IP: The world is a soapbox on the Web -- A penny press for the

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

The world is a soapbox on the Web


A penny press for the gripes of common folks


Published: March 17, 1996


BY  DAN GILLMOR


Mercury News Staff Writer


The big and powerful are absorbing a hard lesson these days: On agenda.net,
the world is a soapbox -- and much, much
more.


Just ask McDonald's, the burger giant. Or Intel Corp., king of the
microprocessor. Or the candidates for president. Or
the tobacco industry.


The powerful spend mega-millions on advertising and public relations. They
hold well-attended press conferences. But
they're learning, often to their dismay, that they can't control cyberspace.


The World Wide Web, in particular, has become the medium of choice -- and an
equalizer -- for activists, true believers,
gadflies and just about anyone with an agenda. Not only is the Web a global
medium, but just about anyone can publish
on it at relatively low cost. Equally important, the Web is ideal for
collecting and storing information, then seamlessly
linking one collection to others.


So yesteryear's tinny soapbox voice can now be heard almost anywhere. The
earnest pamphleteer now can build an
encyclopedia that keeps growing -- a vibrant archive and organizing tool
that others use and augment. Combined, they
become an impossible-to-ignore, enduring force.


Today, McDonald's can't duck the McSpotlight, a caustic collection of
anti-McDonald's information on the World Wide
Web.


Volunteers in 14 countries are contributing to the site, according to Franny
Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the effort.


Intel can't bury ''Intel Secrets -- What Intel Doesn't Want You to Know,'' a
compendium of information about the
internal workings of Intel's microprocessors -- including flaws and some
features Intel hasn't made public. ''I publish this
material because I have just as much right to disclose it , as Intel has in
keeping it secret,'' writes the page's author,
Robert Collins.


The politicians can't disguise the numbers in the Center for Public
Integrity's campaign-contribution data base. The center
has gathered and posted on its Web site all sorts of public financial
information about the candidates' own money, where
they've traveled, who's paid them to speak, who's given them money and more.


And the tobacco companies can't snuff out the Tobacco Control Archives, an
assortment of documents that
anti-smoking forces have found valuable in their war against the industry.
The tobacco companies have used
''misinformation ... and manipulation of the legal system in hiding the
information in these documents from the public and
the government until now,'' says a description of some of the archived material.


Activists have used cyberspace from the earliest days of computer bulletin
boards -- and with definite results. Intel's
Pentium bug came to light via on-line discussion groups, for example,
sparking a barrage of complaints that ultimately
forced a recalcitrant Intel to offer chip replacements to anyone who wanted
one, not just those who Intel thought
deserved new chips.


And while the Web has galvanized a frenzy of global activity, time-honored
motives prompt people to promote their
agendas: changing the world, getting even, getting publicity, do-goodism,
greed, sheer nastiness and more.


Sometimes the motive is pure practicality. The documents at the Tobacco
Control Archives, based at the University of
California, San Francisco ended up on the Web because it seemed logical to
put them there.


Stanton Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor who's been studying the tobacco
industry and its political contributions to
political candidates, said the university's librarians solved several
problems by posting the material on the Web: getting
the material to people who wanted it while saving time for university
personnel. Only later did the power of the new
medium become clear, he said, when anti-smoking forces elsewhere started
using the material in their own campaigns.


The Web is ''a very important development,'' he said. ''It allows people
like me -- kind of detail nerds -- to make the
resources available, fairly inexpensively and in however much depth we want.''


McSpotlight was the result of an epic London court battle. McDonald's is
suing two activists for libel, a case that has
grown into a huge embarrassment for the fastfood giant. Not only have the
activists worked hard to make McDonald's
seem a bully, but court testimony has added fuel to the anti-McDonald's
movement.


Excerpts from testimony found their way onto some ad-hoc Web pages. That
became the catalyst for the much larger
McSpotlight site, said Armstrong, the spokeswoman for the informal
''McInformation Network.''


McSpotlight itself is on a computer in the Netherlands, where libel laws are
less strict than in Great Britain. It holds
information about the trial including witness statements, scientific papers,
and discussions of issues related to the
fast-food industry and multinational corporations in general; plus links to
Internet mailing lists and other related resources
around the world.


''McDonald's spends over $1.4 billion a year broadcasting their glossy image
to the whole world -- this is a small space
for alternatives to be heard,'' the elaborate Web site informs visitors.


McDonald's didn't return a phone call seeking comment.


Collins' Intel Secrets site, based in Dallas, drew a letter from Intel
warning Collins that he was violating Intel's
trademarks. Collins changed his site's logo to what he calls an obvious
satire -- therefore protected by law -- of the Intel
logo. He says he was motivated both by what he calls Intel's ''improper
behavior'' in handling information about its chips
and his desire to create a valuable information resource for the industry.


Intel won't comment on the technical contents of the Intel Secrets site,
however, and it urges caution to anyone who
reads what's there. ''People can create and post'' anything, said company
spokesman Howard High. ''But there's no
central traffic cop who evaluates whether the information is true or not.''


That's one of the Net's general problems, by many accounts: What's true or
false isn't always obvious.


If activists can launch Web-based ''truth squads'' to report on
multinational companies, they can also launch ''lie squads,''
said David J. Farber, telecommunications professor at the University of
Pennsylvania. ''You can never catch up with
misinformation on the Web.''


There's never been an organizing tool to compare with the Web, Farber said,
but the flowing of power away from
central authorities does have its potential negative side: It can lead to
a more general destabilization that might prove
dangerous.


''I like it, and I worry about it,'' Farber said, reflecting the ambiguity
felt by many longtime Net users and observers.
''We're in for a period of vast readjustment.''


(If you know of any particularly fine ''agenda Web sites'' please let us
know, too. Send the addresses (URLs) by e-mail
to Mercury News Computing Editor Dan Gillmor.)




Dan Gillmor, Computing Editor    E-mail: dgillmor () sjmercury com 
San Jose Mercury News            Voice: 408-920-5016 
750 Ridder Park Drive            Fax: 408-920-5917 
San Jose, CA 95190               http://www.sjmercury.com/homepage/gillmor/