GORE ENDORSES EFF'S OPEN PLATFORM APPROACH

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12-21-93




GORE ENDORSES EFF'S OPEN PLATFORM APPROACH




Washington -- Vice President Al Gore announced at the National Press Club
today a long-term White House telecommunications policy initiative that
incorporates the major elements of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
Open Platform policy recommendations.


The Vice President's speech, which credited EFF co-founder Mitchell
Kapor for articulating the need for an "open platform" information
infrastructure, outlined five policy principles for the National
Information Infrastructure (NII).


Kapor said that he is "honored" by the reference in Gore's speech.
"I'm awfully happy that the Open Platform is right in the middle of the
Administration's infrastructure strategy, and that they see Open
Platform and open access as just as important as competition.


"President Clinton and Vice President Gore deserve great credit for being
the first Administration in over a decade to offer a comprehensive approach
to telecommunications policy," Kapor said. "I am looking forward to
working with the White House and the Congress to help see this thing
through."


EFF executive director Jerry Berman said Tuesday his organization is
"extremely pleased that the Administration has affirmed that neither all-
out competition, nor stifling regulation, will bring the promise of
information access to all Americans." In the three years since EFF's
founding, Berman said, the organization has labored to raise these issues
in the public-policy arena and to promote the Open Platform approach.


EFF's Open Platform policy to support universal access to the digital
information infrastructure is included in the telecommunications bill
recently introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Jack Fields (R-TX), and
Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA).


The first principle, Gore said, is to "encourage private investment." The
Vice President said this principle involves "steering a course between a
kind of computer-age Scylla and Charybdis -- between the shoals of
suffocating regulation on one side, and the rocks of unfettered monopolies
on the other.


"Both stifle competition and innovation," Gore said.


The second principle, he said is to "promote and protect competition." The
vice President said the government "should prevent unfair cross-subsidies
and act to avoid information bottlenecks that would limit consumer choice,
or limit the ability of new informaiotn providers to reach their
customers."


The third principle, Gore said, is to "provide open access to the network."
Gore defined this principle in terms very similar to those of EFF's own
policy statements on Open Platform services.


"Suppose I want to set up a service that provides 24 hours a day of David
Letterman reruns," he said. "I don't own my own netowrk, so I need to buy
access to someone else's. I should be able to do so by paying the same
rates as my neighbor, who wants to broadcast kick-boxing matches."


EFF's Open Platform Proposal, released in November of this year, all
recognizes the importance of access to a diversity of information sources.


The proposal states: "If new network services are deployed with adequate
up-stream capacity, and allow peer-to-peer communication, then each user
of the network can be both an information consumer and publisher. Network
architecture which is truly peer-to-peer can help produce in digital media
the kind of information diversity that only exists today only in the print
media."


Said Gore: "Without provisions for open access, the companies that own the
networks could use their control of the networks to ensure that their
customers only have access to their programming. We've already seen cases
where cable company owners have used their monopoly control of their
networks to exclude programming that competes with their own."


Gore also cited with approval EFF co-founder Mitchell Kapor's analogy of
an "open platform" infrastructure to the open architecture of the IBM PC.
"We need to ensure the NII, just like the PC is open and accessible to
everyone with a good idea who has a product they want to sell," he said.


The fourth principle, said the Vice President, is "to avoid creating a
society of information 'haves' and 'have nots.'" Gore said the United
States will "still need a regulatory safety net to make sure almost
everyone can benefit."


The fifth and final principle, he said, is that "we want to encourage
flexibility." Gore said the legislative package to be offered by the White
House must have the kind of flexibility that the Communications Act of
1934 had, in order to deal with technological changes that no one can yet
anticipate.


Berman said Gore's speech also helps define how the Administration plans to
handle the transition, following the breakup of the Bell System, between a
world of telecommunications monopolies and a world in which there is
meaningful competition among content and communications providers. "This
speech shows that part of the White House's definition of 'managed
transition' is that all citizens will have access to digital-network open
platform."


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Contacts:




Jerry Berman, Executive Director, Internet: <jberman () eff org>
Daniel J. Weitzner, Senior Staff Counsel, Internet: <djw () eff org>




 v: 202-347-5400
 f: 202-393-5509