[This document came from the Progress & Freedom Foundation,
http://www.pff.org.]

PFF - 5/3/96
     
Courting Irrelevance

     The digirati needs to learn how to make friends and win influence in
     Washington.
     
     Richard F. O'Donnell
     
   
   
   For months the path finders of Cyberspace have been apoplectic about
   government censorship of the Internet. On-line discussion groups and
   computer magazines have filled gigabytes of memory with words on how
   the heavy hand of government is trying to smash the new frontier.
   Countless conference panelists have railed against the ignorance of
   Second Wave Congressmen who have never even been on line. The result
   of all this collective frothing at the mouth: Absolutely nothing!
   
   
   The computer industry forgot the old adage that how you do things is
   just as important as what you do. To the dismay of us all, the
   government will now determine the content of Cyberspace. To prevent
   future damage to the electronic frontier, the digirati needs to learn
   better the ways of Washington.
   
   
   When President Clinton signed into law the Communications Decency Act,
   which criminalizes the transmission and posting of indecent material
   on line, the Internet civil libertarians observed a day of mourning
   for supposedly lost free speech by turning black the background on
   their web pages. This collective act of protest was greeted, at best,
   with a yawn in Washington and, at worst, with a collective "Who cares
   if their web pages are black? The fools."
   
   
   How can a group of such bright people, who by most accounts are
   building the future, have been so ineffective in their bid to protect
   their nascent technology - through their insularity and
   holier-than-thou attitude. Walking into the office of a Member of
   Congress or the Cabinet and saying "You just don't get it" is not a
   way to quickly make friends and win influence. Flooding with e-mail
   the offices of those few Members of Congress who actually are on-line
   demonstrated how small the Internet constituency is. (And e-mail is a
   lot easier to get rid of than an envelope.)
   
   
   The doyens of Silicon Valley need to realize that no matter how
   glorious the future of Cyberdemocracy, for the foreseeable future it
   is in Washington and the state capitols where policy is made. The
   crucial weakness of the entire computer industry is that for the past
   decade it has not had much of a presence in Washington, let alone
   state capitols (where the most onerous taxes are passed). Cyberspace
   may be a world unto itself, but it exists in the real world, and
   unless its leaders engage people in the real world, those in the real
   world will continue to do bad things to the electronic frontier. The
   forces for regulating speech on the Internet are real; the forces
   against it are virtual. The real will win every time.
   
   
   In Washington and state capitols, entrenched Industrial Age interests
   still hold sway. As Francis Fukuyama notes: "By definition, sunrise
   industries do not yet exist and therefore have no interest groups
   promoting them. Sunset industries, on the other hand, are often big
   employers and usually have vocal and politically powerful proponents."
   Many hackers need to learn how to stop frightening lawmakers and start
   befriending them.
   
   
   If the Information Age means anything, it means we must view reality
   in new ways. As such, a challenge: it would behoove the civil
   libertarians of Cyberspace to recognize in their perceived enemy a
   natural ally. Many supposed "right wing Christians," who are rightly
   concerned about morality and pornography, are just as fearful of an
   authoritarian government (for impinging on their right to freely
   practice their faith). The digirati must make peace with this supposed
   enemy (but not the true statists) by showing them it is no better to
   have government regulation of chat-rooms than of pulpits. (In
   Washington, your opponents on a particular issue may very well be your
   allies on the next debate.)
   
   
   There are tried and true ways of building coalitions, and the computer
   industry is beginning to learn them. Many companies and individuals
   are advising the new bi-partisan and bi-cameral Congressional Internet
   Caucus. Efforts by Representative Vern Ehlers is to teach his fellow
   Members about Cyberspace are being widely supported.
   
   
   The battle over the Communications Decency Act was lost, but valuable
   lessons for the war were learned: having a sustained presence on the
   field and building coalitions with unusual allies.