Page 220 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Internet and Its Rad cal Potent al | 1

al gore’s internet?
During the Clinton administration, Vice President Albert Gore organized the “National In-
formation Infrastructure” (NII) discussions that led to the commercialization of the Internet.
The accelerated delivery of Internet technology to a mass public created the World Wide
Web among other services, and the Internet rose to occupy a major place in the national
imagination. When published reports quoted Al Gore as saying, “I invented the Internet,”
the phrase was considered an outrageous exaggeration, and he was roundly criticized for
attempting to take credit for the most important technological development of the century.
A few years later, during his bid for the White House in the presidential elections of 2000,
he appeared on the David Letterman show and in a comedy routine, presented a Top Ten
list of presidential slogans that had been rejected by the Gore/Lieberman ticket. One of the
rejected campaign slogans was, “Remember folks, I invented the Internet and I can take it
away.” Gore received a hearty applause for his self-mocking script, though he did not be-
come the 43rd president of the United States, and the controversy still plagues him.

inCrEasing LEgaL BounDariEs

The failure of Napster to defend a business model based on peer-to-peer file
sharing set an important precedent for digital distribution of media. The MGM v.
Grokster case decided in 2005 by the U.S. Supreme Court benefited the content
industries by exposing technology companies to damages from “secondary lia-
bility” for copyright infringement. While it did not go quite so far as to overturn
the landmark Sony Betamax ruling, which protected multipurpose information
technology designers and also the rights of fair use, the ruling created a new
“inducement” doctrine for copyright that introduces new risks to technology in-
novators whose creations imperil established technology standards and business
models. These precedents have eroded the Internet’s ability to disrupt the sys-
tem of intellectual property ownership dominated by a handful of transnational
corporations.

a “waLLED garDEn”?
Once the “content industries” had tamed the Internet to their liking, tele-
com carriers began to press for the ability to impose price discrimination on
packets received from competing services. The operation of Internet service
“tiers” for prioritized access and distribution of data departs dramatically from
the “network neutrality” principles by which telecom carriers and ISPs have
handled traffic traditionally. Cyberlibertarians, media reformers, and consumer
groups are alarmed by attempts to erode and bypass these conventions. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Michael Copps is criti-
cal of the “access tiering” anticipated as media conglomerates try to extract fees
“from anyone who wants to reach their millions of customers. . . . A handful of
broadband barons is poised to destroy what is so precious about the Internet.”
Such a structure would allow one or two companies to provide the “last mile” of