Maybe this is a way to continue this discussion, at this early stage reply with your comments directly to Contained.
By passing the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, the two dominant parties in the USA have jointly agreed that the convergence of media, telecommunications and computing should be driven by market competition between large corporations. Recognising that massive economies of scale are needed for the construction of a national broadband network, the Democratic President and the Republican legislature have lifted most restrictions on the cross-ownership of media and telecommunications systems. In addition, further legislation is pending which will propose a dramatic extension of the rights of copyright owners to provide the legal structure for an electronic marketplace in information commodities. Quietly forgetting its New Deal aspirations for an information superhighway construction programme, the US government has now abdicated ist strategic responsibilities to the private sector. But, this faith in market competition entails risks. In the near future, no nation will be able to compete within the global marketplace without a fibre-optic grid. Just as the building of railway, road, electricity, gas, telephone and water networks in the past laid the basis for modern urban living, the infobahn will provide the basic infrastructure for the next stage of capitalism. The fibre-optic grid will not only distribute entertainment and information, but also enable people to work collaboratively in almost every sector of production. Encouraged by funding from high tech corporations, the American political establishment is gambling that the construction of the National Information Infrastructure can be successfully carried out through the neo-liberal panaceas of deregulation and privatisation.
Given the history of the development of the PC and the Net, it seems more likely that the infobahn will emerge from the miscegenation of the public, private and community sectors. Yet, ironically, debate in the USA over the Telecommunications Reform Act hasn't been centred on whether or not unrestrained market competition between private companies is the only way to develop cyberspace. Instead, a fierce controversy has raged around an attempt to impose broadcasting-style content controls on the Net. Under the terms of the new Telecommunications Reform Act, online services cannot allow access to "pornography" or the use of the "seven dirty words" in any form. From being a largely unregulated form of communications, the Net has now suddenly come under the most restrictive form of censorship applied in the USA. Not surprisingly, there has been a storm of protest from the online community. Net sites were turned black, and blue ribbons have been attached to Web pages in protest against these restrictions on the freedom of speech. Legal actions are underway to test whether the regulations contravene the right of freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. There are important issues at stake in this controversy. Parents are justified to be concerned about paedophiles using the Net to contact minors or distribute pornography. Children should be allowed to grow into puberty at their own pace and free from sexual violence. Yet, the restrictions in the Telecommunications Reform Act aren't simply concerned with clamping down on a small minority of child abusers. Under pressure from Christian fundament lists, the two main political parties have passed a law which could potentially prevent the distribution of any form of sexual material - even among consenting adults. If this attempt at censorship succeeds, online services in the USA would only be able to provide content which conformed to the repressive mores of the American Puritan tradition.
As with any other law, the Telecommunications Reform Act will face the problem of enforcement. The "War on Drugs" hasn't stopped Americans from voraciously consuming billions of dollars of illegal chemicals every year. There must be similar doubts about the practicality of the censorship measures in the new Act. Is the American state really going to be able to prevent its citizens saying "fuck" to each other in their private e-mails? How will it prevent people logging-on to Web sites in other countries with a less hypocritical attitude towards adult sexuality? The development of hypermedia is the result of the convergence not only of radio and television broadcasting, but also of other types of less censored media, such as printing and music. Why should the Net be subject to broadcasting-style restrictions rather than those applied to printed material? A long political battle is now beginning to find an acceptable level of legal controls over the new forms of social communications.
(...)
At the very moment that cyberspace is about to become opened up to the general public, the individual freedom which they prized in the Net seems about to be legislated out of existence with little or no political opposition. Crucially, the lifting of restrictions on market competition hasn't advanced the cause of freedom of expression at all. On the contrary, the privatisation of cyberspace seems to be taking place alongside the introduction of heavy censorship.
The ideological bankruptcy of the West Coast libertarians derives from their historically inaccurate belief that cyberspace has been developed by the "left-right fusion of free minds with free markets" (Louis Rossetto, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine).
As Andy Cameron and I showed in our article, "The Californian Ideology", neo-liberalism has been embraced by the West Coast version of Kroker and Weinstein's "virtual class" as a way of reconciling the anarchism of the New Left with the entrepreneurial zeal of the New Right. Above all, this weird hybrid has relied on projecting old myths about the American revolution onto the process of digital convergence. According to Wired Magazine, the development of hypermedia would create a high tech "Jeffersonian Democracy" - the eighteenth century will be reborn in the twenty-first century.
(...)
Because the liberal principles of Jeffersonian Democracy exist outside real history, (...) Californian ideologues cannot recognise the temporal dynamics of really existing capitalism. Although new frontiers may be opened up by enterprising individuals, the original pioneers are quickly replaced by more collective forms of organisation, such as joint-stock companies. For instance, the free-spirited cowboys of the Wild West soon ended up as employees of agri-businesses financed by the industrialised East.
A similar process occured in the first electronic frontier in American history: radio broadcasting. Back in the early 20s, radio was initially developed by an enthusiastic minority of amateurs and entrepreneurs. With few restrictions over broadcasting, almost anyone could either set up their own station or rent airtime on somebody else's. Yet, once cheap radio receivers became widely available, the airwaves were rapidly taken over by the corporate networks provided by NBC and CBS. This process of monopolisation was consolidated by the Federal government through the 1927 Radio Act which restricted broadcasting to the holders of licences granted by a state-appointed regulatory body. Not surprisingly, conservative politicians seized the opportunity to silence political and cultural radicals, especially from the Left. However, this imposition of censorship encountered little popular disapproval. On the contrary, most voters supported the Radio Act because the licencing system ensured that the popular programmes of the national networks could be heard clearly without interference from other stations. The democratisation of the availability of radio broadcasting had ironically removed most opportunities for participation within the new media.
The key question now is whether the new electronic frontier of cyberspace is condemned to follow the same path of development. (...) [T]he principal obstacle to the expansion of the Net in the USA is the problem of who pays for the building of the fibre-optic grid. Given that they refuse to provide state investment, the Democrats and Republicans have had to use the new Telecommunications Reform Act to create a regulatory framework friendly to the large corporations which possess the capital needed for the construction of the infobahn. Above all, both parties have given their blessing to the growing number of mergers between companies operating within the converging sectors of the media, computing and telecommunications. Because it has lost its competitive edge in its traditional Fordist industries, the American economy now relies heavily on companies at the centre of the process of digital convergence, such as the Hollywood studios, Microsoft and AT&T. Far from encouraging a Jeffersonian Democracy composed of small businesses, the Telecommunications Reform Act has cleared the way for the emergence of American "national champions" which have sufficent size both to build the infobahn at home and to compete successfully abroad against their European and Asian rivals.
For many on the Left, these multi-media corporations are the greatest threat to free speech on the Net. As happened in radio - and later television - broadcasting, the desire to attract a mass audience can be a far more effective method of inhibiting political radicalism and cultural experimentation than any half-baked censorship provisions tacked onto the end of a Telecommunications Reform Act. The Neo-Luddite pessimists have their worst fears confirmed when corporate leaders openly proclaim their aim to transform the Net into "interactive television". In this scenario, the new forms of sociability existing within contemporary cyberspace would be replaced by the passive consumption of pop entertainment and biased information provided by multi-media corporations. Despite their disingenuous protests against the anti-pornography provisions in the new Act, these corporations cannot be too sad to see the introduction of regulations which would turn the Net into a safe - and therefore profitable - form of family fun.
In this vision of the future, Jeffersonian Democracy is simply neo-liberal propaganda designed to win support for the privatisation of cyberspace from the members of the "virtual class". By promiscuously mixing New Left and New Right together, the Californian Ideology attracts those individuals who hope that they're smart - or lucky - enough to seize the opportunities presented by the rapid changes in the technological basis of social production. But, while they're being sold the dream of making it big as cyber-entrepreneurs, most digital artisans are, in reality, denied the employment security previously enjoyed by workers in Fordist industries. Far from being self-sufficent pioneers on the electronic frontier, many end up living hand-to-mouth from one short-term corporate contract to another. Similarly, the privatisation of cyberspace also threatens community uses of cyberspace. As more commercial money is spent on providing online services, it becomes increasingly difficult for amateurs to create Web sites of sufficent quality to attract large number of users. Yet, as happened in 20s radio broadcasting, many people will happily accept corporate control over cyberspace if they are provided with well-produced online services. According to the Neo-Luddites, the democratisation of the availability of the Net is removing most opportunities for meaningful participation within cyberspace.
The current controversy in the USA over the Telecommunications Reform Act has cruelly exposed the limitations of the Californian Ideology. (...) Far from producing an electronic frontier composed of many small businesses, the commercialisation of cyberspace is creating the conditions for the concentration of capital on a global scale. Given the huge costs of building a national broadband network, only very large corporations can mobilise enough investment to carry out this infrastructure project. Within this emerging oligopoly, innovative entrepreneurs will still achieve public prominance as either leaders of big businesses or as sub-contractors of the multi-media corporations. But their individual success will only be made possible through the huge collective effort to build the infobahn. The dynamics of digital convergence within really existing capitalism are pushing towards the ever increasing socialisation of production and communications, not the realisation of eighteenth century fantasies of individual self-sufficency.
It is therefore rather one-sided (...) to direct (...) criticisms solely against the anti-pornography regulations contained within the new Telecommunications Reform Act. Freedom of expression on the Net is not only threatened by the state, but also by the market. As shown by the history of radio broadcasting in the USA, these two forms of censorship have often been imposed in parallel. Both politicians and corporations have a common interest in ensuring that middle America is not disturbed by any radical political and cultural ideas emanating from new forms of mass communications. Therefore, any meaningful campaign for cyber-rights has to fight for freedom of expression against both state and market forms of censorship. The development of the Net offers a way of overcoming the political and economic restrictions on free speech within the existing media. Everyone could have the opportunity not only to receive information and entertainment, but also to transmit their own productions. The problem is how this potentiality will be realised.
A campaign for hypermedia freedom can only be successful if it recognises the inherent contradictions within this fundamental right of citizens. The political rights of each individual are circumscribed by the rights of other citizens. For instance, in order to protect children, the state has a duty to restrict the freedom of speech of paedophiles on the Net. Because ethnic minorities have the right to live in peace, the democratic republic should try to prevent fascists from organising online. But, apart from these minimal restrictions, citizens do have the right to say what they like to each other. A democratic state certainly has no mandate to impose a narrow religious morality on all ist citizens regardless of their own beliefs.
Similarly, a campaign for cyber-rights must also recognise the economic contradictions within hypermedia freedom. Because they use amateur labour, community hypermedia projects can happily exist within a high tech, gift economy. But, if digital artisans are to be paid for their work, some form of commodity exchange will have to be created within the Net. However, the dominance of the free market will inhibit the free circulation of ideas. Therefore campaigns for cyber-rights have to engage with the economic contradictions of hypermedia freedom. Above all, they cannot take absolutist positions over the shape of the digital economy. On the contrary, the development of cyberspace has so far been carried out through a hybrid of public, private and community initiatives. All sectors have played an important role in the construction of the infobahn. But, in the new Telecommunications Reform Act, Americans now face the problem of the wrong type of government action, rather than too much state intervention. While it seems all too eager to impose moral censorship on Net users, the Federal government has simultaneously shirked its duty to ensure that all citizens can have access to online services. While the corporations may possess the resources to build the broadband network, the state should use its powers to prevent any section of society being excluded from cyberspace for lack of resources.
Contrary to the predictions of the pessimists, it is possible to win the struggle against both the political and economic censorship of cyberspace. Although the state can - and should - prosecute the small minority of paedophiles and fascists, the resources needed to spy on everyone's email and Web sites will make the imposition of moral puritanism very difficult to enforce. Even with sophisticated censorship programs, the sheer volume of Net traffic should eventually overwhelm even a well-funded surveillance body. While it might just about be possible to regulate the output of thousands of radio and television stations, the sheer cost of vetting many millions of users logging onto a global network of online services would be prohibitive. The social nature of hypermedia is the best defence of the individual's right of freedom of expression.
Similarly, the corporation's ambition to buy up the whole of cyberspace will also be checked by the social basis of the process of convergence. For instance, the recent trials of interactive television have been commercial failures. As Andy Cameron points out in "Dissimulations", the corporate cheerleaders are trapped within a category mistake: they're trying to impose the form of earlier media onto the new hypermedia. Above all, interactivity can't be restricted to clicking through a series of menu options. Most people want to meet other people within cyberspace. Unlike the existing electronic media, the Net is not centred on the one-way flow of communications from a limited number of transmitters. On the contrary, hypermedia is a two-way form of communications where everybody is both a receiver and a transmitter. The multi-media corporations will undoubtedly play a leading role in building the infrastructure of the infobahn and selling information commodities over the Net, but they will find it impossible to monopolise the social potential of cyberspace.
Over recent years, the advocates of the Californian Ideology have been claiming that eighteenth century liberal individualism would be miraculously reborn through the process of digital convergence. Yet, now online services are becoming available to the mass of the population, the collective nature of the new information society is becoming increasingly obvious. Within politics, electronic democracy will be at the centre of the relationship between representatives and their voters. Within all sectors of the economy, the infobahn will soon become the basic infrastructure for collaborative work across time and space. Crucially, this socialisation of politics and economics will be the best protection for individual freedom within cyberspace. Far from having to escape into a neo-liberal hyper-reality, people can utilise the new digital technologies to enhance their lives both inside and outside cyberspace. The electronic agora is yet to be built.
Professor Richard Barbrook is a member of the Hypermedia Research Centre of the University of Westminster, London.
(emphasis added)