Internet for Everyone

by Brian Reich | 24 Jun 2008, 2:00am

I am at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York and am attending a launch event for a new initiative that calls on Congress and the president to act in the public interest by enacting a plan for the wired and wireless Internet built upon the following principles.   The project is called Internet for Everyone (http://internetforeveryone.org/)

NOTE: The organization that launched this project, Free Press, is a client — but I do not currently play a role in this initiative.

I won’t try and summarize all the important points made during the session.   Andy Carvin did an excellent job of capturing everyone’s remarks, so you can see as close to a transcript as you’ll find on his Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/acarvin)

Let me quickly summarize the project:

An open, free, and accessible internet is critical — not just to those who do things online (like myself) — but to all aspects of our economy, our governance, and similar.   The future of the internet is the future of all media.   And it is pretty clear (to me anyway) that leaving the development of a national broadband policy to the cable and telecommunications industry, who have controlled much of the policy making around this issue, is not a good idea.

So, the initiative promotes a four-part agenda:

Access: Every home and business in America must have access to a high-speed, world class communications infrastructure.

Choice: Every consumer must enjoy real competition in online content as well as among high-speed Internet providers to achieve lower prices and higher speeds.

Openness: Every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination.

Innovation: The Internet should continue to create good jobs, foster entrepreneurship, spread new ideas and serve as a leading engine of economic growth.

A broad, bi-partisan group of experts - business, policy, entertainment, etc. - have come together to help promote the effort.   For starters, look at the group that they pulled together for the announcement:

Josh Silver, Executive Director, Free Press
Brad Burnham, partner at Union Square Ventures
Robin Chase, CEO of Meadow Networks, co-founder Zipcar
Van Jones, president, Green for All
Michael Winship, president Writers Guild of America - East
David All, co-Founder Slatecard.com and TechRepublican.com
Tim Wu, Columbia Law professor
Jonathan Adelstein, FCC commissioner
Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
int Cerf, chief technology evangelist of Google
Larry Lessig, Stanford Law professor

And going forward, the group will be hosting public forums across the nation to get citizens involved, and no doubt other things (that was all they had time to mention today).

My two cents: This is a tremendously important issue.   This initiative deserves national (and local) attention - not just within policy circles, but at kitchen tables, in schools and libraries, and among friends over a beer or coffee.   But, this issue, and this initiative, could very easily not gain the necessary traction among people who are not already within the media and policy space.   This could be the darling of the wonk establishment and even the media (wouldn’t that be ironic) and still not move the needle towards being implemented.   Why?   Because this issue is complex.   People don’t make an association between this issue and their daily lives.   The people who don’t have access to broadband probably don’t fully realize why its such a big deal.   The people who already have it take it for granted.

So, for this effort to be successful, the initiative has to get out of its own way.   It can’t be about the groups or the organizers, or even the specific policy (which is way too complex for anyone to settle on a single set of criteria).   You can’t just talk to people who gather at a PDF-like conference, where everyone is already in agreement on the need.   And it can’t live solely online.

This movement will organize town hall meetings for people to attend and use as a way to show their support or get involved.   But what about a true grassroots effort, going door to door and town to town to spread the word.   Is that planned?   The people need to have a voice - but will they truly get to play a role in shaping this policy, or just sending emails and making phone calls to their politicians to pressure them for support?   This movement has a nice, straightforward website, which summarizes the issue well.   But who will take responsibility for answering all the questions that people have and pushing content out - online and through traditional means - so that word spreads and people make this issue their own?

These are important questions - and just a few of the ones that need to be answered if this group to succeed and this baseline policy will become a reality.   The big telecommunications folks know this, and are probably counting on the fact that it will be difficult to organize a broad-based, online and offline community to support this fundamental issue.   We can’t let them get away with that.   We can’t fall into the trap that so many organizations have fallen into with the rise of the internet, where the activity happens online (but never reaches the real word), we focus on the tools (blogs and wikis and such), and where the same people are talking to each other as they always have (and few new voices finding a place in the discussion).   When that happens, little real, meaningful, measurable change being made.   We can’t let that happen.

I’ll make that case to my client, and anyone else who wants to listen.   I hope this group will not only realize the need, and opportunity, to organize this effort differently and actively push to do more to engage the public, move beyond a ‘campaign’ style effort, and get into the real world.   And when they do, this effort will finally, finally succeed.

TAGS : Event Coverage PDF2008 Policy