Flow of Information

The ability to make multiple perfect digital copies, accessible instantly to millions of users worldwide, is an exciting prospect, but it can also be a license to steal intellectual property cheaply, easily, and in a way that destroys incentives for future creativity … Recognizing that the Internet has grown up within a culture that thrives on sharing information and research, commercial information providers have approached the network with great caution. Commercial authors and publishers are concerned that their works will be accessed, easily downloaded, and redistributed without appropriate authorization and remuneration. The scale of a network such as the Internet makes this prospect a substantial deterrent to making information available.

Flow of Information

Intellectual property in the networked environment is bound up with how intellectual property protection should evolve to cover digital media generally. For example, copyright law applies to the multimedia environment as it applies to the print world, but some have raised questions about the application of intellectual property protections to the hybrid products made possible by digital convergence. How these questions are resolved will affect business development and process planning. The area of intellectual property rights represents one of the greatest areas of difference among the research and education and commercial communities.

Flow of Information

During times of technological change, the interpretation of constitutional protections, such as the First Amendment, is normally developed by a long litigation process with case law being developed and further interpreted … The environment to be created by the NII suggests that the models implicit in case law may need to be revisited … The speed with which these issues are faced will affect the growth of the NII culture. Decisions that are excessively restrictive may slow it down or change its nature. A balance must be found between the rights of the operators and those of the users.

Flow of Information

[Acceptable Use Policies] have caused controversy … It is presumed that they will diminish with the decline in federal support for network infrastructure.

Flow of Information

The First Amendment provides for freedom to publish by media owners, but it does not necessarily provide a right of access to media … People are increasingly able to create, deliver, and express in text, images, and sound regardless of the medium – one can define an information product by what it does rather than by the medium to which it is bound; there may not be a physical medium.

Flow of Information

Translated into a principle for information infrastructure, the First Amendment suggests that government should permit no one to exercise monopoly control over the content carried over the network; content determination and editorial control issues should be the province of competing information providers … Placement on the network and in address directories … should be provided without discrimination or favoritism. It is in the public interest to have a variety of information sources … Users should have the ability to place information on the network – a capability that has differentiated the Internet, whose users have emerged as both authors and publishers. A corollary is a right of users to offer services over the network.

Flow of Information

The treatment of information about infrastructure use – in particular, who owns and accesses what information – is an issue that needs further exploration and resolution … A central issue with regard to protecting privacy is the balancing of legitimate business opportunities against individual rights, which need to be more clearly defined in this context.

Equitable Access

Although the popular debate over the NII has acknowledged a risk of polarization into information “haves” and “have nots,” a more varied spectrum involving “have mores” and “have lesses” may be more realistic … People with desktop or other immediate forms of access will be able to engage in more spontaneous, intermittent, and possibly more interactive uses of the infrastructure than people who must go to a communal point of access and wait their turn … At the present time there is no compelling argument for a government program to accomplish universal network access to all individuals immediately. Costs would be prohibitive, and the absence of a universal culture of use means that benefits would be swamped by costs. Rather, what is required is assurance that those individuals who desire access can obtain it in a cost-effective and straightforward manner.