and technical options for conducting every day financial transactions in the network economy. It was shared by Dan Shuster of Citicorp with a large number of participants. The architecture report was chaired by Neal Ransom from Dell South with a large number of other participants. And I think that these papers taken together clearly show that America's leading companies are viewing the NII as a major opportunity for the country and that have a principled and long- term and open vision. The particular press release that you have has a quote from the Vice President, essentially commending the Cross Industry Working Team for helping to put the activity together. There are several others in progress which we hope to release shortly: one on portability which deals with the whole notion of the NII as a kind of a nomadic computing experience, a second one that has recently been set up on security. And one of the areas that we will focus on initially is the technology for handling key escrow. It is also working on the development of an overall technological road map for the NII. And it expects to work closely with the national academy in that particular area. I would just like to close by telling you t hat the Cross Industry Working Team would be very pleased to work with the Council in any wats that the co-chairs might deem appropriate to be certain that it gets the advice of the major firms that are fully committed to creating and building both the technologies and the services that are needed for the NII. So I hope you enjoyed the report. If you have any comments or concerns, we would be happy to take them back. And we plan additional outputs of this group with the Council as it proceeds with its work. MR. McCRACKEN: Thank you, Bob. I think your reports actually made it only about halfway around the room. So if -- DR. KAHN: Okay. MR. McCRACKEN: Could you -- DR. KAHN: Let me -- MR. McCRACKEN: Make sure that everybody has a copy of each one. DR. KAHN: Well, we got (Inaudible). We will catch everybody up for -- MR. McCRACKEN: Right. So again, thanks very much. I think you will find it useful work. And thanks again. DR. KAHN: You are very welcome. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. We are very honored to have the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown with us to give us a progress report on the NII. I just have some preliminary comments in introducing him. He needs no introduction. He is probably one of our most activist Secretaries of Commerce in history. I think his travel schedule is probably very hectic as ours have been. But his is around the world. And we are very proud of his activities in this country and around the world in promoting commerce and the United States. Also, he is a leader and activist on this information infrastructure issue. And he is going to give us a progress report about what has been happening up to date. But when he made an appointment of this Council which will be a year in January, he asked us to serve and to give him the best advice we could on the evolution of information infrastructure. But not only that, he has had his staff and his team in Commerce actively working on the issues, coordinating with us. And he has been an activist in working with us over the last few months. When we want to meet with him, we get an appointment. He sits with us and gives us guidance. We have no difficulty in reaching his team members and working with them and moving us forward. So we have a person who is not only interested in this but is giving his time and support. Great to have him in New York City. This is his home. He can probably tell us more about this place than we know. We were with him yesterday at the Ralph Bunch school. And that was an exhilarating experience to watch his students deal with the tools of this technology. But without any further ado, our Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown. (Applause) NII PROGRESS REPORT RON BROWN, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you very much, Del. I wish I could report to you that I feel at home here in the New York Public Library. Had I been a better high school student, I could probably report that to you. I didn't spend enough time in this library, but I must admit that I did spend a lot of time in it. And I want to say how important it is I think that we are meeting in a public library, particularly a public library of the stature and importance of this one. I walked in with Dr. Leclair who is an old friend and has providing tremendous leadership here and who was speaking to me with great excitement about the challenges that he faces here at the library and the opportunities that telecommunication technology affords him. We were reminiscing about old times. And one of the first honorary degrees I got was handed to me by him from Hunter College where I went to the elementary school and have kept a connection with Hunter through the years. So I want to thank you, Paul, for your leadership and for your hospitality here today. I want to thank the members of our Advisory Committee for your hard work and your diligence and obviously for organizing this important event and for developing and helping us to implement our plans for the national information infrastructure. I want to pay special tribute to Del and Ed though for their leadership. I think it is probably the case for all of us when we all got into this, we weren't really very clear on what tremendous, tremendous mission this was, how broad it was, how sweeping it was, how much importance it had for not only the telecommunications industry, but for our country, and all of the major issues that we have to grapple with, tough, vexing issues, often issues of some controversy, but issues that we know that we have to deal with. And we have to be focused on. We have to be serious about our commitment to come up with answers that are pragmatic and that make common sense. It has been a year since Vice President Gore and I released the NII agenda for action in which we first defined the Administration's vision and goals for the NII, presented the principles for government action, and made specific commitments to accelerate its development, deployment, and use. It has been just one year, but in an age of constant innovation where information is transferred at lightening speed, one year can now be as productive as 10 or 20 in the past. Today, we are releasing a report documenting the Administration's progress thus far. I believe that we have gone a long towards achieving the commitments which we set forth in the agenda for action. And I am confident about what we will achieve in the future if we continue to work together as a team, if we continue to do as much listening as we do talking, as we continue to reach out as we have through public hearings and other vehicles to really see what is on the American people's minds. What kinds of applications are possible. How we can make the best and most use of the technology that we are dealing with. The promise of the information age is clearly limitless. And I know that we are going to do everything we can to fulfill that promise. It would indeed be hard to exaggerate the potential impact of information technology on our country. Access to communications networks is changing the way we provide for our families, the way we educate our children, and the way we interact with each other. It is transforming the way American businesses and entrepreneurs manage their companies and the way they manufacture their products and the way they compete in this very tough and difficult global economic environment. This Administration's NII initiatives seeks to ensure that all Americans can take advantage of the opportunities brought by advanced information technologies and services. Through the NII, we can achieve a broad range of both economic and social goals. As Secretary of Commerce, obviously I take every opportunity to emphasize the economic aspect of the information highway with its vast potential for economic growth and for jobs. And I know that the focus sometimes tends to be on the impact on the telecommunications industry. But we are really talking about how we are going to be a more productive and more competitive nation in the future, how we are going to build an information infrastructure that really speaks to the fact that we are really number one in telecommunication technology worldwide and how we are going to use that advantage to help America grow and prosper and create jobs in the future. We know that the NII just is not about technology. It is about how we assure our nation's competitiveness in the twentieth first century. And that is why I am pleased to be able to assert this morning that the American economy is back on track. In the past 18 months, we have created 4 million new private sector jobs. That is about four times as many as were created in the four previous years. The economy is growing at about the rate we predicted it would grow, and at about the rate it should grow. Inflation remains virtually nonexistent, notwithstanding some data the other day that I think was much exaggerated by the markets. Interest rates remain relatively low. Business confidence is clearly up. Investment in plant and equipment and research and development is moving in the right direction which bodes well for our nation's economic future. Consumer confidence is up. All of the fundamentals are good. And they are good, I would like to believe, because the Clinton Administration has taken some important steps and frankly some courageous steps to deal with the issues as tough and complex as the federal deficit and how we manage the growth of our economy effectively. The fact is we've got a strategy. We've got a plan. And it is working. One of the ways that we can ensure the kind of continued sustained growth that we seek is through the way we deal with our mission, both as members of the Administration and members of our National Advisory Council. We know that the remaining challenges are formidable. To continue our success, we must become increasingly competitive, both at home and throughout the world. There is no doubt that the national information infrastructure will spur economic growth and will create jobs here at home. The telecommunications and information industries account for almost 1 -- (Change Tape #3 to Tape #4.) VOICE: Plan to share the additional outputs of this group with the Council as it proceeds with its work. MR. McCRACKEN: Thank you, Bob. I think your reports actually only made it about halfway around the room. So if -- DR. KAHN: Okay. MR. McCRACKEN: Could you -- DR. KAHN: Let me -- MR. McCRACKEN: Make sure that everybody has a copy of each one. DR. KAHN: Well, we got (Inaudible). We sort of ran short of cash. We will catch everybody up for -- MR. McCRACKEN: Right. So again, thanks very much. And I think you will find it useful work. And thanks again. DR. KAHN: You are very welcome. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. We are very honored to have the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown with us to give us a progress report on the NII. I just have some preliminary comments in introducing him. He needs no introduction. He is probably one of our most activist Secretaries of Commerce in history. I think his travel schedule is probably very hectic as ours have been. But his is around the world. And we are very proud of his activities in this country and around the world in promoting commerce and the United States. Also, he is a leader and activist on this information infrastructure issue. And he is going to give us a progress report about what has been happening up to date. But when he made an appointment of this Council which will be a year in January, he asked us to serve and to give him the best advice we could on the evolution of information infrastructure. But not only that, he has had his staff and his team in Commerce actively working on the issues, coordinating with us. And he has been an activist in working with us over the last few months. When we want to meet with him, we get an appointment. He sits with us and gives us guidance. We have no difficulty in reaching his team members and working with them and moving us forward. So we have a person who is not only interested in this but is giving his time and support. Great to have him in New York City. This is his home. He can probably tell us more about this place than we know. We were with him yesterday at the Ralph Bunch school. And that was an exhilarating experience to watch his students deal with the tools of this technology. But without any further ado, our Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown. (Applause) SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you very much, Del. I wish I could report to you that I feel at home here in the New York Public Library. Had I been a better high school student, I could probably report that to you. I didn't spend enough time in this library, but I must admit that I did spend a lot of time in it. And I want to say how important it is I think that we are meeting in a public library, particularly a public library of the stature and importance of this one. I walked in with Dr. Leclair who is an old friend and has providing tremendous leadership here and who was speaking to me with great excitement about the challenges that he faces here at the library and the opportunities that telecommunication technology affords him. We were reminiscing about old times. And one of the first honorary degrees I got was handed to me by him from Hunter College where I went to the elementary school and have kept a connection with Hunter through the years. So I want to thank you, Paul, for your leadership and for your hospitality here today. I want to thank the members of our Advisory Committee for your hard work and your diligence and obviously for organizing this important event and for developing and helping us to implement our plans for the national information infrastructure. I want to pay special tribute to Del and Ed though for their leadership. I think it is probably the case for all of us when we all got into this, we weren't really very clear on what tremendous, tremendous mission this was, how broad it was, how sweeping it was, how much importance it had for not only the telecommunications industry, but for our country, and all of the major issues that we have to grapple with, tough, vexing issues, often issues of some controversy, but issues that we know that we have to deal with. And we have to be focused on. We have to be serious about our commitment to come up with answers that are pragmatic and that make common sense. It has been a year since Vice President Gore and I released the NII agenda for action in which we first defined the Administration's vision and goals for the NII, presented the principles for government action, and made specific commitments to accelerate its development, deployment, and use. It has been just one year, but in an age of constant innovation where information is transferred at lightening speed, one year can now be as productive as 10 or 20 in the past. Today, we are releasing a report documenting the Administration's progress thus far. I believe that we have gone a long towards achieving the commitments which we set forth in the agenda for action. And I am confident about what we will achieve in the future if we continue to work together as a team, if we continue to do as much listening as we do talking, as we continue to reach out as we have through public hearings and other vehicles to really see what is on the American people's minds. What kinds of applications are possible. How we can make the best and most use of the technology that we are dealing with. The promise of the information age is clearly limitless. And I know that we are going to do everything we can to fulfill that promise. It would indeed be hard to exaggerate the potential impact of information technology on our country. Access to communications networks is changing the way we provide for our families, the way we educate our children, and the way we interact with each other. It is transforming the way American businesses and entrepreneurs manage their companies and the way they manufacture their products and the way they compete in this very tough and difficult global economic environment. This Administration's NII initiatives seeks to ensure that all Americans can take advantage of the opportunities brought by advanced information technologies and services. Through the NII, we can achieve a broad range of both economic and social goals. As Secretary of Commerce, obviously I take every opportunity to emphasize the economic aspect of the information highway with its vast potential for economic growth and for jobs. And I know that the focus sometimes tends to be on the impact on the telecommunications industry. But we are really talking about how we are going to be a more productive and more competitive nation in the future, how we are going to build an information infrastructure that really speaks to the fact that we are really number one in telecommunication technology worldwide and how we are going to use that advantage to help America grow and prosper and create jobs in the future. We know that the NII just is not about technology. It is about how we assure our nation's competitiveness in the twentieth first century. And that is why I am pleased to be able to assert this morning that the American economy is back on track. In the past 18 months, we have created 4 million new private sector jobs. That is about four times as many as were created in the four previous years. The economy is growing at about the rate we predicted it would grow, and at about the rate it should grow. Inflation remains virtually nonexistent, notwithstanding some data the other day that I think was much exaggerated by the markets. Interest rates remain relatively low. Business confidence is clearly up. Investment in plant and equipment and research and development is moving in the right direction which bodes well for our nation's economic future. Consumer confidence is up. All of the fundamentals are good. And they are good, I would like to believe, because the Clinton Administration has taken some important steps and frankly some courageous steps to deal with the issues as tough and complex as the federal deficit and how we manage the growth of our economy effectively. The fact is we've got a strategy. We've got a plan. And it is working. One of the ways that we can ensure the kind of continued sustained growth that we seek is through the way we deal with our mission, both as members of the Administration and members of our National Advisory Council. We know that the remaining challenges are formidable. To continue our success, we must become increasingly competitive, both at home and throughout the world. There is no doubt that the national information infrastructure will spur economic growth and will create jobs here at home. The telecommunications and information industries account for almost $1 out of every $10 spent in the United States today. Telecommunications and information businesses support more than 4.6 million jobs in America. Entrepreneurs are using advanced information technologies to create and sell new products and services. Today, nearly one in three American households has a personal computer. More than 16 million Americans own cellular telephones. And I don't need to remind you that just a few years ago, the CEO of one of our major telecommunications companies predicted that there might be a million cellular telephones in America by the year 2000. And here we are in 1994. And there are already 16 million. The market potential of these new communications and information products is tremendous both here at home and overseas. And as industrializing economies also begin to enter the information age, the potential for exports and job creation is truly astounding. Consider just one product that we all take for granted. And that is the telephone. We estimate, for example, that China will spend about $6.7 billion just in the next two years to upgrade that country's information infrastructure and move China into the information age. We intend to do everything we can to get our share of the business. Not surprisingly when I was in China last week, leading presidential business development mission, telecommunications was one of the primary focal points of that mission. The NII is essential to our economic competitiveness and an improved standard of living for the American people to be sure. But it can also have a profound impact as we move to a global information infrastructure on the way people live and the standards of living all over the world. Access to information will employ and educate and will clearly empower. The information infrastructure can bring benefits to the traditionally underserved and help create more and better paying jobs. But there are obstacles that must be overcome if the NII is to fulfill its promise. There is the danger that competitive pressures could lead infrastructure builders to bypass rural and low-income communities thereby widening the gap between America's rich and poor. But we must not ever let that happen, thus, our focus on universal service as a goal. The emergence of new technologies and networks has changed how people in businesses exchange information and entertainment products and services and how copyrighted works are created, reproduced, distributed, displayed, and sold. And who could have anticipated some of these issues. What is publication, for example? Issues that we wouldn't have thought that we would have to grapple with just a few short years ago, but they are real tough issues and issues we have been grappling with. I think we demonstrate our ability to deal with them through the publication of a white paper, for lack of a better phrase, by our intergovernmental task force really put together by our Patents and Trademarks Office. It was a very thoughtful document. I think it has been universally well received, not that there is not some continuing debate on some of the issues that it raised and how it dealt with the issues. But we are dealing with these tough issues. We have shown a willingness to take them on and try to resolve them. And they are issues, once again, that we did not even have an opportunity to think about or to contemplate just a few short years ago. It is clear that if people are to have confidence in the national information infrastructure, we must guarantee privacy and we must guarantee protection of intellectual property. It is also crucial that standards do not become barriers to using new technology. Open and interoperable standards are needed to promote national and international networks, encourage innovative applications, and reduce consumer concerns and confusion. The changing nature of technology thus requires government action that is forward looking, but that is not ideological or rigid. It requires a regulatory and economic framework in which innovation and creativity can be rewarded. Until the Vice President and I released the agenda for action last September, the government's role in the NII was uncertain. The Clinton Administration report was the first comprehensive statement defining the government's position and principles in promoting the emerging NII. It is based on a simple premise. And that premise is that there must be a public/private partnership. We've got to work together and really redefine some of the relationships that have been previously existed in America. The NII will be and is being built. And it should be built by the private sector. That is not government's role. But there is an essential role for the public sector in this process. By complimenting and enhancing the efforts of the private sector, we can surely assure the growth of an information infrastructure available to all Americans at a reasonable cost. Building on this partnership, the Clinton Administration has focused efforts on three main areas: reforming domestic regulation to encourage investment and competition; advancing access to information technologies and exploring its applications; moving toward a global information infrastructure. And that has been demonstrated clearly at this year's G-7 conference in Naples when President Clinton successfully called for the G-7 nations to meet within the next year at a special ministerial conference on information technologies. That conference along with a series of multilateral and bilateral discussions will clearly advance this dialogue even further. The agenda for action report with its declaration of principles, goals, and action was the first step. The report we are releasing today is the next step. It shows how far we have come, but it shows how far we still have to go. We have I believe established a framework for the government and private sector to interact and plan their activities. Obviously, one way is through the Advisory Council. And another way is through the Intergovernmental Information Infrastructure Task Force which I have privilege to chair. During the past year, the Clinton Administration has embarked on an extraordinary effort to collect information directly from the public. from interest groups and from state and local governments. The result has been a heightened awareness of what the telecommunication super highway is all about. It has been an ongoing dialogue with the private sector and improved communications and coordination within the federal government. The stage, we believe, is now set for the Administration to move aggressively and hopefully efficiently and effectively to take concrete actions that move the NII forward to benefit our economy and enhance our quality of life. The tasks ahead as we see them, include the enactment and implementation of historic communications reform legislation, including working with NII stakeholders, working with the Congress and the FCC to define and implement what universal service means, what's it all about, how do we define it. I know many of you on the committee, including Bert and Carol and others have been actively involved with this issue, trying to figure out what it means when we use these terms: what are our real goals and how we are going to get there. Facilitating industry-driven standards and how those standards have developed to achieve interoperability and openness of the NII. Finalizing privacy principles and developing the necessary regulations and legislation to protect the privacy of individuals and amending copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret laws to protect intellectual property that travels over the NII. Developing an aggressive agenda to facilitate industry-driven advancement of critical NII applications and issuing the Administration's global information infrastructure report agenda for cooperation and working with GII stakeholders on its implementation. There is no question that an advanced NII will provide economic opportunities and advantages at home and abroad that will mean more and better paying jobs for workers, not only here but around the world. But the benefits of the NII are not purely economic. By linking the complimentary activities of the public and private sectors, we also can accomplish technological and social objectives that pay dividends for our entire nation. The NII is helping to prepare our children for the knowledge-based economy of the twentieth first century. It is the bridge between what our children learn in the classroom and the outside world. When I was in school, we looked at pictures of far away places. Today, students are taking virtual field trips that allow them to visit the Louvre or to explore the ocean's floor. Computers and network access in the schools help prepare students for today's job market which demands a labor force that is well informed and computer literate. Yesterday, a number of you along with me had what I thought was a unique opportunity, a really exhilarating opportunity to go to a public school in Harlem, the Ralph Bunch school. We went to the school's computer laboratory where students between the ages of eight and 11 demonstrated a variety of applications that they use in their school work. And Dave Baram was a part of that visit yesterday. And I know that what we say there, he can be given a lot of credit for because when he was at Apple, Apple took responsibility for equipping that school and making it possible the kind of excitement, the kind of enthusiasm, the kind of commitment to learning and education that we saw demonstrated. And it was not just the students. It was the administrators. And it was the teachers that had a whole new view of the world because of access to information through telecommunications. And the excitement that you saw in their faces and to hear the principal talking about how he was in the school drilling holes for the wiring and how he was taking a wire and running it out of the window through a bathroom into another classroom so that in fact kids could have access to this information and knowledge. And it was something that clearly changed the outlook of everyone in that environment and demonstrated to us the potential, you know, what is this all mean? It is not all a kind of bottom line economic result. It is how we change the lives of people, how we deliver educational services to underserved areas, how we close the educational gap in America. And I will tell you, it was a very, very exciting and exhilarating thing to see and to feel. It was particularly interesting for me because I was forced to look at some video tape of me four or five years ago. One of the young ladies who I guess at that time at Ralph Bunch school came to interview me when I was the Chairman of the Democratic Party. And she wants to be a journalist. And the level of excitement and enthusiasm I admit I commented yesterday that watching that tape and seeing how many more gray hairs I have today than I had then was a little distressing. But seeing what it has done for her and the way she is able to influence her peers and the excitement that they must feel just by hearing her describe her experiences, it was really wonderful. And that kind of thing can happen all over America. And in many respects is happening all over America. We need to look at it. We need to document it. We need to learn from it. We need to replicate it. We need to duplicate it. We need to understand the depth and scope of the potential that we have before us. And the same can be said of health care applications. On all of my recent international travels in trying to focus on the global information infrastructure, we have done some things from Russia and from Chile and from China most recently which show the global implications, how we interconnect not only in the United States, but how we interconnect around the world and what it can do, not only to people's standards of living, but to our relationships. How do we relate to people around the world? How do we become culturally sensitive? That can help us in furthering our relationships in all kinds of ways, in political ways, in ways that affect our security interests, in ways that affect how we develop our foreign policy, in ways that affect how we relate to each other in a global sense. The NII will reduce health care cost while increasing the quality of care, especially in underserved areas. And experts have concluded that nationwide, use of information technologies could reduce health care costs by $36 billion every year. Pilot programs in telemedicine are already bringing specialist services to isolated and rural areas in Georgia and Texas and West Virginia and other parts of our country. The NII is fostering a more open, more responsive, and more participatory democracy at all levels of our government. Access to government information has increased. And many documents are now available to the public on the INTERNET and computer bulletin board systems. In a sequel to his science fiction novel 2001, Arthur C. Clark writes about the beginning of the twentieth first century, predicting boldly that on December 31st in the year 2001, the world will simply abolish long-distance charges, making every telephone call a local call. Now, Bert, I don't know if you like that idea very much. (Laughter) SECRETARY BROWN: This he says will turn the world into one big gossipy family and will build coalitions for peace across national borders. Our own goals for the year 2000 are somewhat more modest than that. And they are to connect every classroom and every library and every hospital and every clinic in the United States to our information highway, to connect every school and library in the world to the INTERNET thus creating a global digital library. The Administration has an ambitious agenda for next year. And I know you share in that ambition and in the agenda. With your and the public's help, I am confident that we will meet the next round of challenges and opportunities that are posed by the national information infrastructure. We have much to be proud of. And I look forward to working with all of you in the weeks and months ahead to build the future of global communications and to make the future brighter for not only all the people in the United States but people all over the planet. Thank you very much. (Applause) MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for those outstanding remarks. It is just very gratifying for us to have a cabinet member and an official so supportive of our work and so active in the very details of what we do. It is real support for us. And to have your team supporting us as well is extremely gratifying. So we really thank you for your support and your guidance as we plough through these very, very important issues. We still have some time. We don't want to -- I know your business schedule, but we don't want to miss this opportunity to relate to you as a Council. So why don't we take a few minutes and open the floor, if you have anything specifically you'd like to add now or questions that come from the floor or comments to our Secretary. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: It is not usually a bashful group. SECRETARY BROWN: I think -- if I might, I think that there is a growing recognition of what we have before us and how important it is and how tough some of these issues are. And we can't any longer look over our shoulder and figure out who is going to do it for us. We've got to do it ourselves. And that causes an awakening. I know how hard you have been working. And I want to express on behalf of the President our appreciation for the amount of time and effort busy people have put into this. And I know it means that you share our view that this means something, that it can make a difference and that the decisions and judgments we make and that the advice we give can have a profound impact on the future. I can't think of any issue that is more important to the future than this issue and that can have more impact on more people than this issue. And I think as we move down the road, we've got to make sure that we are doing everything we can to share with each other. And that is why Del's comments about the meetings that he and Ed and I have had. And I know I have had some individual conversations with Bert and with others demonstrates to me that you care deeply about these issues and care deeply about the responsibilities that you've taken on as members of the Advisory Committee. So we want to do a lot of listening. We want to do a lot of talking. We want to have a lot of dialogue. But then, we've got to make some judgments. And once we make those judgments, we've got to support each other on them because we probably won't all agree on every single thing we do and every policy pronouncement of the Administration or everything that happens on Capitol Hill. We have got to try to mold and shape it as best we can and use the greatest influence we have to make it come out the way we think is the best long-term interest of the country. And that is what we are endeavoring to do. We could have kind of just stood at the sidelines and watched it happen. It would probably have been a lot easier and a lot less time consuming, but that would have been irresponsible to do. The mission is to important to have permitted us to take that course. So we have taken the other course. And that is to engage and to talk about these tough issues and to face up to them and to try to deal with them. And we couldn't be more appreciative of your desire and willingness to walk down this road with us. VOICE: I have a comment. I'd like to say thank you because what you are doing is actually teaching. You are the teacher this time. You are using the fabric of the nation to educate each segment. And by doing things like the Council on Competitiveness, by addressing education, by showing us what can be done instead of just giving it to us on a paper, then you are the teacher. And I commend you for it. SECRETARY BROWN: Thank you. Thank you. MR. LEWIS: Yes, Toni. DR. BEARMAN: I am very pleased to see the leadership role in the global information infrastructure. And I was delighted with the proposal to connect every school and library in the world to INTERNET, as you can imagine. Can you tell us a little more about that? I realize it's early, but how are we going to get the G-7 nations involved in this? What are our plans? What is the agenda there? SECRETARY BROWN: Yes. DR. BEARMAN: And how can we help? SECRETARY BROWN: The honest answer is we haven't figured it all out yet. I am leading our delegation to the ministerial meetings that we are going to have early next year that grow out of President Clinton's push for G-7 dialogue on this issue. We are in the midst of going through a lot of discussions within the Administration now about how we can shape the future of the global information infrastructure. The fact is we are facing some of the same problems we faced with the national information infrastructure as the train or the rocket is already moving. And we have got to make sure that we stay at least caught up with it. We would like to stay a little bit ahead of it. But we would be glad to have your input and your suggestions about how we can have the best chance of having the kind of influence we want to have. I think part of generating global interest is the same way we have generated national interest. And that is talking about applications, talking about what these things mean in the real lives of real people, you know. What is the real impact and potential impact? And that is what we have tried to do through some of these demonstrations that we have done, not unlike telemedicine demonstration connecting a major medical facility in Boston to rural West Virginia. I think doing a lot of that can help. But I think again setting the parameters. And if you think it is tough domestically, it is even tougher internationally because there are all kinds of competing interests. And I think we have decided to take the first towards doing this at the G-7 level. And hopefully, we can spread it beyond G-7. VOICE: Mr. Secretary, I just want to add to that. In our session this morning, we covered a work plan that we had discussed with you a few weeks back. And it was approved by the Council. And one of the things we just mentioned tangentially that we thought there was a natural flow between what we are doing domestically and your interests globally. And we wanted to hold ourselves out, not that we were looking for more to do. We know that we have a lot to do here domestically. But we thought there could be some easy tie ins between what we are discussing and what we are probing that could lead to helping you on the global side. So I think that the Council stands ready to help there. SECRETARY BROWN: Great. MR. LEWIS: John. VOICE: Mr. Secretary, I think I speak for the Mega-Project that is working on intellectual property when I say that we are impressed with the green paper on intellectual property as written by Bruce Lehman and Terry Southwick. And we commend you for their efforts. And we commend their efforts. And we have really appreciated their input to our Mega-Project. SECRETARY BROWN: Thanks, John. And I can't over emphasize. I mean, whenever you issue something in an area that is as controversial as this area, you don't know what kind of reaction you are going to get. And I have been really very heartened by the reaction that we have gotten. I mean, I think we have proven that we are serious about grappling with these tough issues and kind of looking beyond the horizon so to speak, just not about the challenges of the next couple of months but the next couple of decades. And hopefully, I am not sure the exact timing when we finished the input part and finalized that work, but I think we are getting close to it. Larry, are we pretty close to that on the intellectual property side? VOICE: (Inaudible). VOICE: Okay. VOICE: (Inaudible). VOICE: Okay. VOICE: Somebody in the audience (Inaudible). VOICE: Yes. VOICE: (Inaudible). SECRETARY BROWN: I have no clue. I didn't know about your efforts to do it. VOICE: (Inaudible). SECRETARY BROWN: I don't know. Larry or Jonathan or anybody on the staff know anything about that. VOICE: (Inaudible). SECRETARY BROWN: Why don't you come to the microphone. Did you -- or Larry heard it. Go ahead. VOICE: (Inaudible). VOICE: What efforts have the Administration made to improve access to multi media CD Roms in public libraries and museums? VOICE: (Inaudible). VOICE: I'm sure a lot of schools will appreciate your gifts. And maybe one of the wonderful things you could do would be to give those to some of the schools. We'd love to have them. I know teachers would love it. They are -- VOICE: Well, I have school district six and eight in New York City have received donations from it. But I'm not aware of any effort on the part of the Administration to make multi media CD Roms more available in public institutions. And after donating to over 100 institutions across the United States and asking those institutions whether or not they have received any monies or any products from the Administration, I was told no. And I can document that. MR. LEWIS: We should probably -- we are going to run short of time here. We have public comment time before we adjourn. I know the Secretary might not be with us, but I apologize for that. But I think we probably should give our Council in the short time we have left a chance to interact with the Secretary and hold the public comment until toward the end of the day. I would appreciate that. VOICE: (Inaudible). MR. LEWIS: It definitely is. VOICE: (Inaudible). MR. LEWIS: I'll take your question and we will move forward. VOICE: I guess I would like to ask the Secretary why there is no news group on USENET news for this committee and why the committee members are not on USENET news and why this is such a low tech venture considering the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the development of the global computer communications networks, the beginning of the (Inaudible) done with a lot of U.S. taxpayer money? And it just seems that if this process is not making an effort to build on what has been developed and for these to be on and to have the public comment and discussion and debate that that makes possible then it just seems that all the words are really hype and not in fact any demonstration that this is going to be a fruitful process for the public, not just for the private sector. SECRETARY BROWN: Well, I would have to turn the question about what decisions the Council made as far as how it is structured and what it is focusing on to Ed and Del. I would like to make a comment about your earlier remark. I don't think that there has ever been a process that has been more diligent about reaching out to the public, having public hearings, asking for public comment. Every document that we have printed, it has never been printed in final form. It has always been printed and distributed widely for public comment, using telecommunications technology to distribute it. I don't know how we could have been more diligent. Have we done everything that we possibly could have done in every area? Probably, no. VOICE: The USENET news is -- SECRETARY BROWN: And we VOICE: (Inaudible). And yet, there is no news groups that this -- VOICE: That is not true. I had NI Teach. And there is also EDNA. There are listers. I sat up from 11:00 o'clock from 2:00 o'clock in the morning answering questions from those people. And some of the people in this very room I've talked to today are people on those lists. So I don't know USENET. But if you want to plug into NI Teach, I distribute all the documents through that. Okay. VOICE: I'm (Inaudible) about (Inaudible). VOICE: Okay. VOICE: Good. VOICE: This process didn't know anything about it when in fact people have made an effort to make it available and to let people know about it. SECRETARY BROWN: And we are pleased to get the information. VOICE: And that there is just -- there are things distributed. But I'm not saying distributed. I'm saying comment and debate and discussion that is public. That is what in fact would make the whole process be very much more dynamic than what is going on here. MR. LEWIS: Let me follow up on the Secretary's comments. I think if you had been following our meetings and the Secretary is quite right. Not only has he done a lot of inhouse in terms of soliciting public comment, at every meeting we have had of this organization, we have had opportunities for public comment. And every meeting that we have had of our Mega-Project meetings have been open to the public. So we are definitely involved in public participation. And, secondly, I'm sure you have heard us this morning, the Secretary has approved it and we have agreed to develop an outreach component for constituencies across this country. And we will be setting up the procedures to do that. And you talked to me privately about USENET. I told you I would take that under consideration. I said we will move forward with that. We may be a low tech operation, but we are going to move forward and do what we think is in the best interest of the United States. So we heard you. And we appreciate your comments. Can we have any other comments from the group to the Secretary? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: You have established a terrific track record for yourself in international trade and have shown a great deal of interest in the area and had a great deal of success helping American business. A subject was raised earlier today by Bob and it has come up actually in each of our meetings. And I just want to synthesize you to it because it will loom a little larger in the future, namely, this issue of growing trade, international trade and information and information services. And more importantly in using the information infrastructure around the world to just deliver plain old services. And this country has an opportunity to be a real winner in the future in that international trade arena if we don't recreate in the area of information what we unfortunately created over hundreds of years in terms of barriers in international trade and products. And so I guess we would all like to sensitize you to that issue. We don't want to face a situation where someone is stopping bits at the border to make sure that they are the right flavor because we can really win if there is free trade on an international basis. So please continue your efforts and be very sensitive to that. SECRETARY BROWN: Thanks. And that is good advice. And I think the analogy is good, not to do in telecommunications technology what we have done with trade. And we have a lot of good reasons to be very sensitive to that because of some of the things we are going through now in trying to break down barriers. Let's not erect them in the first place. We won't be worrying about breaking them down. So that is advice well taken. MR. LEWIS: Yes, Bob. DR. KAHN: I'd like to raise an economic question for you. I know that the Department of Commerce keeps track of a number of the quantitative aspects of our economy, puts out regular reports and statistics. And while a large part of the motivation for creating a national information infrastructure, is obviously qualitative, hard put any real numbers on -- in economic terms like improving our educational processes and the like. There are going to be parts of it that probably can be quantified. Or at least we ought to make an attempt to do that. And I'm just wondering whether there has been any discussion within the Commerce Department of how we can evaluate the implications of these investments in infrastructure in this country in terms of any quantitative difference it might make in the economy of this country. SECRETARY BROWN: The answer is, yes. Very complex issues, as you know. We have just, for example, moved to something somewhat related a green GDP, you know. How do you make some of these evaluations of the economic impact because of environmental degradation, for example? We are trying to figure out how we can do a better job of not only data collection, but data analysis and data dissemination, what we are looking for, what questions we are asking, what we are trying to assess. We have found that a lot of things that are happening in economic analysis at our Census Bureau are happening just because they have been happening since 1930 or 1940. And their usefulness now needs to be reviewed. And we are trying to review them. So again, that advice is well taken in this arena, too: how do we determine what economic impact our decisions really have? And in some cases, we don't have the tools or at least we are not employing the tools yet to do that kind of analysis. MR. LEWIS: (Inaudible). VOICE: Mr. Secretary, that is a poignant side line to your having a good time yesterday at the Ralph Bunch school (Inaudible). In one room, I was sitting next to a little boy in the other room. I asked him (Inaudible). And he said (Inaudible). And we continued to have a conversation in Spanish while he entered -- (Change Tape #4 to Tape #5.) VOICE: Growing trade, international trade and information and information services. And more importantly in using the information infrastructure around the world to just deliver plain old services. And this country has an opportunity to be a real winner in the future in that international trade arena if we don't recreate in the area of information what we unfortunately created over hundreds of years in terms of barriers in international trade and products. And so I guess we would all like to sensitize you to that issue. We don't want to face a situation where someone is stopping bits at the border to make sure that they are the right flavor because we can really win if there is free trade on an international basis. So please continue your efforts and be very sensitive to that. SECRETARY BROWN: Thanks. And that is good advice. And I think the analogy is good, not to do in telecommunications technology what we have done with trade. And we have a lot of good reasons to be very sensitive to that because of some of the things we are going through now in trying to break down barriers. Let's not erect them in the first place. We won't be worrying about breaking them down. So that is advice well taken. MR. LEWIS: Yes, Bob. DR. KAHN: I'd like to raise an economic question for you. I know that the Department of Commerce keeps track of a number of the quantitative aspects of our economy, puts out regular reports and statistics. And while a large part of the motivation for creating a national information infrastructure, is obviously qualitative, hard put any real numbers on -- in economic terms like improving our educational processes and the like. There are going to be parts of it that probably can be quantified. Or at least we ought to make an attempt to do that. And I'm just wondering whether there has been any discussion within the Commerce Department of how we can evaluate the implications of these investments in infrastructure in this country in terms of any quantitative difference it might make in the economy of this country. SECRETARY BROWN: The answer is, yes. Very complex issues, as you know. We have just, for example, moved to something somewhat related a green GDP, you know. How do you make some of these evaluations of the economic impact because of environmental degradation, for example? We are trying to figure out how we can do a better job of not only data collection, but data analysis and data dissemination, what we are looking for, what questions we are asking, what we are trying to assess. We have found that a lot of things that are happening in economic analysis at our Census Bureau are happening just because they have been happening since 1930 or 1940. And their usefulness now needs to be reviewed. And we are trying to review them. So again, that advice is well taken in this arena, too: how do we determine what economic impact our decisions really have? And in some cases, we don't have the tools or at least we are not employing the tools yet to do that kind of analysis. MR. LEWIS: (Inaudible). VOICE: Mr. Secretary, that is a poignant side line to your having a good time yesterday at the Ralph Bunch school (Inaudible). In one room, I was sitting next to a little boy in the other room. I asked him (Inaudible). And he said (Inaudible). And we continued to have a conversation in Spanish while he entered information into the computer in English. It was a very interesting scenario. And I would also like to ask about your trip to South America. SECRETARY BROWN: The two are clearly related, too. First, that is a pungent reminder of the challenges that we face and how we've got to find ways to face up to them in realistic and pragmatic ways. And I think that having the technology we have might make it easier to build some bridges that we have not been able to build before. In terms of the Latin America trip, it was terrific. It did not get as much attention as the China trip, but it was equally as rewarding. We went to Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I have long felt that we have not paid enough attention to Latin America. It is a part of the world that is changing very rapidly, not only in terms of the democratic process. And those changes have been extraordinary. We are having a summit of the Americas this year, first time in almost 30 years. Our last time, all the leaders that were there were in military uniforms bedecked with medals. This time they will all be in civilian clothes, democratically elected. The same kinds of changes are going on in the economies of those countries. And just as we have said all over the world, we want American business and industry to participate fully in that economic development so we can create economic opportunity here at home. Economic reform is moving along very well in all three of those countries, clearly better in Argentina and Chile than in Brazil. But you can't ignore Brazil when you talk about Latin America because of its population, and even with the problems, a continuing dynamism of its economy. So we were very pleased with the results. There is a lot of follow-up to do. And I think one thing that gives us something to focus on in talking about these issues, particularly when we talk about them in an international context is a tremendous advantage that we have in the United States in this global market place. And we have that advantage because of the diversity of our country which is a subject that we don't talk too much about except when we are whining and complaining and moaning about how hard diversity is to manage instead of talking about diversity being the greatest strength of America. And it is my judgment that because we've got 30 million Americans of Latin descent and 35 or so million of African American descent and many millions of Asian American descent and Native Americans who have a special kind of cultural sensitivity because of their experience and the experience of other minorities in America, we are uniquely positioned to compete in this new global economy. Because when you look at emerging markets around the world, where are they? They are in Latin America. They are in Asia. They are in Africa. Not that Latin -- people of Latin descent ought to be restricted to doing business in Latin America, but you would certainly think that all of us working together with the help and support of Americans of Latin descent that we can really do some good things that help our own people and our own economy. And it is one of the things that we are learning I think from all of this focus on commercial engagement, on commercial diplomacy. And it also I think teaches us that you can't look at every relationship as the same as every other relationship. You have to have some sensitivity to cultures of people. We certainly find that in China. They have been around a long time, 5,000 years, five millennia. And we are still working on year 300 that we haven't gotten to yet. And I think you've got to respect that. You got to understand it. And you got to understand the importance of building relationships and how that can have an impact on our bilateral relations with countries in a whole lot of different areas, not only in commercial areas, but in political and security arenas as well. And so I think we have done a lot of learning in the process of generating business and opportunity and economic growth and giving American companies a competitive edge and American workers therefor a competitive edge. The part of it is just that relationship aspect of it. MR. LEWIS: Thank you. John. VOICE: Mr. Secretary, this is the fifteenth anniversary of C Span. And I believe that C Span has been one of the really great success stories with telecommunications because it has allowed people to understand and engage in the process of government. As we now look at the NII and the potential for interactive online services, do you see any possibility of information like the OMB budget information that could be made available online so that the general public as well as students would be able to understand the process of government from the standpoint of the budget spending area where your Administration has demonstrated some success? SECRETARY BROWN: John, the answer is yes. And probably a lot of federal government would like some help in understanding it, too. (Laughter) SECRETARY BROWN: So we've got some challenges. But I think absolutely, yes. That is just the kind of thinking we ought to be doing: how we communicate more effectively with the public; how we get the American people engaged in the process of government. And I think the experience of all of us is that when people are engaged, they feel a stake in the process. They feel a commitment to it. They feel commitments to its outcomes. And you don't get all this kind of negativism and cynicism. And one way to avoid it, to overcome it is to give people information. Let them know what is up so to speak. And, yes, I think we ought to be finding ways to do that. MR. LEWIS: Why don't we take one last question from our group before we -- is there one other question? VOICE: Yes. I'm going to -- I don't know if the rest of you have already done it. I know I'm going down to look at some of these demonstrations which I -- MR. LEWIS: We are going to talk about that in two seconds. VOICE: Which I am -- if I could. MR. LEWIS: We would like to join you. VOICE: Okay. Great. I will wait. MR. LEWIS: All right. We will conclude. First of all, let's give the Secretary a round of applause. (Applause) MR. LEWIS: Outstanding comments. And your comments on diversity was so well put and so meaning. And I just want to say that we appreciate you being here for such a substantive dialogue with us on this very, very important issue. We mentioned the applications tour. The Council is welcome to join us on this tour. If you don't particularly want to, lunch can start in the trustee's room. And Council staff will help us find where we need to go for lunch. But there will be an applications tour. There may be a chance for Ed and I to have some discussions along with the Secretary with the press. But we will see how that goes. But you are welcome to join us on the tour. We will reconvene at 1:30 back here for the continuation of our meeting. So thank you very much for your participation. (Whereupon, the meeting was recessed for lunch.) AFTER RECESS CRITICAL ISSUES SOCIAL APPLICATIONS OF THE NII MR. LEWIS: Let's see if we can get started. MR. McCRACKEN: I don't see any particular lead-in comments. MR. LEWIS: Okay. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Let's see if we can get started in just a minute here. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Okay. In this afternoon's session, we have the normal issue after a great lunch of staying awake. So that's why we scheduled some really hot topics, topics where I know there is not total agreement in the room here. So that should keep us awake. But notice in the Mega-Project meetings and in the Council meetings that we have been really pretty nice with each other. But I know that underneath that all somewhere are some really different points of views. I think it is really time to bring those points of views out and get them on the table so we can really understand them. So we would like to do that this afternoon in the next little while. And we would like to do that really in several of the next Council meetings. Today, we would like to start with three of what we thought were the hot issues. If as you think about this meeting on the way home or over the next month, you think there are hot issues that we don't have summarized in any of these subject areas, please let us know and we will put them on the agenda as well. The idea is to bring those controversial items up to the table so that we can really talk about them. The first one we would like to spend some time on this afternoon is the issue of social applications of the NII. Development of many of the applications for the NII will be driven by commercial values and commercial considerations. While commercial applications may also have social useful benefits, for example, educational value, there may be a subset of social applications that are not commercially viable. If so, these applications may require a subsidy from some source. So the issues, the questions are what are the social applications that should require or should deserve a subsidy? What should be the form of such a subsidy? What can the NII Advisory Council do to ensure that the NII meets societal goals, either through commercial applications or if necessary some form of government sponsored applications or subsidy? I know this issue has been discussed in several of the Mega-Project sessions, but we felt it would be useful to have an open discussion of this in the Council at large. So as co-chairs, what we would like to do is to kind of turn this issue over to you. We will be here to facilitate and take notes with our staff here. So I think it will impact the work of the Council. So who wants to be first to talk about these topics? (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Grab a mike there. VOICE: I guess I have a little concern with the -- not that I don't understand the commercial aspects of it. But I have concerns about that the whole approach is commercial rather than social. If we truly believe, as Secretary Brown and I think everybody in the room has said, the implications of what this is going to do to our society that it in fact has the possibility of changing all of our institutions that there are more social ramifications of this that we should -- perhaps we should certainly as an equal partner, the social ramification as well as the commercial ramification of it. If it changes our educational institutions the way we look at education, if it changes our -- the work place, if it -- we can go on down the line of saying how it is going to change our society which then, by social change will derive some political change from all of that. So I think that if we don't give some equal priority to the social aspect of it, as well as the commercial, that we are not carrying out our responsibility. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: (Inaudible). (Pause) VOICE: I'll try to stay awake during my comments. (Laughter) VOICE: As you correctly pointed out, this particular subject has been focused -- has been a focus of several of the Mega Task Forces, particularly including the one that Carol and Bert are heading. And I might add a footnote or two to the comments you made this morning and elaborate on them. The way I like to think about it is to divide the applications into some categories and see what the implications are of each category. And here are the ones that I find useful not in order of priority or size. Number one, are those applications that you would maybe categorize as having no redeeming social value whatsoever? And I won't identify any of those. Although if any of us have watched the Emmy's recently, that is a hint. (Laughter) VOICE: Category number two, that series in immediately are those that have redeeming social value and there is some commercial or quasi- commercial means of paying for them. So it is not quite a free market situation in a traditional way, but it is in another way. And my prime example is the news broadcast every day which are paid for by massive interjections of advertising. And yet, you say that is socially important and people should be able to get the news. And yet, that works just fine. And we could point to this library or the Metropolitan Museum of Art as social applications that are increasingly electronic, decreasingly physical and are being at least partly paid for by the jewelry shop in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the catering and restaurant service of the library and so on and so forth. So that is sort of a category, too. Are they fully or substantially paid for by some kind of quasi-commercial activity? Category number three is are the applications that really are social public service, you know. Call them what you want. And are paid for by taxes or by charitable, volunteer contributions? So this category is the noteworthy thing. And this is the point that Bert brought up this morning. I just wanted to reinforce is that the United States has about 200 year history of dealing with this problem or this issue. It is just that up until about recently most of it has been physical. And now, some of it is physical and some of it is electronic. And increasingly in the future, it will be more and more electronic. So, for example, education, we are talking about electronic delivery of education. But we have had physical delivery of education for several hundred years. And there has been the issue of private schools, public schools, how it is paid for, who pays for what and so on. What are the minimums and so on? And that is the same issue. It is just a different delivery mechanism and a different qualities of education. Museums, libraries, health care information, government information, these are all 200 year old things. And I only use that number because that is about how old the country is. For another country, I would use a bigger number. And the same principles would apply. And this third category is noteworthy because we have for every one of these a lot of money that we are spending, existing organizations in place, school boards, whatever, that figure out how much to spend on what. What are the minimums are and so on and so forth? And existing funding mechanisms. You asked for some other provocative views. I don't know if those are provocative, but mine is we should at least start by using exactly those same mechanisms, funding sources, decision making bodies for the electronic versions of something versus the non-electronic versions of something and see how far that takes us. And it may take us a lot further than we think. And if a school board decides to spend less money on something and more money on something else, if the something else is INTERNET access or terminals or computers or telecommunications, well that is a decision. And if the school board simply wants more money, well, then that is a different kind of (Inaudible). The fourth category are those sort of social applications or public service applications that for the national information infrastructure for which there is not any body in place deciding who gets what or how much. There is not any current funding mechanism. And they are not any current funds in the traditional way. And I can't think of anything in that category. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't think of anything in that category. This is a personal limitation statement. But except for a few trivial examples, almost everything seems to be covered by an existing organizational form, be it state, local, federal, an existing funding stream, be it volunteer, charity, taxes or whatever. And that -- if that is the case, then that is actually potentially good news because it says how we can approach things in a way that is evolutionary rather than necessarily discontinuance. Your only problem that I'm worried about slightly in this approach is whether there is what I will call an aggregation of volume, namely, one community can pay for two-thirds of something. Another can pay for two-thirds. Another can pay for two-thirds. So nothing quite happens because everyone can pay for part of it, even a substantial part. But I just decided that actually that was not a big problem because there are organizations in place today to aggregate volume. They are know as companies. And so, for example, Bert, probably none of your customers could pay for your company by themselves or would. But you aggregate their volume to pay for your company. And so I think that the public sector organizations that might have only part of the money they need will get help from the private sector in aggregating their volume to provide services if it can all just balance out right, just as happens today. So anyway, that is my slant on this, if that is helpful. VOICE: Greg, I have a suggestion on your last point there. Digital health services to the uninsured. VOICE: Greater health through bits. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: The issue of social applications is an interesting one. I think when I begin discussions often with people about problems that disabled people have with respect to technology or the promise of technology, people think about applications that are for people with disabilities. When I think the reality is most disabled people simply want to use the same applications everybody else does and often find barriers there inadvertent design of interfaces most usually. In order for the goal of access to applications for disabled people to be met, there is a role for government in promoting and assisting work that needs to be done to map out hopefully in a way that is collaborative and involves industry, as well as experts on accessibility, just how you go about making, say, multi media accessible for people with disabilities from an engineering and design point of view. Something, for example, in the realm of how you actually include graphics display for people who can't see the graphics, thinks like that. Our problem right now in advocating for accessibility is that the design specs or the guidelines and the benchmarks for creating accessibility are not an exact science yet. And inasmuch as the technology is a moving target, it is also true that how you design it for all people is also a moving target. So I would like to suggest that government has a role to play in bringing together many of the major players to solve this problem together. And that will lead to the goal of more accessibility to social applications, as well as commercial applications. (Pause) VOICE: I would like to add one other thing. I want to support LaDonna Harris' comments early on. I don't know if they were really sinking in. I heard her say that there were some questions about the way this is framed. And I'd like to come back to that because I read it over again. And when you look at it, it is framed from the perspective that we are proceeding to develop a commercially viable NII. And what are we going to do about oops social applications? And I agree with her. And I think that if we start out looking at this from a more balanced perspective that the NII is unfolding and that there are social applications to be considered. There are commercial questions to be considered. It is all in the evolution of this information infrastructure and to not to have it proceeding one way with consequences coming back socially. So I think that is what she was saying. And I would like to if it is -- MS. HARRIS: Yes. It is. And along those lines because we will be cleaning up. We may have to be cleaning up something that we created if we don't give more social responsibility to the application. I know that -- well, from my constituency group, one of the things that it says is that -- the group says, we don't to be colonialized by information. There was one discussion about information is going one way. And if it is one way, then the information about native people are not necessarily all correct or very good. The quality is not very good. So we want to have community -- empower communities to build their own information about themselves so that there will be a two-way resource of that. And I think we will find this in our international experience, too, that many of the particularly third world nations will consider the information colonial, a form of colonialism. So if we think about that as what we are doing and that it can be as oppressive as other forms of discrimination so that we think about some sort of balance to that is really what I have. VOICE: I wonder if we need to meet or talk to the people at NIS who have done a really good job. I keep talking about this. I know I'm not the only person who read those books. But if you look through the application books that were done by the NIS group that works on that, a lot of what we are talking about is there. But I think there is a general misconception in the public that if a student is using INTERNET that that is being -- that they are being taught. And there are many, many applications. There is Satellite. There is CD Rom. There are many ways in which you can affect learning. And I keep hearing people say, well, when they are plugged in, the teacher won't have anything to do. I want to know that when teachers use these technologies what happens is the children learn more. There is more information. So there are many more things to do. So I guess that is the one concern that I have. The people think, okay. They are going to be in the INTERNET. And that is all. That is not all. VOICE: Ed, I have one comment to add as a corollary to Bonnie's. One of the things that we don't often think about as a social application but which I think is a really important function of the NII is to take a look at the community networking potential of the NII. For most state and local governments, we are strapped for funds. It is often very difficult to think of the BBS types of functions or the community networking, the programming types of access channels as our primary service mode. But oftentimes, the means by which we allow people and groups in communities to begin networking together, communicating and sharing information also allows them to take advantage in a far more effective way of government services which will provide a lot more entry for many of these groups to be able to take advantage of the NII. So I am not sure whether or not it is appropriate to talk about community networking kinds of functions in terms of a subsidy or government sponsored whatever, but that is a very important function that I think is part of the social applications list. (Pause) VOICE: I'd like to go back to Craig's division. I like that much better than the way we have framed the social applications. Not only is it really rather negatively worded, but it implies that there social applications and commercial applications and that the commercial ones are being supported by the private sector and the social ones have to be subsidized. It is much more complicated than that as we all know. I think we need to determine what is in the public interest. And obviously, part of what is in the public interest is a strong and viable market, a strong economy. Commercial applications are very much part of that. The social interest certainly is a well educated public and work force. But it doesn't mean that that has to be all subsidized, even in a public school environment. So I think we need to look at what the interests are, what the various applications are, and how those should be supported. And in many cases, it is a partnership. Some of the things that Bert and I have been talking about are partnerships between industries and libraries and schools to see how we can bring different groups together to really focus on the changes that we wish to make. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Bert. VOICE: If I could just add, too, to what both Craig and Toni said. There is just two points I want to emphasize. I totally agree with the point that we have to be very careful about the split of this. We have to define what kinds of things and maybe they are hard to define because infrastructures exist. And there is an education infrastructure that exists, good, bad or indifferent. But we have to define what ought to be available to the public, what kinds of applications are important. And then, not leap to the conclusion that commercial business enterprises are at odds with the end result. If you take a look at the work force 2000 study, it is pretty dismal. And it assumes that a business is not interested in a work force coming out of the school system, that we are going to need to for our very survival ways that you can get monies to things through partnerships and other that I think are different than what might be implied by the traditional word "subsidy". So just in terms of -- this is future. But in terms of the way we bracket it. The second thing that was touched upon by Craig but it was talked in our session yesterday at some length -- and I think it is really a critical point. And that is it may have been (Inaudible) to use the words, but if there are subsidies or if there are decisions on how to apply money towards social applications, you ought to put that decision making process as far down the (Inaudible) as possible. A community in New Mexico may have a far different set of priorities and a way of applying funds or the NII social application end result than the public library in New York City. And I think again we need to be very careful about presuming that the federal government which so often believes that they can think about all these diverse things without -- not a lot of success, that we get it down at the community level. Now, there may be discrepancies in the funding levels. It may be a very rich community has -- I mean, in other words, you may need to have some balances or some stimulus. But I don't think we should second guess or at least we should leave the hooks in the process when we talk about these kinds of things of ensuring that we've got either geographic or demographic communities that are well involved, but not making the full decision of making the process because there is going to be radical differences. Anyway, that is a summary of our discussion yesterday. (Pause) VOICE: I'd like to add a new phrase to our -- to all our initials and alphabets that we use. I'm a big fan of the LII, the local information infrastructure. Since there is now a GII, I feel it is only fair to counter with an LII. VOICE: Great. VOICE: And what I've heard from Carol and Bert and others I think speaks to that because if there is one thing the Los Angeles earthquake taught me besides that you should nail everything down is that the first and last mile is the critical one. You can have a beautiful 50 mile connection, but if that first mile and last mile is not in place, then in some ways you don't have communication. And I think the analogy works in this instance that if communities are not involved and prepared to communicate with one another, share cultures, experiences, economic, business, social, and so forth, then how can they effectively participate in a national infrastructure or in a global one. And so I agree with everything that has been said about not separating out social applications as if it is the ghetto of applications. And moreover, I support and would urge us to look at how we can really make the LII the first and the last mile of the NII. MR. McCRACKEN: I'd like to add one other thought to this. John Sculley and I in our interactive conference, we had a few days back, I think we hit on something I would like to share with you. And that is we got some questions from state and local government people about how can we get involved? What can we do? And we both came to the conclusion that one of the roles that this Council can play either through the education and/or the outreach is to give communities and communities of interest empowerment. In other words, we can tell them what the lay of the land is, what the university is, how things being (Inaudible). We can share information, but also say, don't just sit three and wait for things to happen, that you have a role here to initiate some activity to partner, to align, to associate yourself with what is happening with commercial partners, the not- for-profit partners. You have a way to get into this action. And somehow they say, oh, I didn't know that. And I think this is a real obligation, responsibility we have. John, you want to add any? VOICE: Well, I -- this may jump into the next subject a little bit, Ed. But I think that this is not going to happen in a year or two. And somehow, we have to sort of set expectations for ourselves as well as the country at some point. It is going to probably take 20 years. It could even take longer, which isn't all bad because none of us are smart enough to figure out which technologies are right. And we can go racing off and try something and discover that that didn't work, and go racing off in another direction. So I would be very biased towards picking sort of both shifting the whole debate away from media attention on mergers and acquisitions which is the whole discussion on NII in the press is about who has what relationship with whom. It's like a soap opera. (Laughter) VOICE: And the real story on the NII should be more about what Del was just talking about, how do you empower people at the local level. I think Susan has come up with a great way of phrasing it, the LII. But I think this is about it is going to start first at the local level. And it is going to start first on something which people can appreciate the outcomes which is education probably. And education can go from pre-school K-12, school to work transition, lifelong learning, community colleges. It really covers someone's entire life span. So I would like to encourage us to do what we can to begin to shift this debate away from merges and acquisitions and technology and more towards outcomes that can happen at the local level on things like education where I think there is -- maybe some disagreements in terms of how it ought to be done, but there isn't much disagreement that it ought to be done. And I think that for the first five years or so, that is where the success stories are going to come up. And then, if that works there, then someone is going to say, gee, what worked there could work over in health care. Or what worked in health care could work somewhere else. And that I think is a more realistic way to look at the whole thing. So I would agree with really with the general discussion that has gone here. But this sort of overlaps a little bit, Ed, into the next topic. (Pause) VOICE: I would like to raise a kind of structural issue in this discussion because I think the way that we get to provide social services will depend as much upon the structures we have to deal with as on any set of goals and intents that we have to work with. And I am particularly struck by the fact that many of the applications that we want to build involve these. There are so many different pieces and parts that it is very difficult for an end user to understand what has happened when something goes wrong. I am thinking that there are a lot of functions in society that don't have turnkey service providers end to end. We really haven't given much thought to building an NII where there are turnkey service providers in almost every one of the different areas. The many applications can in fact be built by a single organization. And many others will require the cooperation of multiple organizations. Some will be brand new applications. And some will be adaptations of existing ones. And some will be easier to do. And some will be harder. But the hardest ones almost always are the ones that involve multiple organizations working together. The national academy recently put out a report on the NII where they articulated the open data architecture model. I happen to be very fond of that model. But I simply want to point out that it is only one model and not necessarily the one that may have the most commercial attractiveness. And the kind of development of infrastructure that involves to turnkey capabilities by individual companies going from one end of the spectrum all the way to the end application is yet another model where we may end up with a few major providers of infrastructure services that then have to integrate. And that could have significant ramifications for what kind of social services that get provided because one turnkey provider could provide them. You don't have to get into this whole realm of how do you get multiple parties to cooperate on putting together the resources to provide it. I'm not trying to take a position one way or another on how to do that. But it seems to me that that topic is worth an investigation almost perhaps as a separate topic in its own right, namely whether the open architecture models that we have been pursuing are really the most effective way to deal with the commercialization of this infrastructure and whether they -- what are the ramifications in terms of providing social services. It has not been a topic that has been discussed. I tend to come out in favor of the open models. But it may be that there are strong commercial forces that would dictate toward the more integrated corporate approach. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Yes. VOICE: I was wondering, Ed, if this group should take a position on the need for metrics. We seem to be very input oriented. And yet, when John says we can look at what is working and what is not working, that implies that there has to be some metrics. I'm not sure that this group can set metrics for societal programs or programs that influence societal applications. But it seems to me it may be worthwhile to take a position on the need for metrics. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Give us some examples or an example. VOICE: For example -- and this is just off the top of my head. Yesterday, we talked about some of the fundamental things that businessmen are looking for as an output from the schools. And these things are centered around people who have basic mathematical, writing, and reading skills. It seems to me that those are things that can be measured. And so as we apply some of this technology to the schools, perhaps at least in one sense setting some metrics for how valuable the technology has been in changing the balance in those areas might be useful. MR. McCRACKEN: (Inaudible). VOICE: I'd like to follow up on George's comment and remind us about a discussion we had at our first meeting, the one with the small gold chairs. At that meeting, we said that the federal government was aspiring to accelerate the enrichment of the national information infrastructure. And this group is probably in the best possible position to establish some -- call them milestones, benchmarks, metrics, whatever, just a few of national help four or five years out so that we and they could look and say has the acceleration happened? I mean, if we didn't get there, we didn't. If we did, we did. And these wouldn't be elevated to a sort of national goal status because you can have a body temperature of 98.6 and still not be healthy in a broad sense, but just a few indicators. And somehow that has gotten dropped or delayed or something. But maybe just one or two in education, electronics, commerce, whatever. That is a step beyond identifying metrics because it is actually aspiring some values for those metrics. But I would hope that in the next year and a half, we could at least re-look at that and see if we can say anything on the subject. (Pause) VOICE: I think that is really interesting. In fact, we might want to have Mega-Project I take a look at that on their agenda. VOICE: We have talked this one out for today. I think Craig's four categories are really valuable. (Change Tape #5 to Tape #6.) VOICE: Providers in almost every one of the different areas. The many applications can in fact be built by a single organization. And many others will require the cooperation of multiple organizations. Some will be brand new applications. And some will be adaptations of existing ones. And some will be easier to do. And some will be harder. But the hardest ones almost always are the ones that involve multiple organizations working together. The national academy recently put out a report on the NII where they articulated the open data architecture model. I happen to be very fond of that model. But I simply want to point out that it is only one model and not necessarily the one that may have the most commercial attractiveness. And the kind of development of infrastructure that involves to turnkey capabilities by individual companies going from one end of the spectrum all the way to the end application is yet another model where we may end up with a few major providers of infrastructure services that then have to integrate. And that could have significant ramifications for what kind of social services that get provided because one turnkey provider could provide them. You don't have to get into this whole realm of how do you get multiple parties to cooperate on putting together the resources to provide it. I'm not trying to take a position one way or another on how to do that. But it seems to me that that topic is worth an investigation almost perhaps as a separate topic in its own right, namely whether the open architecture models that we have been pursuing are really the most effective way to deal with the commercialization of this infrastructure and whether they -- what are the ramifications in terms of providing social services. It has not been a topic that has been discussed. I tend to come out in favor of the open models. But it may be that there are strong commercial forces that would dictate toward the more integrated corporate approach. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Yes. VOICE: I was wondering, Ed, if this group should take a position on the need for metrics. We seem to be very input oriented. And yet, when John says we can look at what is working and what is not working, that implies that there has to be some metrics. I'm not sure that this group can set metrics for societal programs or programs that influence societal applications. But it seems to me it may be worthwhile to take a position on the need for metrics. (Pause) MR. McCRACKEN: Give us some examples or an example. VOICE: For example -- and this is just off the top of my head. Yesterday, we talked about some of the fundamental things that businessmen are looking for as an output from the schools. And these things are centered around people who have basic mathematical, writing, and reading skills. It seems to me that those are things that can be measured. And so as we apply some of this technology to the schools, perhaps at least in one sense setting some metrics for how valuable the technology has been in changing the balance in those areas might be useful. MR. McCRACKEN: (Inaudible). VOICE: I'd like to follow up on George's comment and remind us about a discussion we had at our first meeting, the one with the small gold chairs. At that meeting, we said that the federal government was aspiring to accelerate the enrichment of the national information infrastructure. And this group is probably in the best possible position to establish some -- call them milestones, benchmarks, metrics, whatever, just a few of national help four or five years out so that we and they could look and say has the acceleration happened? I mean, if we didn't get there, we didn't. If we did, we did. And these wouldn't be elevated to a sort of national goal status because you can have a body temperature of 98.6 and still not be healthy in a broad sense, but just a few indicators. And somehow that has gotten dropped or delayed or something. But maybe just one or two in education, electronics, commerce, whatever. That is a step beyond identifying metrics because it is actually aspiring some values for those metrics. But I would hope that in the next year and a half, we could at least re-look at that and see if we can say anything on the subject. (Pause) VOICE: I think that is really interesting. In fact, we might want to have Mega-Project I take a look at that on their agenda. VOICE: We have talked this one out for today. I think Craig's four categories are really valuable. And I think it would be really useful to have all of us think about the different applications for the NII and how they might fit into these four categories, a homework assignment for the next meeting so that we can develop our own ideas about each of the applications and how they might fit, whether they can be funded commercially and whether they can't be, etcetera. Any other comments? (No response.) VOICE: Go ahead. CRITICAL ISSUES GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN DEVELOPING THE NII VOICE: Let's flip right -- we have had some discussion about this already. Let's flip right into the second issue, government's role. And I know some of you have some feelings about this. What should be the government's role in NII? Should the government play any role in designing and instructing the NII or developing applications and services for it? Should the government provide services which can be offered by private parties? Should the government ensure the government ensure the government information is readily available at a reasonable cost? What is the appropriate role for government procurement in shaping the NII? Should the government require open architecture? And if so, what does that mean? Should the government create demand for services or transmission capability (Inaudible) social or beneficial, where there is insufficient demand, etcetera? Who defines and articulates the country's vision for the NII, federal, state or local officials or some combination? And how does that contrast with the role of private industry? We have had some discussion of this already. Let's try to address this one directly if you've got some strong views on it. Joan. VOICE: How could I resist being one? This is probably the ultimate issue where bridging should take place because you don't have to know a bit from a baud to have an opinion on what government ought to be doing. As many of you know, I'm a state regulator. And our charge is to watch out for customers of monopolies. And I think that government's role in the future should still have the underlying principles that we followed over the last 60, 70 years that there has been regulation of monopoly providers. That is that there is equity, fairness, and economic efficiency, as Mr. Vale will remember if you were still alive. And what is the result is to produce a high quality, ubiquous, reasonably priced communication system. But the environment has changed. And the monopolies are no longer what they were, especially since the Carter phone. And now with the convergence of computer technology with communication technology and the large customers ability to bypass the local incumbent telephone companies. We are looking at a whole another world. In fact, added to that world are increasing functions and capacities of other media other than wire line communications. So I ask myself, what should be government's role should, especially mine as a state regulator? And if you will pardon the vernacular, I believe the role is to butt out. Why? Because the regime is different. The market place should, although it won't do it in such a perfect way, take over on economic efficiency. There are five things I think government should do in order to at least not get in the way of producing a high quality ubiquous information system available at reasonable prices to almost everybody. And the first is to manage the transition away from the old rate base regulation form which neither encourages efficiency nor rewards innovation in a declining cost industry. And as we do that, we need to work together both at the state level and the federal level to preserve 1934's dual regime of regulating the particular utility. And find ourselves, at least at the state level, left out in the current legislation being considered which I consider too flawed to contribute anything to the current debate. The second role that we should be playing as government is to assure what some of you have talked about. That is interoperability, that the standards cross borders, state lines so that we don't have the equivalent of driving down a highway that is 12 feet wide per lane. And then one state or one nation in 15 in the next. That would not be economically efficient. And then, at the local level to open the monopoly bottleneck so any provider can buy a piece of it and sell it and not have to buy a bundled network parts of which that vendor may not need. And that goes for the trunk side for those of you who are familiar with this kind of jargon, as well as the line side, the last mile that Susan mentioned. Maybe it is a national issue, but some of us are ready to go with it now so that we can facilitate competitors in the market place. Third, government still has a role to play in antitrust. As various players enter this market place, some will have advantages that others don't have. And again, it is I think a matter of justice to make sure that the dynamics of the market place overcome where we get duopolies or monopolies. Fourth, and it is already happening. There will be fraud. It won't be a perfect market place. And there will be a need for government both at the local and the federal level to look out for consumer interests. And finally, government has to be a part of the debate on who subsidizes services where there are populations who cannot afford them but must have them, where there are the disabled, where there are areas which are uneconomic to serve, such as the rural parts of our country, and who will designate the carrier of last resort with the obligation to serve? That is a debate for all of us. And I can't resist going on to what should government do in terms of being a consumer and as a taxpayer instead of a regulator. I would like to say that I surely do hope government will be as canny as any good customer should be and will look at cost and balance them with benefits and only choose what is cost efficient for the services of that part of government thinks it needs to provide. (Pause) VOICE: Why don't we just take her memo, Ed, and move to the next one? VOICE: I have one, too. Okay. VOICE: Could I comment? I'll stipulate agreement to everything you said. (Laughter) VOICE: I would just like to add one at the top though. And that is I think government has a role in setting the vision. And I think that is part of our job here to set the vision. And I think the principles we are working on go in that direction and because once we -- if we set a vision, if we get some agreement on it, then I think that can be used in many -- by many different parties in many different ways in order to implement it. And I hope that the Administration and future Administrations would rally around the vision or modify it as appropriate, whatever. VOICE: I would like to follow up on his point to say that in education, if we don't have a government vision, since we have so many different school boards in so many different states, there is no clear vision. And so we keep reinventing this thing we call education. And you talk to us who are teachers and you say we are not teaching, but we are teaching what you tell us to teach. But many of you are telling us different things to teach. So there is no vision. So the first thing in education that we are trying to do now, we need to establish a vision, go along to the governor's councils and let the governors support us with this. Linda Roberts has already come out. You may not agree with her goals 2000, but those are some measurable types of goals. And then, if you don't trust the government, we have groups of teachers organizations like the NCGE. Those are the geography people. The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. I don't think that we in this group can tell what it is that we need. But these groups have already defined goals. And these goals are measurable. We already have the math ones. The science ones are being worked on. The geography ones, there is language. Those are things that can be measured. These are things that you can use the technology. There is a program that my students use. I thought it was stupid. But it is a grammar program. And you know what they liked about it. They could show me that they knew it and that they didn't have to do that part anymore. And then, they could really write. So I think that when we set the goal and then we get IDA scaffolding and we get people to buy in, then instead of having 632 different types of education which is nothing, we at least have the vision for the nation of some measurable types of goals that would allow us to do some things like portfolios and assessments and sharing and then knowing what to train for. (Pause) VOICE: Two points. VOICE: Stanley, could I have you -- MR. HUBBARD: Well, I don't want to be too negative. But I don't think the government has proven over the years to be very good at establishing vision or setting goals. If we are going to set goals that have a ceiling on it to say this is the goal or this is vision, you can't go any further, we are going to really miss a big opportunity. I really believe out here some place, maybe even in this room is somebody whose vision may go a lot further than any of us in the committee or anybody in government might ever think of. So you have to be very careful of the government establishing goals or visions, not to put ceilings or limits on those visions which will enable regulated companies to succeed and keep others of the new visions out. VOICE: Stanley, I was struck by the fact that there was an article about my class in Newsweek Magazine. And the next week, the Minister of Japan was in my room for six hours. He wanted to see what it was my kids were doing and how they did it. And like the class yesterday, I stood in the corner. And the children showed laser disc technology. And they showed CD Rom. He was fascinated. And then, he handed to me a plan. And we compete with Japan. So I guess my concern is do we keep just dreaming and not ever start any action? Or do we do some action? MR. HUBBARD: Oh, there is action going on right today. There is an awful lot of continuing development of the information infrastructure locally and nationally. It is happening daily. Someone said, we read about it in the Wall Street Journal who is merging, who is doing what. And we have in this country a wonderful information infrastructure. And I think what we are talking about is taking the bounds and offering a growing and expand to become greater than it is today. VOICE: Stanley, education is on a dirt road. We don't have telephones yet. When were they invented? People are still dreaming about how we are going to get those in the classroom. I agree with you most of the time. But I don't think you've ever been in a room with no phone. You can't go -- you don't understand. And that is what maybe some of you need to do. You need to spend one day in a room, in a classroom, one whole day, not come in in your Gucci shoes and your gray suit and stay for an hour and look around. Come in and spend a whole day and see what it is like. MR. HUBBARD: Bonnie, I couldn't be in a room without a phone. I always have one. VOICE: Carol. MS. FUKUNAGA: I have two points. I think the way that I guess the overall issue is defined is sort -- is really written from federal perspective. And for many of us at the state and local level, you know, I particularly like Susan's LII reference earlier because many of the services that are being delivered and that we talk about as being benefits of the NII are really being delivered at the state and local level and could be delivered more effectively. And so I think part of what I would like to urge is that we rephrase this to look at government entities at all levels. And then, secondly, to urge the use of partnerships, you know. When we say who defines and articulates the country's vision, it really should be a partnership of state, local, and federal government, as well as the private sector because the best examples of what we see succeeding are really coming from those kinds of partnerships. I think if we take a look at the example we saw yesterday at Ralph Bunch school, it was a partnership of a bunch of teachers, their principal, the students, Apple computer company, many, many groups that put it all together. Those are the kinds of energies that we would like to harness in seeing how we can expand and leverage government's role. VOICE: I think that at some point, we ought to schedule maybe it is the two of you, a presentation to the National Governor's Association. I think the level of government that works is not at the federal level on many of these things. The federal government can help get some obstacles out of the way, but I think it is going to be the governors on down that are going to make the difference. And the governors are the closest thing that we have to chief executive officers. There is not anything comparable at the federal level. And I think if they can see the potential outcomes of this for education for all the problems they are trying to deal with, law enforcement, health care, and so forth that would begin to put a focus on it. And that by itself is not enough obviously. But I agree with this discussion we have had of let's keep forcing this thing down. Just because we were appointed by federal government does not mean there is where the solution. VOICE: Yes, but, John -- VOICE: Ed, may I just add just a little more to that. I think the governors conference is one place we must articulate what the national infrastructure ought to be and how to use it. But there is likewise three other groups I think are critical government roles that are just important as the governor. One is the Council of Mayors. Two is the Council of County Executives. And probably in education, probably the superintendents, the Association of School Superintendents in the country. I think these are four very critical groups that we've got to communicate to if we are going to be successful about the role of government. VOICE: Well, yes, but sure. As the -- we are appointed to give any of those folks any advice, it may be beyond our scope to be communicating with them. And, John, at the federal level, the chief executive officer, sure there is something comparable, isn't there? VOICE: No. I don't think there is. The chief executive officer gets to set the budgets, hire and fire, set their own policies. VOICE: And you think governors can do all that? VOICE: No. But I don't there is anything at the federal level that has that authority. The constitution was set up to divide it in three parts. VOICE: Yes, but it is a system of checks and balances. And you don't have autocratic control like you may have in some corporations. VOICE: But in many states you have line item veto. You don't have that at the federal level. VOICE: Not all governors have that. VOICE: Well, a lot of them do. And I think that there are some governors who are demonstrating that they can impact their states and are managing pretty effectively. And I think it would be a mistake to interpret our appointment as saying that because the federal government appointed us, therefore we should only focus back on things that have to do with the federal government. I don't agree with that. VOICE: It is the setting of the presentation to them that concerns me a little bit. Certainly, we should focus on whatever is important to the nation insofar as the NII concerned. And that is going to involve state and local government concerns. But communicating with governors, mayors, county judges, superintendents of schools, I'm not sure is a real good idea for this group. VOICE: This morning, we did talk about the work product of Council. And we talked about Phase VI which was the development of an action agenda. And we broke that up into an action agenda at the federal government, an action agenda for state and local government, an action agenda for business, and an action agenda for the other communities of interest. And I think all of those are important. Craig. DR. FIELDS: Just to continue these procedural comments, it is a good rule of thumb in any of these issues for our group is that every action is an over reaction. The federal government plays a very special role for this committee, namely they actually asked for our advice in contrast to every other group we have named which are pretty important groups. I am not trying to diminish them in any way. But none of them have asked for our advice. And since I am concerned with getting some impact, let's not forget who our initial customer is. VOICE: There is -- looking at the federal government, there is a couple of special areas where they can have a profound impact. And there is not much that anyone can do about taking this away from them. And I think we ought to try to bias that impact where we can specifically in the allocation of resources, such as frequencies and how they may be applied to social applications versus commercial needs and other things. That is clearly something within the problems of the federal government as an example. And we have had at least some recent examples of decision making processes going on that may be very applaudable for filling the government coifs with money, but it is not clear that they are meeting any of the needs that we are here to talk about. And I think that if we can as a group certainly apply whatever principles that we come up with for the NII, have the government look at those in terms of the critical resources that they will be responsible for releasing, allocating. That could be useful. The second area is going to be in the area of international. I mean, as it stands now, citizens can do certain things with respect dealing with foreign businesses, foreign governments. But as a general proposition, that is the province of the government. Whether you are talking about international standards, you are going to be talking about things in terms of other delicate issues, such as privacy and other things. You will be talking about trade issues, security. Again, I guess that is in under the State Department, but it is the role of the government. I think insofar as we can give them some recommendations, some advice with respect to the principles that we come up, we should do so because a lot is at stake in all of those areas. VOICE: I just have other comment. I agree with the discussion. I thought it was a very interesting discussion. I agree that do just because we are appointed by the federal government doesn't mean that we can't look at the roles at the state and local. I think it is absolutely essential that we do. And I think it is also part of our outreach that you just mentioned in terms of the constituencies of interest. The other point about our customer, obviously, we were appointed by the federal government. And we are going to fulfill that role. And we are doing that. But the other part of what we are about that I believe strongly is leadership. And leadership is going to be taking some initiative. And talking to those groups I think will be absolutely essential, governor's groups, county executives, mayors. We only have so much time, but I think we ought to make some effort, not only to show them what we are thinking about and ask for their input, but getting some sense of where they are and how we might be able to work on this together because all these things are going to impact lots of constituencies around the country. So we've got a leadership role here. We've got an obligation here. And I don't think we should do this in a vacuum. VOICE: (Inaudible. VOICE: I have to follow up on that and also John Sculley's. I don't who you were talking to from state and local who are saying what can we do? We don't know what to do. But to follow up on Carol's as well, maybe we invite these groups. But they have a great deal more to teach us than we to teach them. There is hardly a state that is not looking at its own networks that itself is a customer as a consumer. There are many innovative things going on in small rural places and great cities. If Jane were here, she would be mentioning North Carolina again. Tennessee has done some imaginative things. Hawaii -- VOICE: Yes. I just want to add to that in all fairness to them. I think what I was alluding to was the fact how can they interact with us, not that they are lost about how to develop networks in their states. They are absolutely moving in those directions, but they have no idea about who we are, what we are about, and how there can be some synergy. So that is really the questions they are asking. VOICE: Well, there is a constituency though on this group. I mean, we have state representation, state input. And it seemed to visible rise to the top when I suggested we preempt states of all activities. So I don't think that we are not getting the input. (Pause) VOICE: And then, I hope you yield to Ms. Kaplan over in the corner. I just wanted to mention two things. First of all, I would like to add one thing to the list that Ms. Smith had. And Mr. Ferguson if you stipulated the others, would you stipulate to this additional one which is I think that local and state governments are the best situated to be the guardians, the advocates for the universal service element which is something I think has been a common concern to all of us in our Mega-Projects and in all of the things that we have said. If a school in south central is not getting that drop, that connection to the NII, even to the LII, as have we all said we wanted to get, who will know but those at the most community level? So I think that in addition to the responsibilities that you listed, that I would advocate that we add also that to the degree that there guidelines or principles that are set for universal service and access, that is the local government that is the one that is best situated to ensure that fulfillment of that commitment. The second thing is, I don't know if you are interested in doing this or not. But there may be some of us at the local and state government level in others who would be interested in interfacing with the different governmental agencies that exist, counties, townships, governors councils and so forth. And maybe it can begin to start building the bridge from this committee to them. There was already a national coalition that exist on the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the U.S. -- the National Association of Counties, the National Congress of State Legislatures, and the National Governors Association, and (Inaudible) the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. And we already have that alliance. And maybe we can be a bridge for you. VOICE: Okay. VOICE: Deborah gets to go. MS. KAPLAN: A couple of things. On the government's role in general in the Mega-Project II subcommittee, we have been talking about what the government can do to insert certain social applications and consciousness into public policy. Bert alluded to this in talking about spectrum allocation. But if a major concern of the Administration is, for example, universal service and we are concerned about what communities are going to be getting broad band capabilities before others and what kinds of inequities may be designed into the process if only the market place determines where the technology will go. There may be ways that the federal government can insert deployment into some of the geographical regions and neighborhoods in the country which the market does not have as much magnetic resonance towards, just as an example of how the government could provide, possible provide incentives towards more equity in where we are going. Another question that is in this talking paragraph about this issue has to do with government procurement. And that is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. The federal government has been under an obligation for several years now to make sure that any technology that is purchased or leased to be used by federal employees is accessible to and usable by disabled employees of the federal government. The Generals Services Administration is responsible for this statute, for implementing it. The GSA however took a mandatory statute and turned it into non-mandatory guidelines. And as a result, technology is purchased by the federal government on a regular basis that does not comply with the guidelines and with the statute. A very simple -- really not so simple. In my mind simple thing that the federal government could do and GSA could do is to turn those guidelines into mandates and make the federal agencies and departments purchase equipment and technology that employees with disabilities can use so people won't lose jobs as new technology comes on board that is inaccessible. And that is a real life situation right now where people are losing jobs due to inaccessible technology. VOICE: I'll take about two more statements in this area. (Inaudible) and then Toni. VOICE: I'd like to tell you about a radio station that operates in the Yacama Valley of Washington. And I think it is one of your affiliates. This radio station has been operating for 15 years in that area which is highly Hispanic and providing a community service, very important public service to that community. And I will give you an example of the kind of service they have provided. When -- this is an area where many migrants farm workers work year round -- year after year, at times when it was necessary, a signal was used on the radio station, a certain song was played at a certain time whenever some green clad federal employees were out rounding up the population to alert the population that this was happening and asked everybody to head for the hills until things cooled off. That is the kind of public service they have been providing for quite awhile. But in answer to the question, should the government provide services which can be offered by private parties, in the case of KBNA in Granger, Washington, the private parties were not ever interested and still aren't interested. And I suggest to you that there are a number of areas and radio stations that are functioning at this time in California as well as Washington, Southern Colorado. The Navahos operate one at Window Rock where private enterprise was not interested. And I think that there is a place for government help, government subsidy in areas such as that to provide the kinds of services that we take for granted in the larger areas. (Pause) VOICE: This follows up well to what Ed just said. There are specific areas where the government has a responsibility to provide services to make the right thing happens and hopefully to do it in a cost effective manner. I think of the work that would not have been possible without the federal support under the Library Services and Construction Act which for years has provided way to small funding to libraries to the state libraries for three major purposes. One to start pilot projects that could not have been done otherwise that are later taken over by the local communities. For example, library services to new immigrant communities that have not been there before the Vietnam boat people. Secondly, to provide the opportunity for networking, the multi type library networks linking together public and school libraries that are very cost effective and have saved us millions and millions of dollars would not have happened without LSCA funding. And the third is some of the work to try to equalize some of the library services so that a child living in a rich community doesn't have library services that are so much better than someone living in a poor inner city neighborhood. So specific functions like that, we must not lose sight of that as a very important federal role. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much for this discussion. There is obviously a lot of energy on it. We will continue these discussions in some of the Mega-Project activities, especially in Mega- Projects I and II, universal access and (Inaudible) vision. And we will also come back and spend more time on it as an entire Council. CRITICAL ISSUES INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MR. LEWIS: Let's move right in to the third topic, something that I know many of you are very interested in and has been discussed in Mega- Project III. But I have heard from many of you that you would like -- that are not on Mega-Project III that you would like to participate in this discussion somewhat. And that relates to intellectual property. The owners of content on the NII are concerned about controlling its usage as historically they have been able to do via the copyright process. In some cases the financial ability to continue to create, provide content is contingent upon being able to protect its usage. On the other hand, the early users of INTERNET and those who are accustomed to cultures in which information is freely shared, such as universities and basic scientific research have a strong desire for the super highway function along those same lines of freely shared information, and have a good deal of philosophical resistance to the notion of protecting intellectual property. Does anybody have anything they want to comment on this topic? VOICE: First of all, I don't know who wrote that. But that is really I think an appropriate statement. The intellectual property holders within the university environment very often are those very same people who created that knowledge. I think it is not true to say that researchers and people in the scientific community have philosophical resistance to the notion of protecting intellectual property. I really think that there are concerns about appropriate and fair use within education. That is quite different. And I would hope that we could perhaps rephrase this question. I do think that there are some important issues about what is appropriate and fair use in the electronic environment. Is that term even appropriate any longer as we are looking at licensing agreements. There is concern on the part of the people who have created the knowledge that is now available that it be too restrictive or over priced so that it is not available to the very people who created it. We have many instances in universities where the libraries cannot afford to buy the journals that consist almost entirely of articles written by faculty at those and similar universities. So there are some very sticky questions that need to be addressed. But I would hope that a statement like the philosophical resistance would not appear in any public questions. MR. LEWIS: (Inaudible). VOICE: Mega-Project III has spent a great deal of time addressing and studying the green paper. I know the Secretary referred to it as a white paper. There are some that have white covers and some that have green covers. Green or white. I applaud much in the paper that I feel is thoughtful and addresses the imperative of protecting intellectual property and copyright. The need for education on the subject of intellectual property which is I think such a void in this country that doesn't understand that something is intangible as a piece of music in the air, for example, is not as protective as a property, such as this water pitcher. However, I believe that there are some portions, some ideas that are positive in the paper that present things which could seriously jeopardize the creative community. And I must question first of all the way this is posed here. When you say the owners of the content, I must respectfully ask that you say the creators and/or the owners of the content because I am very concerned about the creative traffic that is to travel this highway. And I feel that unless the creators are given the incentive to create the vehicles that will travel this highway, I think it will not be as rich a trip as it should be. The key points, because I don't want to talk too long. I know there were other people who have varying opinions, (Inaudible) opinions and so forth that want to be heard. But I think the calling into question something which is part of current copyright law as to what is a public performance of a musical composition, for example, is very key to our concerns. The paper posits that not every transmission is a public performance. And, of course, we are not talking about one to one private performances that take place at home or E-mail or anything like that. But what constitutes a public performance is very clearly spelled out in the copyright law. And I do also applaud the papers which to not to really seriously tamper with existing law. We recognize the need certainly for new rights to come into play as the new technology progresses. And the owners of those new rights, of course, must be compensated but never at -- we believe at the expense or derogating existing rights which brings me to the second point. The paper also posits that when something can be -- is in fact construed to be other -- a performance, a transmission is a performance or something which is meant to be copied in which sense it is a distribution right which is involved that it is not as we believe but two rights which are involved. There are two rights. And there is precedent for groups of rights to be compensated. But the paper posits that it is an either or proposition. It is either a transmission or it is a distribution right and cannot be both. And it is to be decided by a primary purpose test which none of us have quite been able to figure out who decides it or what it is. And it would seem to me it would be decided by whoever holds the special interest to decide what it is. I think that the creators of copyrights in this case have to be protected. In my particular case, I'm concerned about the creators of musical compositions. And I believe that contrary to what may be understood, the performance right is the key source of income to composers, both struggling and successful. As a matter of fact, the struggling composers and composers of symphonic music very often the performance right is the only right for which they are compensated. If this right is derogated or diminished in order to recognize justifiably new rights which will come into play, I think serious damage will be done to the artistic community. I feel that this can be worked out. I think it is a serious problem in the paper. But I really feel that we have been engaged in discussions which I am optimistic about. But I must call your attention to our problems in this area. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Vance. MR. OPPERMAN: You know, in order to ensure the progress of the arts and science, authors should be protected in their copyrights and creators in their letters patent. That phrase and that very smart public policy is not yet a principle of the NII, but it was adopted in Philadelphia as part of the United States Constitution rendering the United States Constitution the only written document of government that recognizes intellectual property and recognizes intellectual property before it recognizes any other form of property. The history of this country and its leadership in innovation and the encouragement of the arts is I think a marvel of our entire specie. And I think it is not coincidentally related to the protection, very strong protection given to intellectual property. I doubt that we would be sitting here today discussing something called the NII if letters -- (Changing Tape #6 to Tape #7.) VOICE: I think it is a serious problem in the paper. But I really feel that we have been engaged in discussions which I am optimistic about. But I must call your attention to our problems in this area. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: Vance. VOICE: You know, in order to ensure the progress of the arts and science, authors should be protected in their copyrights and creators in their letters patent. That phrase and that very smart public policy is not yet a principle of the NII, but it was adopted in Philadelphia as part of the United States Constitution rendering the United States Constitution the only written document of government that recognizes intellectual property and recognizes intellectual property before it recognizes any other form of property. The history of this country and its leadership in innovation and the encouragement of the arts is I think a marvel of our entire specie. And I think it is not coincidentally related to the protection, very strong protection given to intellectual property. I doubt that we would be sitting here today discussing something called the NII if letters patent had not protected operating systems. If they could not have been enforced in the Apple litigation, the Microsoft litigation, the Franklin computer litigation, I doubt very much that we would be sitting here and talking about content if they had not been protected by copyright. And the idea of taking a step backwards, taking away from that protection at a time when we lead the world increasingly, at a time when we have seen the fruits of that very wise constitutional policy would strike me as a terrible step backwards. The green paper, white paper, whatever we are calling (Inaudible) paper is I think an important first step. I think it is an excellent product. I think it addresses in many ways 80 percent of what I would want to have addressed and not another 20 percent. The world is not a perfect place, but if we came away from here with the idea that somehow intellectual property of all kinds, copyrights, patents, trademarks which has served us so well and which we would not have had any concept of the NII without, we would have done a horrible disservice. This country has over a 200 year experience with valuing, cherishing, encouraging intellectual property. And any step back from that would strike a lot of us as a terrible, terrible mistake. VOICE: I'd like to just follow up on Vance's very articulate remarks about this subject. I, too, and also just picking up on Toni's point was actually offended by the framing of this issue in this paper. Offended because obviously there is an element. There are several people involved in the work of this Council. I'm not sure how many the number is that looks at the fundamental protection of intellectual property as called for in the Constitution of the United States the basic fabric upon which everything has been built in this country, in this society. It dismisses it as some sort of quaint acronyms simply because a technology that has developed allows for easy bypass of these protections. And to somehow allow that notion to filter into the work of this Council or to even be considered as something -- as a legitimate position to be debated, I find frankly rather astounding. If the early users of the INTERNET, to quote the paper, feel this strongly about dismissing the notion of intellectual property protection, then they are perfectly welcome as citizens of this country to call for a constitutional amendment to change that but certainly not to try to utilize this Council as the forum to accomplish that. It is frankly rather mind boggling to my point of view. I would just like to comment briefly on (Inaudible) remarks relative to the public performance versus distribution issue. This is a tough knot that has to be unraveled. We were all trying to work at it. The simple fact of life, getting back to the technology, is that this technology has forced this to become an issue because in very real terms, the technology is fully capable of becoming the distribution mechanism of the twentieth-first century for not only pre-recorded music but for audio/visual software in general. And that has to be addressed in one fashion or another. Whether or not the green paper addressed it in perfect fashion is subject to debate, as we know. We are in that debate right now. But I think if we all should put our shoulders to this issue, we can find a common ground that works. VOICE: Thank you. MR. McCRACKEN: Frances, did you want to say something first? Did you? (Inaudible) is going to come afterwards. VOICE: That's right. Go ahead. VOICE: If that's okay with the chairman. VOICE: First of all, I think that we agree with most of the white paper, green paper. But, of course, we do have concern for authors, inventors, creators in this country. I think that our stakes are great. And if we make mistakes, there will be a high price to pay throughout the world, not only in this country, but throughout the world. I do feel that we have to be very careful that our current levels of copyright protection be maintained and that they not be eroded by this new technology. I think that the -- we must enforce a system in the market place that will protect our creators. And we must also be aware of our concerns to the education and to the betterment of all folks. But the rights of authors should be clear. And the interest of the end user should also be made very clear. And I think it is very important that what comes out of this meeting will do just that. We have a big of educating. We talk about educating in our schools, but we have a big job of educating the users of products out there and what their obligations are. And it is something that I live with every day. So it is not an easy process. And I would hope that this new technology will enable us to enlighten the general public as to the value of music, the arts, the inventions and that in order to keep this to the quality that we hope we will be able to maintain in this country, to people who create that for a living must be compensated. So I would hope that we will able to work this part out in our deliberations over the next few weeks and months and that we will wound up a happy group of campers when it is all over. Thank you. MR. McCRACKEN: Thank you. VOICE: I wrote a letter which you may have read. And I'm not a lawyer. I want to set the record straight that I am 1,000 percent down the line for intellectual property rights. And I apparently missed some of the nuisances in our green paper because I thought it was pretty good from the standpoint of a laymen protecting intellectual property. And if I misread that, I stand corrected. And I would be very (Inaudible) as anybody on this committee that doesn't feel strong that we have to maintain intellectual property rights. I would be very surprised if there were. (Pause) VOICE: Just so it is completely clear, I think that the green paper is excellent. My only comments were about our questions, the way they were worded. There are a few comments that will be put in writing on the draft. But I think that they have really done a superb job on the green paper. These are very, very difficult issues, hard to come to grips with. I think the section on licensing is very good and very appropriate that more and more we will be relying upon licensing, as we have in the past, for the electronic environment. I was also pleased to see that there is a section on education. It is something that we take very seriously in our school, for example, as we are educating information professionals. Within our ethics course, within all of our courses, we are adamant about the protection of intellectual property. And if any student is caught duplicating software or violating the copyright in any way, they are in very serious trouble in our school. And I think we need to do more to help people to understand the responsibilities and the ethical principles, even beyond the law. What is the right thing to do even if there is any question legally so that we are ethical citizens? I had a question. One of the things which is noted here which is very important is that the working group is sponsoring a conference to bring together copyright owner and user interests to develop guidelines for fair use. Could we have a little more information about that? When is it going to be held? Can we get some information on that because I think that is an excellent idea, kind of like the old upstairs/downstairs group? MR. LEWIS: Bob, would you have comments? VOICE: Yes. I just wanted to point out that as far as the green paper goes, it really does not address effectively enough in my view the fundamental importance that computer programs are going to play in the network environment of the future. This is a comment that I want to make broadly about virtually aspect about the NII going to at one extreme the role of service providers to the role of computer manufacturers and the software developers themselves to the role of the actual creators in the first place. And it is entirely possible that what we have done is try to retrofit only the current mechanisms of dealing with intellectual property creation and distribution and performance into a world into which I think we are going to see many new opportunities for innovation show up. Creators of information may very well create programs which create their material in the future rather than producing the material they produce, the computer means of producing it. And that will be every bit as valuable to them as the works tailorable by the end users. The same thing is true about the folks who are in the distribution business. They may end up with mechanisms that are tailored. Programs that are tailored to the task of distribution that figure out the environment that you are in, that work with the user to interact on their real needs and requirements. Maybe even to tailor the things are set to satisfy their own aesthetic needs and what are presented on whatever resolution screen they might have or whatever. And as we begin to think more and more about the role of computer programs in the NII, I think we are going to see the need to almost completely reevaluate what our options and possibilities are for the future. Clearly, we want to incorporate the current world and make sure that that can flourish and in that environment. No question about it, intellectual property protection is at the core of that. I think that we are not as fully cognizant of what this future is going to look at. And computer programs are going to be the key to that future. VOICE: (Inaudible). VOICE: I just would like to underscore in light of what Bob has said that no matter what the intellectual property looks like, no matter what form it takes, whether it is notes on a staff, words on page or binary digits, I think the copyright act in a very forward looking way I think spoke to us when it said that when they want to take into consideration communication by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received are beyond the place from which they are sent. I think that principle lays out at the heart of protecting any idea no matter how communicated, no matter by what process, what means, how sophisticated, how revolutionary. The underlying work, the product of a creative mind and idea is what must be considered sacred here. And I feel that we would do violence to something extremely sacred and constitutionally protected, if we really do violence to that principle. VOICE: Mr. Chairman. MR. LEWIS: Yes. VOICE: I want to join with the others who have expressed their concern about the unfortunate language that is presented before us here. Anybody who is associated with the labor movement would have to say that every worker is worthy of his hire. They have to be treated with respect and provided with appropriate compensation for their labors. That should be no different with regard to the creative elements in our society as to anyone else. We wouldn't expect a bricklayer or carpenter or those who employ them to build a school for free. We don't expect any of the people who manufacture the equipment we have been viewing here to just give it away for nothing even to our schools. So, too, we should not put a burden on those who create intellectual things of intellectual value by expecting them to in effect subsidize all of these things by giving their work away. In essence, there is no free lunch. We all know that. And anyone who still believes there is is somebody who is pursuing a fool's mission, a mission that will turn our marvelous potential for this information highway into an empty vacuous jumble of wires, sand, glass and air as was told to us last night, but that is all it would be. With regard to the green paper, I also want to join with some colleagues who commended it. It is in contrast to what is said here. It is -- it avoids the simplistic approach to anything. And in fact, I applaud it for hitting head on some issues that have been for too long pushed under the rug and for highlighting how far behind our thinking is with regard to protecting our creative environment in this country. For example, the sound recording is an old technology. And I wonder how many in this room realize though that the sound recording has no performance right protecting, that the marvelous people we hear everyday, the performers on the air receive nothing, nothing for their work. They only receive the work for actually making the original performance. But the enjoyment which is derived by the millions who hear them each millions of time, they are not being paid for that. And yet, they were displaced. We can remember at one time broadcast stations everybody had to have because there was no sound recording of any quality. So we had musicians. And even I remember when I was in the Air Force traveling around the country. And you can go from one region of the country to another and you knew where you were by the radio because you could hear different sounds, different kinds of music. They were live. And they reflected the culture of that region. None of those musicians are employed today. You don't need them. They were displaced. Well, that is fine. That is okay. It is not so good I guess, but at least they should be compensated. And they weren't. And they aren't today. And the green paper points out that the sound recording is an anomaly in our copyright laws. It is the only copyrightable item does not have a performance right attached to it. I think that is a shame. And the green paper has brought that out. Now, unless we recognize our creative talents, those that exist today and those that must be protected tomorrow as the new technology is introduced, we are going to lose our leadership in the world. The industry is based on copyright and intellectual property in this country, probably return to this country the largest amount in terms of our net balance of trade. And other countries realize our ability to compete is tremendous in this area of intellectual creative works, intangible works. They protect or try to protect their creative sources. And we are going to find ourselves running into their laws unless our laws are in harmony. We talk about the global infrastructure. Well, again, unless our copyright laws are patentable as our intellectual property laws are in harmony with the people around the world who do respect the creative elements of their society, unless we are in harmony with them, we are going to find ourselves closed out from these markets. And we are going to lose -- this is not a luxury. We are going to lose billions in our trade posture. This, too, was alluded to in the green paper. And I'm glad it did because it has tremendous significance to our competitive position in the future. VOICE: Thank you. VOICE: Mr. (Inaudible), I have a response to one thing that stands out. For instance, will you please tell me when they obtain license fees where that money goes, to the radio broadcasters who are putting this talent over the air? VOICE: When you pay us your license fees. The money is then paid to the authors, composers, and music publishers whose works were performed over your station. VOICE: Am I missing something? You said people don't get compensated. VOICE: Well, the sound recording has many contributions of many creative people. And you are right. It is the composer. But the the composer's reward, and you can correct me Frances, comes -- derives not from the sound recording but from the underlying score that you are compensating. VOICE: The musical work. VOICE: And I was making this distinction here. But the performer who adds something, you must admit, to the presentation, they are an essential element of that performance. VOICE: Yes, but the quid pro quo is that without the (Inaudible) they wouldn't sell any records. VOICE: Well, that is very questionable and you know that. When you play the top 10 or the top 20 or the top 30 or 40, how do you know which is the top 30? You got out in the stores and find out what is already selling. And that is what you put on the air. VOICE: It seems to me there is one thing we need to make clear for education though, the information, how we give it. But it's like how do we know what we can use? I know now that I can create wonderful programs in the classroom, but I don't know who I can share it with. When I put a lesson, a plan like you on the INTERNET, there are some things that need to be clarified for educators because we have access to more now than we ever had but we don't know what the rules are. We can't use the National Geographic laser disk pictures if we are making a video. And do you know what happens? Some people say, I'm not going to look up whether it's National Geographic. So you don't use it. So please give us -- when you define for all of us, since I'm not a lawyer and no classroom teacher is going to be, please make sure you define for us what we can and cannot do because those are the kinds of hoops that a lot of people don't jump through. MR. McCRACKEN: We may have time for one more. Mack, you -- VOICE: I was just thinking maybe we ought to recognize that the green paper is not only a commendable work, but all of the real labor that went into it is to be commended as well. But maybe we ought to talk a little bit about what it proposes to do and whether or not it persuades us that what it proposes to do ought to be done in terms of proposed amendments to the Copyright Act and some other additions to federal legislation. I, you know, Stan, as you know, I am a lawyer. It's too late to turn back now. (Laughter) VOICE: Okay. VOICE: I read these things with a lawyer's eye. And having a nodding acquaintance with the act and having looked up some of the cases cited in this thing and having then studied the proposed amendments, I am not sure that the green paper proposes amendments that are necessary to the copyright law to protect the interests that it has identified. Or even if some changes are necessary, I'm not convinced that this is the appropriate way to go about it. And the means that they propose to adopt in their draft is simply to add to the list of other items that are already protected in the statute. What may be necessary -- what may be more appropriate to be thinking of the terms in which the act is drafted to begin with so that every time we have an advance in technology, we don't have to go back and continue to add to the list of the items that we seek to protect in the statute. MR. McCRACKEN: We have had a lively discussion here. We have a Mega-Project, of course, on intellectual property that they should take this up. They are taking it up. We will hear back from them next time. It's been a good background discussion to get ready for that. Thanks again for all your discussion in the last hour and a half. If you have particular ideas about how we should redraft these social issues, we have heard some, these issues as we move down the list, please get them to Del and I before the next meeting if possible. And we will redraft it for the next meeting. Del and I just talked. We guarantee to get you out by 4:00 o'clock today. But let's take a five or 10 minute break now and then get back together for public hearings. (Whereupon, the meeting was recessed.) AFTER RECESS PUBLIC COMMENTS, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS MR. LEWIS: Can we come to order? We are now moving into our public comments section. (Pause) MR. LEWIS: And then, we will close out. And we are going to move right along. We are really going to have to unfortunately limit our public comment to two to five minutes. And we have about three, six, seven people on the list. That will move us right at 4:00 o'clock. So why don't we start. I think the first is David Becker, two to five minutes, please. (Pause) MR. BECKER: Hello. My name is David Becker. I am not on the President's staff nor am I a (Inaudible) member of society or one of the notables like the members of the Advisory Council. Basically, nobody important. I would like to thank Mr. Mandle and Mr. Kirkerslav of ATT for their superogatory efforts on my behalf, and Ms. Herman on the Council. If there were more members like you on the Council perhaps we wouldn't still be a nation at risk. Thanks to Mr. Lewis and Ms. Smith, Mr. Cooke and Mr. Roberts for assisting me in doing multi media CD Roms to public libraries. Today, I have distributed multi media CD Roms to Toni Bearman, Carol Fukunaga, Mr. Hellmeier, Bonnie Bracey, Ms. Kaplan, Ms. Forrester, and Mr. Hubbard. And I've asked them to assist me in donating multi media CD Rom to any public library or museum of their choice. I'd like to point out that it has been my experience that many members of the President's staff on the IITF were all sent multi media CD Roms by myself to donate to any public library or museum of their choice. Not one of those people has made a donation of the CD Rom. In many instances, they have not been returned. Dr. Lindberg never returned the CD Rom. Bruce McConnell never returned the CD Rom. And Mike Nelson never returned the CD Rom. (Pause) MR. BECKER: There have been many members of Congress I've sent multi media CD Roms to and asked them the same things. And let me point out their names to you. I'm sure you know who they are. (Pause) MR. BECKER: Senator Simon, Senator Hollings, Senator Pell, Senator Inouye, Congressman Owens, Congressman George Brown, Jr., Senator Moynihan, Senator Kennedy. I'm sure many of you are aware that these members of Congress are involved on these issues. And they are powerful members of Congress as well. I find it quite interesting that members of Congress would assist a citizen like me. Whereas the Administration that talks about working with interested parties and talks about universal access has not done so. I think it is clear to me that basically the Administration is telling the American public, get with the program, use INTERNET. And if you are not an INTERNET user, you are one of the techno- peasants and don't deserve access to information. You are basically on your own. I don't agree with that position. I'm not asking for a hand out. I know Mitch Kapor has made statements about that in the New Republic. All I'm asking for is assistance in donating multi media CD Roms. Thank you. MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Mr. Becker. The next person is -- and I may not pronounce this right -- Kenneth Kamosky. MR. KAMOSKY: Thank you very much. I am Kenneth Kamosky. I am -- in my professional life, I am an Executive Director of the Educational Products Information Exchange. We are (Inaudible) non-profit. You might be interested to know that we have on CD Rom totally searchable by any teacher or parent, every electronic learning resource that is currently on the market in the U.S., give or take maybe a half of a percent of what is out there because maybe we haven't heard about it in the last two or three weeks. I am here this afternoon to speak to two papers that I have put in the record. So I am sure that I won't have enough time to cover everything I want cover, but the papers are in the record. One of them is called Bypassing the Poor on the Data Highway. Let's BET. And I will explain what BET is about in a moment. The other paper is called the 81 Percent Solution: Restructuring Our Schools and Our Communities for lifelong Learning. That was published in the January 25th edition of Education Week. The 81 Percent Solution addresses the fact that children K-12 in the course of 12 months spend 19 percent of their time in school. And what we are trying to do with the 81 Percent Solution is to look at the total learning and information ecology of a community. And we find that the learning ecology of a community given what kids can learn about drugs and what they can learn from TV is as toxic often as the physical ecology of a community if not more so. So we need to address schools, of course, but we need to address the whole learner and the whole learner within the context of a family and a family within a community. Now, I am very impressed with this committee, with this Council. You are doing fine. You are doing God's work. And I say that as a convinced Quaker. Okay. You are doing God's work, but you are operating in a procrustean bed that was designed for you inadvertently I believe by Vice President Gore and President Clinton who when they set your vision limited it to achieving by the year 2000 connectability of schools and libraries and hospitals I believe. You know the range. We must concentrate. I reinforce the comments by the Senator from Hawaii and Susan Herman's comments, the LII. You must begin with at the grass roots community level building not just concentrating on the information highway which we all know. We have had the references to the media is now the information hype way. We must build the electronic main streets, side streets, back streets, and backyards and back fences of this country and through the BET program. And I like to invite -- I have already threw -- I invited the Senator Brent to bring me an access group to our community in eastern Long Island where with businesses for equity and telecomputing, BET. All right. Businesses have joined in a public/private partnership. The public utility on Long Island is donating computers. Why? Because American businesses, unlike schools which only have 9.8 million computers for 49 million kids, businesses have 150 million computers. And as reported in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago, about 15 to 19 million of those are going into a secondary market every 12 months. Now, what we want in the BET program is to have one quarter of those computers coming out of business every year to be donated to a program that is going to get those computers into low-income families. Ron Brown said there are 31 million computers in home. He is absolutely right. And Grove at In House says that is going to double in the next five years. But it is the other 31 million of the 93 million households in this country that need to have computing power. You can have fiber optics coming right up the main street of every low-income community so that there is not technically red-lining. But if they don't have the technology to connect to just twisted pair, to copper wire you are not going to be doing the job that needs to be done in this country. So what we are doing is very simply, we are getting the computers, putting them into low-income community centers. Somebody said there is no free lunch. Well, I'd like to say, and I've said in my paper, there is no free lunch on the INTERNET. Okay. You have to earn your way on. And a family that learns together to telecommunicate, to get up on a community bulletin board which we have in the three public libraries in River Head, New York, connecting all the libraries on the east end and with the county library system putting up a pop to get us on the INTERNET for a local telephone call. These families, as they learn to telecommunicate, earn their computer and modem. By the way, most of them, the computers we are getting from business already have internal modems in them. And we load onto that computer the communications software that they need, the word processing software that they need. If they need spreadsheets, it is on there. Family budgeting, basic skills in math and reading. Not having to worry about intellectual property because this is free ware that we have gathered surfing on the INTERNET. Okay. And some of it is just dandy. My organization has evaluated more learning materials in the last 27 years than any other organization in this country. And I can tell you that some of this free ware is wonderful. And this is what these families are getting. And local computer literates are training them to learn how to use this. And they are getting up onto the network. And on that network, we have a time dollars bulletin board which says to every member of the community, there is a job in this community you can do no matter what your income level, you are retired senior, you are one of the trainers that we have. There is a retired television producer from NBC. MR. LEWIS: We are going to have to move on. MR. KAMOSKY: Okay. MR. LEWIS: Please. MR. KAMOSKY: It is all in the paper. I thank you very much for your time. Continue your great work. Bless you. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mr. Kamosky. The next person is Anthony Lindsey. Mr. Lindsey. MR. LINDSEY: Good afternoon. Information have and have nots who wants to be one, not me nor anyone else I know in the African-American community. My name is Anthony Lindsey. And I am President of International Business Development Services. We are a technology transfer, technology licensing firm. And we help companies transfer technology that has been developed in their organizations into commercial avenues for developing products and services. I have come today to compel you to think very seriously about the notion of how do we get know how and skill development in the hands of the user communities to which we expect to derive demand for the national information infrastructure. I am particularly concerned with the minority communities and specifically African- American communities. My interest is to look for programs from this Council that facilitate and enable local community organizations to be able to use existing programs or in those cases where programs don't exist to develop programs which in particular provide skill development and know how with respect to the technologies that are emerging. One of the things that is a primary concern to me is the notion that these folks will gain access through universal access to the emerging technologies and everybody will have ability to get to these technologies and then we won't know how to use them. And the result of that is going to be, we won't use them. And consequently, the nation is going to think that minority communities are not interested in this technology because they are not using it. There it is and it is not being utilized. So I am looking for this Council to take a leadership role and to demonstrate to the rest of the country and particularly large business enterprises that are being driven by these communities that is made up largely of blue collar workers and the people who are the real fabric, the middle-class fabric and those people who are supporting that fabric of our country. So what we are looking for is more programs like the National Information Infrastructure Assistance Program where there are dollars being allocated. And we are also looking for those dollars to be more specifically channeled into minority communities directly and into those programs in minority communities which address this need of developing skills and know how transfer. So we as a corporation can assist companies or assist local entities, local organizations, churches, community centers, these type of organizations, fraternities and sororities that exist within these communities that have programs that are aimed at enhancing education in the community, making the community more employable, boosting the economic capabilities of these communities so that they can buy the services and buy the kinds of products that are being availed to them through the national information infrastructure. So again, this committee, this Council can urge the NTIA, the Congress, the House of Representatives, and all the other appropriate bodies to focus their efforts on starting at the very grass roots levels. And let's take a bottom up approach to this problem as opposed to a top down approach to this problem which seems to be the primary focus of this organization. I don't think that either one approach should be mutually exclusive. Both approaches will work. And hopefully we will meet some place in the middle. Thank you very much. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, Mr. Lindsey. Next is Mr. Barry Laskey. MR. LASKEY: Thank you. My name is Barry Laskey. And I wear several hats in coming here today. But the one that I wanted to start off with is just the sense that I come as an information half. And I am not as much as an information half as a lot of my peers may be in the sense that I did not grow up with computer technologies. I never played video games or anything like that. But I did kind of address myself to communications technologies and other things over the past four or five years as a means to accomplish what was important to me and as a means of leveraging enhanced opportunity to be able to accomplish certain things. But even from that vantage point of coming from someone who is on the INTERNET, has been on the INTERNET for awhile, and coming from the vantage point of somebody who likes to look at the way these different pieces fit together, I still had a fairly difficult time in really finding out the kinds of information that I would have really liked to have found out about in coming here today. I know somebody mentioned before use NET as a specific example of getting task force information out and other types of things. And I'm not here to say that one particular approach is better than others or anything like that, but that I really feel nonetheless as someone who could find the information and did hunt around for a long time, that it was very difficult for me to get a real agenda and get a real sense of what was definitely going to be happening here today. And at that same time, to then be able to turn that information around and inform my community and constituents that I'm contact with. So I think about in reference to folks who may not have the same type of access that I have. And I just -- I kind of throw my hands up a little bit. However, the fact that it has been open all day and I've been here since 8:00 o'clock in the morning says a little bit in and of itself. And I also take a lot of what I have heard here today as an invitation to just jump in and participate on that dialogue on how to increase that opportunity. And I will take you up on that invitation. But I just wanted to stress in terms of outreach initiatives, number one, that I feel this type open information and this really seriously addressing this participatory involvement of folks around the country really needs to start with that open information building block which is just reemphasizing that again. But the other thing that I wanted to say about the outreach initiative also is that I have been hearing a lot here today kind of clashing viewpoints in terms of outreach. And there is a lot of commercial and a lot of stuff that is being talked about here. And if I had to say one thing that I really would want out of all of this national information infrastructure debate is for that someone comes to me and I may not wait until that time before I speak out. But when somebody does come to me or comes to my community or my friends, I really would like to feel that I'm not being approached in a consumer paradine. I feel that I am involved. And lots of people I know are involved in demonstration projects and all kinds of things. There was the mention of local governments being involved in lots of things. And there is grass roots activity as well. And when I get approached, I want to be approached as an individual who can talk about my experience and things that I have been involved in in terms of really participating and influencing this national debate rather than the approach not necessarily accusational, but the approach that has been in a lot of the media and otherwise where the real issues here for the public is how you will purchase things and how you will do this and that in terms of a consumer paradine. That is all I have to say. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. There is another -- yes. VOICE: Can I say, Tim, NII NTA dot (Inaudible) is the INTERNET address. And we also have an IITF bulletin board gofer that you can download everything, our speeches, all of that stuff. We give it to the press. I don't know why they don't print. You may won't to write some letters to them. VOICE: I am aware of that. I have been on all of those services as well. I guess in terms of specifics, I don't want to get into it. VOICE: I will talk to you after this. MR. LEWIS: There was one other person I guess from your organization on the list. Is it Laura Powers? (Pause) MS. POWERS: Hi. My name is Laura Powers. And I'm the Field Director of Libraries for the Future which is a national organization representing our country's 166 million library users. But today, I am here to represent Access For All which is a local coalition of groups in the New York City and state region that have come together to advocate for a diverse civic sector, a public sector within the national information infrastructure. We represent library users, independent film and video makers, community television and radio, public access cable, a whole variety of organizations which are concerned about making sure that along side the commercial information infrastructure which is growing, there continues to be a vital public information infrastructure. And we are involved in tracking legislation on the federal, state, and local levels, and advocating positions which maintain what has been known as a green space on the NII. One thing that we were active in doing this summer was advocating for S.2195 which was a bill introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii in the Senate which would have reserved 20 percent of the -- (Changing Tape #7 to Tape #8.) VOICE: The top down approach to this problem which seems to be the primary focus of this organization. I don't think that either one approach should be mutually exclusive. Both approaches will work. And hopefully we will meet some place in the middle. Thank you very much. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much, Mr. Lindsey. Next is Mr. Barry Laskey. MR. LASKEY: Thank you. My name is Barry Laskey. And I wear several hats in coming here today. But the one that I wanted to start off with is just the sense that I come as an information half. And I am not as much as an information half as a lot of my peers may be in the sense that I did not grow up with computer technologies. I never played video games or anything like that. But I did kind of address myself to communications technologies and other things over the past four or five years as a means to accomplish what was important to me and as a means of leveraging enhanced opportunity to be able to accomplish certain things. But even from that vantage point of coming from someone who is on the INTERNET, has been on the INTERNET for awhile, and coming from the vantage point of somebody who likes to look at the way these different pieces fit together, I still had a fairly difficult time in really finding out the kinds of information that I would have really liked to have found out about in coming here today. I know somebody mentioned before use NET as a specific example of getting task force information out and other types of things. And I'm not here to say that one particular approach is better than others or anything like that, but that I really feel nonetheless as someone who could find the information and did hunt around for a long time, that it was very difficult for me to get a real agenda and get a real sense of what was definitely going to be happening here today. And at that same time, to then be able to turn that information around and inform my community and constituents that I'm contact with. So I think about in reference to folks who may not have the same type of access that I have. And I just -- I kind of throw my hands up a little bit. However, the fact that it has been open all day and I've been here since 8:00 o'clock in the morning says a little bit in and of itself. And I also take a lot of what I have heard here today as an invitation to just jump in and participate on that dialogue on how to increase that opportunity. And I will take you up on that invitation. But I just wanted to stress in terms of outreach initiatives, number one, that I feel this type open information and this really seriously addressing this participatory involvement of folks around the country really needs to start with that open information building block which is just reemphasizing that again. But the other thing that I wanted to say about the outreach initiative also is that I have been hearing a lot here today kind of clashing viewpoints in terms of outreach. And there is a lot of commercial and a lot of stuff that is being talked about here. And if I had to say one thing that I really would want out of all of this national information infrastructure debate is for that someone comes to me and I may not wait until that time before I speak out. But when somebody does come to me or comes to my community or my friends, I really would like to feel that I'm not being approached in a consumer paradine. I feel that I am involved. And lots of people I know are involved in demonstration projects and all kinds of things. There was the mention of local governments being involved in lots of things. And there is grass roots activity as well. And when I get approached, I want to be approached as an individual who can talk about my experience and things that I have been involved in in terms of really participating and influencing this national debate rather than the approach not necessarily accusational, but the approach that has been in a lot of the media and otherwise where the real issues here for the public is how you will purchase things and how you will do this and that in terms of a consumer paradine. That is all I have to say. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. There is another -- yes. VOICE: Can I say, Tim, NII NTA dot (Inaudible) is the INTERNET address. And we also have an IITF bulletin board gofer that you can download everything, our speeches, all of that stuff. We give it to the press. I don't know why they don't print. You may won't to write some letters to them. VOICE: I am aware of that. I have been on all of those services as well. I guess in terms of specifics, I don't want to get into it. VOICE: I will talk to you after this. MR. LEWIS: There was one other person I guess from your organization on the list. Is it Laura Powers? (Pause) MS. POWERS: Hi. My name is Laura Powers. And I'm the Field Director of Libraries for the Future which is a national organization representing our country's 166 million library users. But today, I am here to represent Access For All which is a local coalition of groups in the New York City and state region that have come together to advocate for a diverse civic sector, a public sector within the national information infrastructure. We represent library users, independent film and video makers, community television and radio, public access cable, a whole variety of organizations which are concerned about making sure that along side the commercial information infrastructure which is growing, there continues to be a vital public information infrastructure. And we are involved in tracking legislation on the federal, state, and local levels, and advocating positions which maintain what has been known as a green space on the NII. One thing that we were active in doing this summer was advocating for S.2195 which was a bill introduced by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii in the Senate which would have reserved 20 percent of the capacity on future telecommunications networks for public use. And it would have also created a special fund to make sure that non-profit organizations, libraries, schools had the ability to use that capacity, to actually train their constituencies and produce content and really put the sort of information component public information component into the information super highway. I am sorry to say that this bill which was the provisions of which were folded into the Holmes Bill S.1822 were effectively -- were very badly diminished in the course of mark up. And now, we have the situation where there is at best going to be a five percent reservation of capacity and absolutely no money which my director is fond of saying it is sort of like giving somebody a Cadillac with no car keys and no driver's ed. So the funding component is very important if you are give to an organization, a school or a library access, there also has to be some money to build their capacity so they will be able to make use that access. Anyway, the final thing I wanted to say is that access for all is just one of dozens of grass roots coalitions that are emerging around the United States geographically based primarily. There is one in the Chicago area. I know of one in the Bay area which are groups of public media converging together to advocate for a non- commercial information infrastructure. And we are out here and we are really going to be advocating both on the federal level and state and local governments as well. Thank you. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. David Green is next. MR. GREEN: Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity of addressing the Council. My name is David Green. I am the Director of Communications at the New York Foundation for the Arts. And I thought I would take this opportunity to speak about at least one area of activity, online activity in the arts. I enjoyed hearing the discussion this afternoon on intellectual property. And I am looking forward to reading the green paper as also I will be looking forward to reading the statement on arts, humanities, and the culture just published by the Administration. ARTSWIRE is one of the programs of the New York Foundation for the Arts. It is the largest national full service arts network on the INTERNET, operating for two years. ARTSWIRE provides over 60 conference forums, many news and information resources and data bases provided by its members, its constituencies, and structural access, very highly structured access to other arts resources around the INTERNET. We specifically set the non-profit arts industry, the producers, the artists as well as arts organizations and agencies and the general public. As we now know from many economic impact studies, the arts and even the non-profit arts comprise a major element of many urban and rural economies. And yet the industry as a whole is generally fairly under capitalized. And, of course, this is even more true for the nation's telecommunications activity within the arts and humanities and our national culture. And we fully appreciate the NII A Grant Program that was just initiated this last year. We maintain that the arts are vitally important in the development of the NII, both as a major source of content provision and by a belief that the arts and artists themselves can serve to influence the look and feel of the network. Artists, of course, are visionaries for the future. And we feel that in some way, they should be consulted in this very important national endeavor. Briefly, as part of the development of our network, as small as it is currently, we are in a dramatically increasing fashion helping to build something of the national infrastructure. We provide a lot of general education on telecommunications in general as well as on the arts in telecommunications. We provide specific pretty intent, one-on- one on site practical training for new users most of which have no experience with telecommunications, mainly which have very little computing experience. So the education that we provide is more than the specific arts on telecommunications. It is general, how to get on the NET education. In implementing the network also, we are bringing on individuals and agencies, often in remote and urban regions. Many of these people have no formal experience of telecommunications. We are conducting a number of experiments with public access, working with free NETS with bulletin board services and working out a number of model public access programs. We are hoping that a number of other projects get started. For example, the Kennedy Center's Arts Ed, the Arts and Education Program to be fully launched in 1996. We have been instrumental in helping them get organized. So many of us in the non-profit arts and culture industry feel our voices perhaps have not been heard although we are very pleased to see the BMI and ASCAP represented. We were dismayed that we have no representative on this body. A coalition is forming. One humanities and arts on the information super highway will be co- sponsored by us together with the American Council for Learning Societies, the Getty Art History Information Project and the Committee for Networked Information. And we are currently organizing and we hope to shortly present material to the Council. And these, I suppose I ought to be consulted to have an affordable and accessible infrastructure for a non-profit community, to have access to production programming and implementation funding, and to get some help with the broader education effort that we feel we are deeply committed to. Thank you. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. We have one last person to present on public comment, Mona Ameniz. MS. AMENIZ: Hello. My name is Mona Ameniz. I am the Executive Director of Media Alliance. And I am going to turn this down a little bit maybe. Media Alliance is a statewide media arts organization based here in the city. And when I talk about media arts, I'm talking about people who are producing non- commercial media, whether it be film, video, audio, computers. Our organization represents the thousands and thousands of producers around the state who are doing non-commercial work, as well as the millions of people who are audience for that work in New York State. Over the nation, we are looking at about 167 million people who are served by media arts organizations. So we are part of that network. And we are a part of this national network of organizations that again produce some kind of independent or non-commercial media. That could be community radio people, public access producers, public television producers, and then, all of the other media arts producers that are outside of those or associated with other organizations that put information on those systems. And then, I guess we are part of really a larger network. I should say that media arts is a very small part of a very large group that is interest -- in the public interest use of the information super highway or all of the public interest groups. And as you know, there has been a lot of organizing going on around the country to try to influence the development of the information infrastructure from a non-commercial public interest perspective. And I guess what we see ourselves as really are again those producers, the people that are potential -- well, I should say doing it already and also then potential producers for any systems whatever kind of communication systems they are. We are already the producers for public broadcasting, public access television, radio and so on, those existing communication systems. In every system I think there are people who are producers who need to have a public space. And these producers really come from a position. I should say the field of independent media and non-commercial media is really founded on some basic values that I think we embrace as a country and those are the values of free expression that every person should have an opportunity to speak their mind, should be able to express their ideas and the people should be able to hear that. And then, a diversity of voices are important. And this is the way that we work together as a country and resolve differences and know each other and work together. So the production of independent is really based on those values. But those values really cannot be expressed if there is no means for the information to get out. And I think those were some of the values that produced some of the excellent models for public telecommunications systems that we have. Some of the ideas of public affairs programming or public broadcasting or the idea of free access for public education or cable. And when we are talking about cable systems or the idea of the telephone as a public trust which is another that needs to be protected and used by the public. There are other ones. But I think that they are all founded on those basic values. So I am here really to speak to the need. Again, like other people have said to retain a private -- a public space for those non-commercial interests and think of the information super highway, not just in terms of people consuming information, having the -- being able to purchase more products or receive, simply receive, but also to be able to produce and communicate in a two-way fashion. And frankly, we are worried about that because we are not seeing in the existing regulations or laws that are being considered -- I should say laws that are being considered not regulations at this point but that emphasis. We are not seeing that emphasis. And we are seeing some of the dismantling of some of the structures that are already existing. And this really concerns us. So I wanted to read a statement of some of the principles that we have developed for the information super highway just quickly. And these again, I am sure there are some other good ones that will come up over time, but these are the ones that we are advancing at this time. We must establish two-way broad band switch networks that allow for interactive use full capability for video image, voice and data. These networks must be available as close to the users as possible and in public telecommunication centers for those without homes on the model of the public telephones, or as shared community resources as we see with something like public access. There must be flexible interfaces on each telecommunications system for a multiplicity of functional abilities and modes of communication without the need for translation and mediation. And this is the position I think is being advanced by a lot of disability groups who I think are some of the most creative thinkers about the information super highway. Each telecommunication system must allow for its use as a vehicle of democratic free expression, where people can express their opinions free of charge, as with the current cable provisions, allowing for public educational and governmental access. There must be funding for experimentation in areas of artistic, social, cultural, and education uses of the new technology as they develop. There must be uncensored use of these telecommunications systems, including prohibitions against the owners of the systems, owning and controlling the programming. There must be adequate operating support for public telecommunication systems to train and provide equipment for community producers and users free of charge, as with the current cable provisions allowing for public educational and governmental access. There must be adequate protections for security, privacy of intellectual property ownership on all communication systems. There must be notice and opportunity for public comment on decisions regarding the development of telecommunication systems on national, regional, and local levels. And I thank you for this opportunity. And decisions on a development of telecommunication systems must be based not solely on a cost benefit analysis but determined by community needs. And telecommunication providers must be accountable to the communities they serve. So I guess what I am here to do is ask you as an advisory body is to take leadership in advancing these issues and communicating to your capacity to the task force, Administration, the Congress, whoever. So I've got this handbook with is basically the principles which I will leave for you. And thanks for the opportunity for me to speak. MR. LEWIS: Thank you very much. That comes to the end of our public comment and the end of our work today. I would just like to summarize quickly to say first of all, thank you for your spirit of participation. We did a lot today. We had in the morning session the framework for the NIIAC which I thought the consensus was established. And we had a work program for the next year and a half. We had review of our Mega-Projects which I think is ongoing and heading in the right direction to fulfill our obligations. And we had a good dialogue with the Secretary Mr. Brown in terms of his leadership in guiding us with our work. And obviously, hearing his work over the past year was exhilarating for all of us. The critical issues this afternoon led by Ed I thought was very good. And I think it was an effort to bring us together to see the critical issues and to bridge those issues, but also to have the dialogue and the consensus build by this Council. And that was beginning to happen. And as Ed said, we will do that in each of our meetings going forward. And obviously, our public comments are important to us. We need to figure out as our schedule permits how to allow for more time if that is necessary, but we do want to encourage and continue our public comment portions. And finally, I just say thanks. We will be on the Silicone Valley in October, and a great work ahead for the next few months. Ed. MR. McCRACKEN: Yes. Thank you very much. And Deborah Kaplan and I will be hosting the next meeting held in California. And see you there. MR. LEWIS: Great. One announcement, again thanks to the staff and all of your staffs. Many of you have volunteered your staffs to work. And they have been extremely helpful. And the staff is having a meeting here immediately following this meeting. There will be a meeting of the staff. So thanks again. We will see you in October. (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned.) C E R T I F I C A T E This is to certify that the foregoing proceedings of a meeting of the United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure, held on Tuesday, September 13, 1994, were transcribed as herein appears and that this is the original transcript thereof. ROSEMARY E. HARRIS