Communications Policy and Information Technology: Promises, Problems, Prospects

Citation

Faith Cranor, L. and Greenstein, S. (2004), "Communications Policy and Information Technology: Promises, Problems, Prospects", Library Review, Vol. 53 No. 3, pp. 191-192. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530410526655

The papers in this book were delivered at a conference held in Washington DC in 2001. The focus of the meeting was on telecommunications policies, especially the implications of recent developments. The papers covered a wide range of social, technical, economic and political policy issues. Some of them are comparatively esoteric; many are narrowly American. Others are on matters of concern and interest to every user of the Internet.

Three papers on regulation of the Internet are probably most immediately relevant to readers of Library Review. Jonathan Weinberg deals with the development of the new top‐level domain names and the changes to ICANN which followed the death of Jon Postel in 1998. The author argues that ICANN is increasingly behaving like the Federal Communications Commission in allocating domains on the Internet. Robert Cannon's paper considers the potential conflict arising out of the convergence of the Internet and the public telephone network. A single system could theoretically replace both telephone numbers and URLs, but policy obstacles are formidable. As in so many aspects of Internet development, the influence of powerful stakeholders is continuously increasing. Michael A. Greit addresses the equally complex question of jurisdiction over the Internet, and the conflicts between national jurisdictions which have already arisen and seem likely to multiply. All three papers suggest to the reader the range of issues which the continuing evolution of the Internet presents to the ISPs, content providers and users alike. The Internet community has historically been self‐regulatory, but it is clear that it is now far too important for that to be allowed to continue. The initial phase of electronic anarchy – if it ever really existed – is coming to an end.

Two groups of papers address key social issues in communications policy: electronic democracy, competition in voice and data communication networks, and the impact of concentration of ownership in the newspaper industry. Markus Prior addresses the important matter of the impact of Internet access on voters' knowledge and understanding of politics and public policy issues. He reports on a well‐wrought study whose conclusions are depressing: most people avoid news and politics whenever they can; and a wider consumer choice between media leads to a decrease in political knowledge as large number of recipients turn away from such broadcasts or Web sites. In this context, Lisa Megargle George's analysis of the impact of ownership concentration on variety in the printed media takes on a particular significance; she shows that consolidation of newspaper ownership does not actually lead to a loss of choice, and may even increase the differences between titles as owners seek to give a distinctive brand to different titles in their groups.

The final section of the book addresses various aspects of access and exclusion. Two rural areas of the USA show similar characteristics: poor access and low take‐up. The underlying issue of who pays to remedy arises in an even more acute form in Martha Fuentes‐Bautista's survey of telephone and Internet access in some Latin American countries. The message is the same: it is patchy, largely urban, closely related to economic status, and is a government problem.

Many of the other papers deal with technical issues of wireless communications systems, and business analyses of competition policies. These are more specialised, but there will be few people concerned with information and communications technology and systems who do not find something of interest in this book.