Page 144 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

134 Communication, Commerce and Power

By the early 1980s, it had become clear that the free flow policy was
an inadequate means through which substantive international reforms
could be generated. This was due to the absence of the leverage
needed to compel other countries to accept free flow as a legal
principle which, under most conditions, would be prescient in relation
to prior consent. But even if they were to become universally recog-
nized, the failure of free flow also stemmed from the unenforceable
nature of such principles. In light of a mounting corporate reliance on
international communications and information services, and the enor-
mous costs involved in constructing 'seamless' world-wide telecom-
munications infrastructures, finding answers to questions concerning
the legality and enforceability of free flow became matters of great
urgency.
In the past, US telecommunications interests had been almost
wholly identified with the interests of AT&T and Comsat. A common
acceptance of these monopolies and their complementary relations
with Intelsat and PTTs persisted until the 1970s. But by the early
1980s, the growing number of US-based companies that had become
dependent on international communications, and their demands for
specialized services and lower costs, generated a wide-scale reassess-
ment of both free flow policy and the persistence of largely uncompe-
titive telecommunications markets . Washington-based communica-
9
tions consultant Roland Hornet told Congress in 1983 that 'until we
in the US exert ourselves to redirect the swirl of 'sovereignty'
forces along more constructive paths, we face a potentially calamitous
disintegration of information resources and relationships that will
benefit neither United States interests nor the international
community.'Io
From an intra-state perspective, dissatisfaction with free flow
emerged in step with the application of new technologies. For ex-
ample, as a result of the use of conventional telecommunication facil-
ities to transfer computer software across national borders, the
Department of Defense established the means to monitor such trans-
missions. When this practice became public knowledge in 1983, the
State Department was deluged with complaints from foreign govern-
ments that this and other forms of US spying contravened the spirit of
America's own free flow of information. II The resulting State Depart-
ment-DoD conflict sharpened State-White House frictions over the
issue of executive branch restrictions to so-called 'strategic exports'
involving limitations in the availability of US technologies and scient-
ific research to 'ideologically friendly' countries. In the minds of