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Economist Lester Thurow Calls for Internet Regulat
Richard Finney writes "Reuters is reporting that Lester Thurow, a noted economist, says "I don't think there is any example (of self-regulation) that has ever worked, unless government is standing behind it with a club" in a Yahoo! news story. His comments come in response to the Global Business Dialog on Electronic Commerce's comments on self-regulation of the Internet."
Note that this is (ba-dum-bump) yet another "self-regulation" effort. The companies' goal here is simply to head off legislation such as privacy laws, consumer protections and minimum standards for security of customer data, although they do seem to have mentioned porn regulation as well.
Are there any organizations that lobby the US government for the kind of freedoms that many Slashdot readers support? I would be willing to contribute money to support an organization that was fighting the US privacy, encryption, censorship, and other policies if I could find an organization with a good track record on these topics.
The American Civil Liberties Union: http://www.aclu.org
Its alot more than just internet stuff, but they support the things you listed.
Also, try http://www.epic.org
This sig is false.
Lester Thurow is a deranged lunatic who likes to hear himself talk.
He's been so discredited WRT stock market and interest rates that even Leftists don't listen to him anymore.
In 95 he loudly complained that Greenspan was being to tight with the money supply by his low interest rates, and he (greenspan) NEEDS to raise interest rates to save the stock market.
Remember in 92 when he proclaimed the immediate necessity of imposing a $4.50/gallon gas tax in order to "save the economy" (!)? His reasoning was "because Europe does it" (his words)!
His basic premise is that government needs to control EVERYTHING and every method that government uses to achieve this is fine with him.
Unlike Marxists, he considers Government control the ends instead of the means.
He's one of the intellectual forces behind the concept in government that 'you' are not responsible for your actions and 'we' need to force 'you' to behave 'properly'
he's skeptical about the 'self-regulation' because he wants government control of everything.
Does that sound fundamentally evil to you?
Because that freedom gets abused. And to people in general that abuse stands out more than the good qualities. Nobody cares about all the sunny days in fi Florida, but one big storm makes national headlines
Besides would you trust unregulated companies?
All the data most people are willing to give for their free internet use, the personal details that are collected by companies like doubleclick, the address/email/phone data needed by online stores/stock-brokers etc. I am quite sure that most people rather have laws or regulations that prevent companies from reselling that data, than absolute freedom.
I for one would not appreciate it when fi my ISP would record all my online activity, and then sell it together with my home address and telephone number to anyone interested. I can imagine that without legislation/regulation that could well be possible and most likely be quite profitable.
It is only that most companies do not think it is in THEIR best interest to sell your details, or it would be happening at large scale already.
Regulation isn't out there to threaten your anonimity, it is meant to ensure your privacy!
And we will all benefit from clear and enforced policies about the return of merchandise bought online, a clear warranty policy etc.
If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
Going to Lester Thurow for a comment on self-regulation is like having Clinton define propriety - you're getting a strongly biased position, not a judgement. A major emphasis of his career has always been to justify and support governmental control of...well, everything. You have to be suspicious of an economist who claims that wealth can't be created, only divvied up differently (his best-known book is called "The Zero-Sum Game"). There's an enormous bug in that reasoning!
_________________
Oh, INTERCOURSE the penguin! (Python tribute, not Linux knock)
Every time I hear a rumor about Internet regulation, I have to laugh. How can a group of companies and governments regulate a world wide (excuse the pun) phenomenon? This is very similar to Internet Decency laws. Who is going to police the entire Internet? The Internet will always remain free in some way. There will always be illegal things on the net like warez, copyrighted MP3s, etc. It is impossible to prevent.
The only way regulation could work is if every government in the entire world was on board. Once you have one little government that is not regulated, all the sites will move there. I just hope the governments and companies of the world are smart enough not to waste billions of dollars trying to do the impossible.
-- soldack
It always interests me to see how countries think that the Internet doesn't regulate itself. Countries have their own rules and the Internet has theirs, which are slightly more liberal, but much more universal. Take, for example, USENET, a prime example of self-regulation if there ever was one. Groups have charters. Group members take their gripes to ISPs and uplinks if problems occur. If there's too much spam coming from a site, a UDP can be put in place. None of these events happen with the help of government. For the most part, binary pictures of naked teens stay in their respective groups and news servers decide whether to carry them.
The Web has its own form of self-regulation, and it involves linking. If people deem a site of not being worthy, they don't link to it, plain and simple. Porn and violence sites are allowed under the same free speech principles which govern America, but in a much 'freer' context.
Where the conflict lies is when boundaries cross, just like when countries' rules contradict each other. Who is right where? A Canadian was convicted in Texas of murder and sentenced to death. Canada said it was unfair. Texas told the Canadians to go screw themselves? Who's right? Both? Neither? I say, it happened in Texas, let Texas take care of it. Same holds true for the Internet. If it happens there, let the self-regulation take care of it, but if it crosses boundaries (ie. bomb plans get printed and then get confiscated or porn gets saved and then gets discovered), let the parties involved take care of it.
In essence, everyone self-governs themselves in a democratic society, and the Internet is just a democracy with no central governing body.
Can there be no freedom in this world? Will humanity forever be trounced by facist state bastards on one hand and greedy corporate assholes on the other?
"NO-RULES INTERNET MAKES CONTROL DIFFICULT"
That about says it all. I'm just about tired of this facist shit. Free Speech takes a back seat to eCommerce? What the hell is this? Incredible! Why do people babble on and on about consumer rights? What ever the fuck happened to citizens rights?
Kind of a shock seeing this guy is from MIT, the same place Stallman and Noam Chomsky are (does anyone else ever wonder if they know each other?).
support gun control: take guns from cops
So obviously we need a haven for justice, freedom and liberty, where the rest of the world can try to pursue their dreams of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We regulate things in this country for safety purposes. But if this jerk wants to start a Nazi party, then do it else where. Sure the government controls the airwaves, but i'm against that too. If you don't like it, then don't watch/listen to it. you can change the channel/web page/radio station, unless your fingers are broken.
Perhaps what this country needs is a re-evaluation of its beliefs. we need to get rid of those money grubbing politicians who think they are in touch. They only come see what you want when they need too.
ELECT JEDILUKE for California State Senate!
Elect a computer geek for the state of computer geeks. Have your ideas expressed. Have your thoughts be a loud thorn in the side of the state!
hehe its a thought. lates
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Get the crypto, Unix, build a business on it, and offer Net access to your employees without snooping.
Oh and forget about the damned office you don't need one.
I'd like to see these punks compete with that.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
First of all, what everyone else said about Thurow. He is NOT a credible source.
Secondly, what ALL attempts to regulate the Internet in any way, shape, or form ignore is one simple yet important principle: The interplay between laws, traditions, and customs.
To clarify what I mean by this, I'm using roughly the same definitions Isaac Bonewits uses in his writing: A law is something that is written down, that a group is supposed to obey, and if the law is disobeyed, various "punishments" can be meted out by members of the group. Traditions are "how things are done," and they may or may not be written down, but there is no *formal* penalty for breaking them (though there is more often than not an informal one). Customs are common behaviors within a group that develop of their own accord, and they tend to be relatively (though not entirely) flexible.
In my experience, of the three, traditions are actually the strongest regulator of behavior. The law against under-21 folks drinking doesn't do much to curb the tradition of college frat parties, which are largely attended by those who are under 21. There are a lot of silly, stupid, and essentially unenforceable laws on the books -- remember "I Can't Drive 55?" What about laws against consensual sodomy? What about the supreme silliness of outlawing the hemp plant?
The point of this little rant of mine is that governments and corporations can pass all the laws and "regulations" they like, but they aren't going to get anywhere. Aside from a few cases that will be prosecuted to "make an example out of," I expect enforcement to be lax and most people to disregard whatever ends up put together.
Why? Simple. The most important tradition here on the Net is that freedom of information must be maintained at all costs. And we've developed plenty of ways to fight back against those who would try to break that tradition -- everything from black-background web pages up to and including cracking the "bad guy's" system. (Remember the "Department of Injustice" page?)
This is not to say that I won't fight against any attempt to impose these irrelevant laws -- I'd hate to be, or know, an "example," and I don't think anyone should have to go through that.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Every advocate of increased government control or regulation believes that his plan is the one that government will implement. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about health care, gun control or internet filtering. What advocates of moral and economic fascism like Lester don't understand is that the internet isn't really chaos; it is potentially 5 billion plans, each one carefully regulated by its owner, according to his own ideas. Thus self regulation always works, by definition; it simply doesn't always work exactly the way the people used to wielding power want it to work. Of course this angers them, and they respond in typical fashion; strangling the greatest boon mankind has ever known, murdering it in its infancy. Before it is strong enough to fight back.
The problem isn't self regulation; we cannot concede to them the moral high ground. We must make these people call it what it is. If they want to change what we choose to say, we can't let them call it a free choice, and we can't let them still call the net free. We have to make them admit that they are trying to stifle us, processing our thoughts like so many parrots, weeding out that which they don't approve of. And we must make them say it loudly, in so many words. Write it one hundred times. No American lawmaker will dare touch us if we make them tell the truth about what they are doing. If we let them deceive themselves and their constituents, I am afraid the Internet as we know it will soon be dead.
Scudder
"The Soviet Union could have worked, if only they could have had microchips implanted in their brains."
Arthur C. Clarke, 3001
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
> self-regulation without government coercion? How about the MPAA ratings
> system? The Comics Code Authority? That's just right off the top of my
> head.
Actually, I think that was Thurow's point - my understanding is that none of those ratings systems would have come into being without the threat of the "government club" being used on those who didn't comply, and that it's precisely this sort of "self-regulation" (i.e. the government using the ISP industry as its club to spare itself the embarassment of drafting yet another set of unconstitutional laws, only to see them shot down in court again) that he favors.
IMHO, the government realizes that it can't nullify the First Amendment, but if it can get others to do the dirty work on its behalf in the interest of "e-commerce", it won't have to. IMHO this is the whole point of the "self-regulation" push. (Non-Americans can replace "First Amendment" with whatever guarantees of "free speech" are appropriate to their countries.)
In the meantime, many others in the responses to this article have done good jobs of pointing folks to articles and sites that debunk Thurow. When even economists appear to agree that Thurow isn't a credible credible source, I think we can safely move on. It sounds to me like Thurow saw a big conference on self-regulation and wanted to put his two Deutschmarks in on behalf of Bertelsmann. Nice try, but no frankfurter.
This is why many companies have decided that selling individual user details, rather than aggregate data, is not prudent. The companies that don't "get it" will slowly, but surely, disappear.
In regards to the "clear and enforced policies" about return of merchandise, etc., I would direct you to today's Wall Street Journal editorial page. There is an interesting article there about Land's End's refund/return policy, and how Germany is forcing them to not advertise it to keep German companies from having to compete with it. This is a classic example of why government regulation of commerce, net- or traditional, should be handled as laissez-faire as possible!
And Thurow?
Thurow has also recently predicted a coming recession in the economy of the U.S., arguing basically that recession was "built-in" to the economy.
Perhaps what is "built-in" is Thurow's narcissism - I haven't heard much from him in recent years...
I don't understand why ALL of these US based politicians don't get that the INTERNET is an international, uncontrolled network of computers.. I can, right now, create a new network called TCharronNET and declare it Internet Law free, as it's NOT the internet.
Technically speaking, the INTERNET doesn't even exist! It's a network of networks all talking to each other. You simply can't regulate something like that.
Internet law is like Arizona setting local laws to govern the high seas.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Yeah, you're completely right. The Internet has tons of self-regulation of activity, but very little self-regulation of information. I'm not talking censorship-type information, but privacy-type information. This is one of those grey boundaries (where do Internet rights give way to physical-world realities), but I definitely see a problem with all the information companies 'require' for online transactions.
In the economics profession, sadly, LT has gained the nickname "Less-Than Thorough" for the quality of effort he puts into his economic writings these days.
Oh yeah, and the newspaper industry seems to get along fine with self-regulation.
jsm
The Libertarians have many interesting points, but they can't be described as being in favour of strict enforcement of the (actual, American) Bill of Rights, since this is fundamentally a statist document which provides for e.g. conscription in time of war.
Libertarians would also be no help to you in the face of "self-regulation" by the Bertelsmann Group, or in protecting your privacy from those who would spam you mercilessly. A Libertarian Internet would quite likely become a corporate monster, with no tolerance of opposing views. But since the censorship was imposed by the cable companies and ISPs, it wouldn't be "censorship", right?
Seriously, if you believe that only government censorship is bad (which is a defensible position; governments have amonopoly on legal use of force), then go for your life; be a Libertarian on this.
If, on the other hand, you think that making it unreasonably costly for opposing views to be heard is also a form of de facto censorship, then the EFF or ACLU are likely to be more to your text.
Me? I take the position of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty on this;
(relevant extract below)
In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. Those whose bread is already secured, and who desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and illspoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of them.
jsm
Unregulated != free . There is ALWAYS somebody or someone regulating. It is just the matter of choosing who regulates : the governement (elected) or big companies (so called "self-regulated"). If something as to be regulated I prefer that it is by someone elected rather than a fat CEO in a Lexus.