Internet Outlook with Richard Wiggins | 42

The Death of the Information Superhighway

By Richard Wiggins

ast week President Clinton held a press conference in which he dramatically announced his plans to do nothing. The topic was the Internet. The President said that Internet commerce was an important national and international goal, and that the best way to promote that commerce was for government to step aside and for the industry to police itself.

Ira Magaziner, who crafted the Clinton health plan, contrived the new policy. On the heels of the overturn of the Communications Decency Act, the architect of a gargantuan, enormously complex scheme for fixing the health care industry has concluded that the best way to promote the Internet industry is to leave it alone.

The CDA set up Federal prosecutors and courts as referees of Internet content. Regardless of past views, at this point the Administration is on the right track with its laissez faire treatment of the Internet. In some ways Clinton is merely describing the inevitable. During the 1996 campaign, some opponents claimed that Clinton tried wherever possible to take credit for the sunrise. Now comes the President with a bold plan: don't do anything that will impede the development of new Internet technologies. If you can't claim credit for the sunrise, take credit for not slowing the rotation of the Earth.

What alternatives might the Adminstration have entertained? Regulating content? No, the Supreme Court pretty clearly took the wind out of those sails. Creating a new Cabinet post, the Secretary of Internet Commerce? No, a Congress that wants to dismantle the existing Commerce Department wouldn't favor any sort of new bureacracy. Taxing the Net? No, that would've evoked a horrendous hue and cry from the telecommunications industry, consumers, and advocates of free trade.