For as long as radio and television have been distributed by a select few networks, corporations and media organizations have had a distinct advantage in reaching large audiences, an advantage that is threatened by the techniques mentioned above. It is no surprise, therefore, that the principle of free speech is in the process of revision in response to the new found ability of individuals to speak out.
One general ethic of internet users has been that individuals are free to do as they please provided that they do not bother others. This ethic, however, has been dealt a blow by the recent Exon legislation which restricts what can be distributed over the internet. S 314 is an affront not only to the more than 100,000 people who signed a petition against it, but also to the 1st amendment itself. Cloaked in the wholesome rhetoric of opposition to pornography and "smut," the Exon legislation quietly encroaches upon the rights of the individual broadcaster, an encroachment that works to the advantage of corporate content providers, many of whom would like to earn millions by transmitting the very same pornography that S 314 purports to arrest.
But the bill itself is impotent in stopping the flow of pornography over the internet, if only because the "smut" is not all originating from within the United States. Children--for whom the legislation was reputedly written--can still download the same sorts of things from Canada, Germany, or any other nation that participates in the Web but does not share our American penchant for censorship. To understand the rationale behind the bill one must look either to the political expediency of advocating family values, or to the insidious interests of the existing hierarchy of media communications, a power structure that has a great deal to lose if the current monopoly of the public's attention dissipates into a more social communication network.
Content providers such as Time Warner are currently doing everything they can to figure out how to exploit the new market of on-line network users. Since the user has more control, in theory, over what programs or services he downloads, the service provider must use new strategies to monopolize the attention of users. Instead of providing 300 stations or even 500, the Web provides almost as many options as there are users of the Web. This means that for the big "content" providers of today, such as CNN, to continue their hegemony in this new domain, they will have to either outperform or squelch out all forms of competition. One way to crush the competition is to foster legislation that makes it illegal for little producers to operate freely.
Another is to monopolize the channels by which users find content on the internet. By providing simple interfaces that include biased search tools, the big ventures can insure that the majority of new internet users will hardly imagine the existence of other content providers, so marginalized will they be in the milieu presented for ready consumption by the likes of Microsoft, Viacom, and Time-Warner interactive. Thought control is the issue at hand. Without a sure means to connect with millions of people, the corporations that have come to rely upon the mass media for opinion formation could be threatened by distribution of sentiments and information that are not flattering to their corporate missions.
The strategy employed to regulate the independent has been to attack an aspect of independent production that is difficult to argue or endorse. The censorship issues are only a diversion, however, from the larger and more significant issues that concern the future of authority. Will, as today, authority be vested in multinational corporations, or will a democratization and equalization occur that allows individuals to compete on the same broadcast terrain as the big networks? These questions aren't settled. One thing is certain, however: S 314 was not about pornography because it does nothing to stop pornography. Any legislation imposed upon the internet will be imposed to counteract the profound anarchy that has thrived there in the 80s and 90s.