BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/MUG News/EFF/open-platform-testimony

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                   TESTIMONY

                   OF

                 MITCHELL KAPOR

                   PRESIDENT
             ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

                   BEFORE THE

                SUBCOMMITTEE ON

             TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND FINANCE
          HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE

                   REGARDING

      TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE LEGISLATION AND PROPOSALS

                OCTOBER 24, 1991

MR. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I want to thank you for inviting me to testify today on the
Telecommunications Act of 1991 (H.R. 3515) and the Telecommunications
Competition and Services Act of 1991 (Committee Discussion Draft, August
1, 1991).

For those who may not know me, I am the principal developer of the Lotus
1-2-3 spreadsheet program and served as the CEO of the Lotus Development
Corporation between 1982 and 1986 during which time it grew into a $200
million dollar a year software company.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

I am a founder and President of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
public interest organization established one year ago by pioneer
developers of computer software and hardware and members of the computer
networking community.

We founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) based on a shared
conviction that a new public interest advocacy organization was needed
to educate the public about the democratic potential of new computer and
communications technologies and to work to develop and seek to implement
public policies to maximize freedom, competitiveness, and civil liberty
in the electronic social environments being created by new computer and
communications technologies.

While one of EFF's objectives is to secure First and Fourth Amendment
protections for computer users and electronic bulletin board operators,
our primary mission is to insure that the new electronic highways
emerging from the convergence of telephone, cable, broadcast and other
communications technologies are truly free and open.  By building our
membership base, cosponsoring the Communications Policy Forum with the
Consumer Federation of America and the ACLU Information Technology
Project, and developing and advocating specific communications policies,
we hope to play a significant ongoing role in resolving critical
communications issues.  In this context, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee, we again welcome the opportunity to appear here today.

The Infrastructure Challenge

Mr Chairman, I view the lifting of the information services restrictions
by Judge Green as a pivotal moment for our nation's communications
future.  If Congress is to address these issues effectively, it must
first re-frame the current debate.  While the entry of the seven
Regional Bell Operating Companies into the information services market
poses serious dangers of anti-competitive behavior -- because of their
bottleneck control over the local phone loop -- erecting appropriate
safeguards must not be the overarching goal of communications policy.
Neither should "lifting the restrictions" on information services or
manufacturing be the goal of public policy as the RBOCs advocate.

Congress has the opportunity---in fact the obligation---to assert its
jurisdiction and define a national communications policy to govern the
future development of our nation's communications infrastructure.  Only
Congress can do so and it must if we are to end the long standing
communications policy gridlock and move toward achieving our
communications goals.

Public policy must be guided by an overarching social vision of what I
call the National Public Network, a vibrant web of information links to
serve as the main channels for commerce learning, education, politics,
and entertainment in the future.  This network will include the voice
telephone service that we are already so familiar with, along with video
images, sound, and hybrid forms of communication.

To build the National Public Network will require more than safeguards,
entry level tests or new telephone company investment in information
services and fiber optics.  It will require Congress to establish in
legislation basic standards, requirements, regulatory mechanisms and
incentives that will

 --  establish an open platform for information services by speedy
     deployment of ``Personal ISDN'' nation-wide;

 --  ensure competition in local exchange services;

 --  promote First Amendment free expression by reaffirming the
     principles of common carriage;

 --  foster innovations that make networks and information services easy
     to use;

 --  protect personal privacy; and

 --  preserve and enhance equitable access to communications media.

In essence, we need to meet the challenge posed by Chairman Markey:

    to make [information services] available swiftly to the largest
    number of Americans at costs which don't divide the society into
    information haves and have nots and in a manner which does not
    compromise our adherence to the long-cherished principles of
    diversity, competition and common carriage.

The National Public Network

Today, more and more information links are evolving from computer and
telephone systems.  By the end of the next decade, these links will
connect nearly all homes and businesses in the U.S.  They will serve as
the main channels for commerce, learning, education, and entertainment
in our society.  The National Public Network will not be created in a
single step: neither by a massive infusion of public funds, nor with the
private capital of a few tycoons (today known as telecommunications
companies) such as those who built the railroads.  Rather the national,
public broadband digital network will emerge from the "convergence" of
the public telephone network, the cable television distribution system,
and other networks such as the Internet.

At its best, the National Public Network would be a source of immense
social benefits.  As a means of increasing social cohesiveness, while
retaining the diversity that is an American strength, the network could
help revitalize this country's business and culture.  It will increase
the amount of individual participation in common enterprise and
politics. It could also galvanize a new set of relationships-- business
and personal-- between Americans and the rest of the world.

The names and particular visions of the emerging information
infrastructure vary from one observer to another.

Senator Gore calls it the "National Information Superhighway."  Prof.
Michael Dertouzos imagines a "National Information Infrastructure [that]
would be a common resource of computer-communications services, as easy
to use and as important as the telephone network, the electric power
grid, and the interstate highways."  We call it the National Public
Network (NPN), in recognition of the vital role information technology
has come to play in public life and all that it has to offer, if
designed with the public good in mind.

To what ends can we reasonably expect people to use a National Public
Network?  We don't know. Indeed, we probably can't know -- the users of
the network will surprise us.  That's exactly what happened in the early
days of the personal computer industry, when the first spreadsheet
program, VisiCalc, spurred sales of the Apple II computer.  Apple
founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did not design the spreadsheet;
they did not even conceive of it.  They created a platform which allowed
someone else to bring the spreadsheet into being, and all the parties
profited as a result, including the users.

We know this much: Computer and communications technologies are
transforming speech into electronic formats and shifting the locus of
the marketplace of ideas from traditional public places to the new
electronic public forums established over telephone, cable, and related
electronic communications networks.  To both local and long-distance
communities, accessible digital communications will be increasingly
important; by the end of this decade, the "body politic," the "body
social," and the "body commercial" of this country will depend on a
nervous system of fiber-optic lines and computer switches.

Although we cannot anticipate the future uses of the telecommunications
network, we can, and must, articulate goals that will shape the
infrastructure as it develops.  Just as it is necessary for an architect
to know how to make a home suitable for human habitation, it is
necessary to consider how human beings will actually use the network in
order to design it.

Policy Recommendations

In that spirit, we offer a set of recommendations for the evolution of
the National Public Network that need to be addressed in crafting the
legislation before you. I first encountered many of the fundamental
ideas underlying these proposals in the computer networking community.
Some of these recommendations address immediate concerns; others are
more long-term.  The recommendations are organized here according to the
main needs which they will serve: first, ensuring that the design and
use of the telephone network remains open to diversity, second,
safeguarding the freedom of users. The ultimate goal is to develop a
habitable, usable, and sustainable system--a nation of electronic
neighborhoods that people will feel comfortable living within.

I.  Create an Open Platform for Innovation in Information Services by
    Speedily Deploying a Nation-wide "Personal ISDN."

By offering affordable, end-to-end digital capability capable of
reaching into every home, business, and school in the U.S.  Such a
platform will unleash a new generation of information entrepreneurs to
develop a wide range of valuable services.

In the evolution of the NPN, information entrepreneurship can best be
promoted by building with open standards and by making the network
attractive to as many information service providers and developers as
possible.  The most valuable contribution of the computer industry in
the past generation is not a machine, but an idea--the principle of open
architecture.  Typically, a hardware company (an Apple or IBM, for
instance) neither designs its own applications software nor requires
licenses of its application vendors.  Both practices were the norm in
the mainframe era of computing.  Instead, in the personal computer
market, the hardware company creates a "platform"--a common set of
specifications, published openly so that other, often smaller,
independent firms can develop their own products (like the spreadsheet
program) to work with it.  In this way, the host company takes advantage
of the smaller companies' ingenuity and creativity.

In the early stages of development of an industry, low barriers to entry
stimulate competition.  It should be as easy to provide an information
service as to order a business telephone.  Large and small information
providers will probably coexist as they do in book publishing, where the
players range from multi-billion-dollar international conglomerates to
firms whose head office is a kitchen table.  Large and small publishers
can coexist because everyone has access to production and distribution
facilities--printing presses, typography, and the U.S. mails and
delivery services--on a non-discriminatory basis.

To achieve the information diversity currently available in print in the
new electronic forum, we must guarantee widespread accessibility to a
platform of basic services necessary for creating information services
of all kinds.  The platform of services offered must:

   (1) have a critical mass of features and capabilities;

   (2) be ubiquitous;

   (3) be affordable.

Some suggest that the technology necessary to offer such a platform is
far off and would require billions of dollars of investment in fiber
optics.

Actually, we have a platform that meets these criteria within our reach
right now.  Personal ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) could
make voice, data, video, high-speed fax, video, and multimedia services
available TODAY to telephone subscribers all around the country.  ISDN
as a key information services technology is well-known in the
communications industry, but its potential as a universal platform is
not properly appreciated, nor has it been properly positioned by the
RBOCs as a service for everyone.

The personal computer transformed the image of the computer from that of
hulking mainframes imprisoned in glass-walled temples to friendly
desktop machines capable of performing a wide variety of useful tasks.
Just as the desktop personal computer represented the revolutionary
platform for innovation of the 1980's, it is my belief that ubiquitous
digital communications media, such as are enabled by ISDN, represent the
hope of the 1990's.  Personal ISDN can enable the citizen's access into
the Information Age.  The key attributes of a Personal ISDN are that, as
a platform, it possess a critical mass of enabling features and
capabilities for individual use; and, as a service, that it be
positioned, priced, marketed to be of interest to and within the reach
of everyone.  ISDN must be re-positioned as a basic service, available
to consumers and small businesses.  This service can be the test bed for
a whole new generation of information services which could benefit the
American public.

+Critical Mass of Features

Many of the capabilities once thought to be possible only on an
all-fiber network, such as interactive full-motion video can be achieved
to a significant degree over Personal ISDN.  This is due to continuing
revolutions in microelectronics and software which enable compression of
video signals by a factor of 100 without significant loss of quality.
Given this, it is possible to use copper wire-based ISDN to carry video
signals to their destination, at which point they are uncompressed
through use of increasingly inexpensive processors, which are built-in
to computers, televisions, and other consumer electronic equipment.  If
uncompressed, carriage of these video signals would require hundreds of
billions of dollars of replacement of existing wiring in the local loop.

I am sure that the researchers at Apple Computer and other pioneering
high-technology firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the country
would be happy to come to Washington to demonstrate these capabilities
for committee members.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation would be
happy to arrange for this.

Ultimately, there is a crucial role for an end-to-end fiber optic
network.  While we have not yet reached the limits of what can be done
with video compression, in the end there will be some services, such as
high-definition television, which will require the bandwidth of fiber
optics.  It would be a huge mistake, however, to commit the enormous
funds required to build such a network and to wait until the next
century for its deployment without accumulating a generation of
experience based on lessons of the marketplace which can be achieved
through a Personal ISDN-based platform.

We have reached an effective limit to the usability of the current
voice-grade telephone network for information services.  Current
bulletin boards and on-line services use existing voice-grade telephone
lines for user access.  These include 30,000 computer bulletin board
systems (BBSes) with millions of users, in addition to the millions of
Prodigy, Compuserve, and other commercial services.  It's a healthy
start, but expansion is hampered by inadequate infrastructure imposed by
trying to overlay computer use on top of a network designed for voice
telephony.  Problems include lack of standardization; slow speeds;
noisy, error-filled channels; and the difficulties of use and barriers
created by these factors.  As a result of these barriers, the vast
benefits of new information technologies are denied to all but the
computer-literate -- those who have the technical skills to navigate the
complexities of today's information services.

What is needed is to raise the floor by creating a new standard, minimum
platform for information exchange.  ISDN, repositioned as Personal ISDN,
can provide a faster, cleaner digital platform for information users
around the country.  It will be easier to use, and allow information
entrepreneurs to offer a vast array of services to a broader user base.

+Ubiquity

To create a market for information services, everyone must be able to
reach the platform.  We must build the new public network by making it
easy for people to connect to it with a few simple decisions. Again, an
analogy to the personal computer market is helpful.  Minicomputers and
mainframes were marketed to companies.  Microcomputers (PC's) were
marketed to individuals.  We need to build a platform that can reach
into individual households and small businesses in order to stimulate
the development of information services that will meet the needs of
those users.

Personal ISDN -- which can be provided over the existing copper plant
that comprises today's public switched network -- can reach into every
home and every small business without laying a single mile of fiber
optic cable.  Telephone company data indicates that over the next three
years majority of central office switches will be upgraded to requisite
digital capability.

+Affordability

Platform services, even if they are ubiquitous, are useless unless they
are also affordable to American consumers.  Just as the voice telephone
network would be of little value if only a small fraction of the country
could afford to have a telephone in their home, a national information
platform will only achieve its full potential when a large majority of
Americans can buy access to it.  We need an information platform that is
priced as a basic service, on par with voice services, so that a choice
to sign up is no more or less burdensome than subscribing to basic
telephone service or cable television.

All available information indicates that ISDN can be priced as a basic
service.  The cost of carrying a digital ISDN call from the customer to
the local switch is just the same as an analog voice call in the digital
switching regime that ISDN pre-supposes.  There are some fixed
investment costs still to be incurred to upgrade the nation's central
office switches in order to handle ISDN traffic, but commitments to
these investments are already largely made.

For all of the reasons I have cited, ISDN would be an ideal platform for
the creation of a variety of new information services.  Yet it is not
being made available to the American public.  Today, even in Washington,
DC -- a city that is one of the major information hubs of the country --
it is impossible to order standard ISDN service from the local phone
company.

Progress towards realizing the vision of the National Public Network
will best be achieved through a series of incremental steps as our
society learns how to use digital media.  No one can guarantee when an
application as useful as the spreadsheet will emerge for the NPN (as it
did for personal computers), but open architecture based on a Personal
ISDN is the best way for it to happen and let it spread when it does.

The next incremental step should be the deployment of a medium-speed
digital infrastructure based on ISDN which can be readily adapted for
use by information entrepreneurs today.  It will not require large
capital investment, which could drive up basic rates.  It can be
leveraged by use of computer technology of desktops, laptops, and
palmtops.  In years to come every home and office may be attached to the
National Public Network with a fiber optic link.  But this is hundred of
billions of dollars and years away.  We have to crawl before we can run
to the field of dreams.

Much of the current debate about the future of the telephone network is
defined by the opposition of two sets of large forces - the local Bell
Operating Companies, on one side, and other carriers and publishers on
the other.  But often as not, the creation and emergence of new
industries depends more on outsiders and new entrants who rely more on
ingenuity than capital to develop the breakthrough concepts and systems
which result in explosive growth.  The personal computer industry was
sparked by the contributions of industry outsiders like Steve Jobs, Bill
Gates, and myself to grow from nothing to $100 billion in just over a
decade.  A personal ISDN platform would give a new generation of
information entrepreneurs a chance to show what they can do.  To the
extent we can open up the process from one dominated exclusively by
well-fortified corporate interests to one in which entrepreneurs have a
chance, we improve the chances of another entrepreneurial revolution.
If we build the right platform and we lower the barriers to entry to
invite in all who want to play, I am convinced the entrepreneurs will
find it, and, with the sure invisible hand of market feedback will help
realize the vision of the information age.

II. Ensure Competition in Local Exchange Services

In the context of the post MFJ restrictions environment, Congress must
act now to ensure competition in local exchange services.  Competition
will promote innovation in these services on which information providers
rely, and help guarantee equal access to all local exchange facilities.

Many consumer and industry groups are concerned that as the MFJ
restrictions are lifted, the RBOCs will come to dominate the design of
the emerging National Public Network, shaping it more to accommodate
their business goals than the public interest.  There is evidence that
the RBOCs are resisting attempts to transform the public telephone
system into a truly open public network notwithstanding the FCC's stated
intention to implement Open Network Architecture.

The Communications Policy Forum, a coalition of public interest and
industry groups, is working hard to study whether some mix of safeguards
drawn from Rep. Cooper's bill, H.R. 3515, and Chairman Markey's August
1, 1991 Discussion draft, could maintain a competitive information
services market that allows RBOC participation.

Some suggest that an entry level test is necessary to guarantee that
alternative infrastructure is developed for information services
delivery.  But rather than relying on alternative pathways, we might
first investigate ways to open up the existing public switched network.
The post-divestiture phone system offers us a valuable lesson: a
telecommunications network can be managed effectively by separate
companies --even including bitter opponents like AT&T and MCI-- as long
as they can connect equitably and seamlessly from the user's standpoint.

The bottleneck that RBOCs have on local exchange services critical to
information providers can be minimized by unbundling these services and
allowing non-BOC providers to offer them in competition with BOC local
exchange companies.  The RBOC's response to the FCC inquiry on open
architecture in the public switched network was not sufficient because
it does not allow for full competition in services that have
traditionally been identified as part of the local switch.  Bellcore's
proposal for an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) offers many useful
services, but centralizes them in BOC-controlled facilities, leaving no
room for competition from other providers.  Unbundling and expanded
competition is a key to ensuring equitable access to local exchange
services needed for information service delivery.

III.  Promote First Amendment Free Expression by Affirming the
      Principles of Common Carriage

In a society which relies more and more on electronic communications
media as its primary conduit for expression, full support for First
Amendment values requires extension of the common carrier principle to
all of these new media.

Common carriers are companies which provide conduit services for the
general public.  They include railroads, trucking companies, and
airlines as well as telecommunications firms.  A communications common
carrier, such as a telephone company, is required to provide its
services on a non-discriminatory basis.  It has no liability for the
content of any transmission. A telephone company does not concern itself
with the content of a phone call.  Neither can it arbitrarily deny
service to anyone.

The common carrier's duties have evolved over hundreds of years in the
common law and later statutory provisions.  The rules governing their
conduct can be roughly distilled in a few basic principles.

Common carriers have a duty to:

+provide services in a non-discriminatory manner at a fair price

+interconnect with other carriers

+provide adequate services

The common carriers who make up the critical elements of the public
switched network -- local exchange companies and inter-exchange
companies -- should be subject to comprehensive common carriage duties
as described above.  However, all communications carriers are not
necessarily common carriers.  As part of the larger telecommunications
infrastructure there will be private networks which perform specialized
functions or only serve certain groups of users.  These private networks
may be interconnected with the National Public Network, but not
dedicated to carrying all traffic, as the local and long distance
exchange carriers are now.  However, on these private networks, it may
be desirable to create public ``right of ways'' to facilitate the most
efficient, free flow of information.

Unlike arrangements found in many countries, our communications
infrastructure is owned by private corporations instead of by the
government.  Therefore, a legislatively imposed expanded duty of common
carriage on public switched telephone carriers is necessary to protect
free expression effectively.

As Prof. Eli Noam, a former New York State Public Utility Commissioner,
explains:

   [C]ommon carriage is the practical analog to [the] First Amendment
   for electronic speech over privately-owned networks, where the First
   Amendment does not necessarily govern directly.

A telecommunications provider under a common carrier obligation would
have to carry any legal message regardless of its content whether it is
voice, data, images, or sound.  For example, if full common-carrier
protections were in place for all of the conduit services offered by the
phone company, the terminations of "controversial" 900 services such as
political fundraising would not be allowed, just as the phone company is
now prohibited by the Communications Act from discriminating in the
provision of basic telephone services.

In a letter to this committee from non-profit organizations who use 900
number services which was also signed by EFF, we noted that:

   Non-profit charitable and political organizations are at the
   forefront of innovative uses of audiotext services.  The flexibility
   of this medium enables political advocacy groups to put up 900 number
   programs in response to changing political events....Since regulation
   of this medium is likely to set the pattern for other information
   services in the future, we believe that Congress should take careful
   steps and consider long-term goals.  To guarantee that this medium
   continues to fulfill its potential as a forum for political debate
   and the free flow of ideas to the public, Congress could adopt
   legislation that would extend common carriage non-discrimination
   duties to all enhanced service providers.

Neither BOCs nor IXCs would be allowed to terminate service
because of anticipated harm to their "corporate image."
Though providers of 900 information services did have their
freedom of expression abridged by the BOC/IXC action, First
Amendment protection is probably not legally available to them
because there was no state action underlying the termination.

If efforts to encourage the development of the National Public Network
are successful, more and more expressive and communicative activity will
rely on new information media.  As the locus of communication shifts,
fundamental principles which protect free expression and free press must
be adapted so that the same level of protection applies to all
communication, regardless of the medium.

IV. Make the Network Simple to Use

Today's public switched telephone network is easy to use and adaptable
for use by people with special needs.  Information services that become
part of this network should reflect this same ease-of-use and
accessibility.

"Transparency" is the Holy Grail of software designers. When a program
is perfectly transparent, people forget about the fact that they are
using a computer. The mechanics of the program no longer intrude on
their thoughts. The most successful computer programs are nearly always
transparent: a spreadsheet, for instance, is as self-evident as a ledger
page. Once users grasp a few concepts (like rows, cells, and formula
relationships), they can say to themselves, "What's in cell A-6?"
without feeling that they are using an alien language.

One of the great virtues of the public switched telephone network, from
a user's perspective, is that it operates according to patterns and
principles that are now intuitively obvious to almost everyone.  As this
network grows beyond just voice services to digital information
exchange, the same kind of ease and user comfort should be maintained.

For example, information services will need standards for presenting
textual information in formats that are pleasing to the eye and easily
manipulable by users.  Today, though, the only common standard for
computer text is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII). But ASCII is inadequate; it ignores fonts, type styles (like
boldface and italics), footnotes, headers, and other formats which
people regularly use. Each word processing program codes these formats
differently, and there is still no intermediary language that can
accommodate all of them. The National Public Network will need such a
language to transcend the visual poverty and monotony of today's
telecommunicated information. It will also need additional standards
beyond what have been developed for message addresses and headers, a
common set of directories (the equivalent of the familiar white pages
and yellow pages directories), common specifications for coding and
decoding images, and standards for other major services.

Since current standards are inadequate to the demands of users:

   We ... need to endow the NII [National Information Infrastructure]
   with a set of widely understood common communication conventions.
   Moreover, these conventions should be based on concepts that make
   life easier for us humans, rather than for our computer servants.

The development of standards is vital, not just because it helps makes
the network easier to use, but also because it ensures an open platform
for information providers.  In shaping the standards development
process, we can draw guidance from the voluntary, cooperative style of
standards setting that has help the Internet to flourish.  The technical
and management standards that govern the Internet have evolved over more
than twenty years to the mutual benefit of all members of the network.
Furthermore, the TCP/IP standards at the heart of the Internet, have
contributed much to our general understanding of network architecture
principles and practice.

Congress and government regulatory bodies may need to set out the ground
rules for standards planning in order to ensure that all interested
parties have an equal voice, and the resulting standards should be
closely analyzed to make sure that they reflect public needs.  But,
direct government involvement in the process should be as limited as
possible.

V. Protect Personal Privacy

The infrastructure of the NPN should include mechanisms that support the
privacy of personal information and personal communication.

As the NPN develops there are two main threats to privacy.  First,
electronic communications meant to be private can be intercepted with
the consent or even knowledge of the communicating parties.  The
Electronic Communications Privacy Act addresses these concerns, but some
modifications in its approach may be necessary.

Second, as the public switched telephone network is used for
an increasing variety of transactions, it will hold a more
personal information about consumers.  This includes not only
financial data, but also buying patterns and preference that
can reveal a great deal about a person's habits and lifestyle.

The privacy of telephone conversations and electronic mail is already
protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Without a valid
court order, for example, wiretaps of phone conversations are illegal
and private messages are inadmissible in court. Legal guarantees are not
enough, however.  Although it is technically illegal to listen in on
cellular telephone conversations, as a practical matter the law is
unenforceable against private parties.  Imported scanners capable of
receiving all 850 cellular channels are widely available through the
gray market.

Cellular telephone transmissions are carried on radio waves which travel
through the open-air.  The ECPA provision which makes it illegal to
eavesdrop on a cellular call is an inadequate means to achieving the
correct end.  Privacy protection would be greatly enhanced if public-key
encryption technology were built into the entire range of digital
devices, from telephones to computers.  The best way to secure the
privacy and confidentiality Americans say they want is through a
combination of legal and technical methods.

With respect to privacy of personal information, we need to give
citizens greater control over information collected, stored, and
disseminated by telephone companies and information providers.  As the
public outcry over Caller ID demonstrates, citizens want and deserve to
have adequate notice about what information is being collected and
disseminated by communications firms and must be able to exercise
informed consent before information collected for one purpose can be
used for any other purpose.  To accomplish this, we need to build on the
provisions in the legislation before you.  We can also incorporate and
build upon the baseline privacy rules that were established for the
cable industry in the Cable Deregulation Act of 1984.

VI. Preserve and Enhance Equitable Access to Communications Media

The principle of equitable access to basic services is an integral part
of nation's public switched telephone network.  We must ensure that all
Americans have access to the growing information services market.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we need to ensure that all citizens have
equitable access to enhanced information services that serve the public
interest.  As you know, telephone companies and others paint a vision of
the future in which all citizens have access to education services such
as distance learning or on-line health care services.  Neither market
competition nor lifting restrictions on telephone companies alone will
deliver these services.  It is time for those who propose serving the
"information have nots" to admit that equity can not be achieved except
by legislative mandate and public funding.  The Electronic Frontier
Foundation is prepared to work with the Congress and consumer groups to
achieve these important goals.

Conclusion

The chance to influence the shape of a new medium usually arrives when
it is too late: when the medium is frozen in place. Today, because of
the gradual evolution of the National Public Network, and the unusual
awareness people have of its possibilities, there is a rare opportunity
to shape this new medium in the public interest, without sacrificing
diversity or financial return. As with personal computers, the public
interest is also the route to maximum profitability for nearly all
participants in the long run.

The major obstacle is obscurity: technical telecommunications issues are
so complex that people don't realize their importance to human and
political relationships. But be this as it may, these issues are of
paramount importance to the future of this society.  Decisions and plans
for the NPN are too crucial to be left to special interests.  If we act
now to be inclusive rather than exclusive in the design of the NPN we
can create an open and free electronic community in America.  To fail to
do so, and to lose this opportunity, would be tragic.