Net Insanity

When I first got this story in my inbox yesterday, I was skeptical....

Barack Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar" has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet

that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period.

The revelations about Cass Sunstein, Obama's friend from the University of Chicago Law School and nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, come in a new book by Brad O'Leary, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech." OIRA will oversee regulation throughout the U.S. government.

Consider the source, I said to myself...some guy who is trying really hard to sell an obviously partisam book. So I decided to do a little searching on the 'net this morning to see if I could find any other corroboration for the allegation and boy did I find it. You can tell, if you go read the whole thing and I encourage you to do so, that the author is a fan of Sunstein's - not a critic. However, he is also intellectually honest enough to admit that the man he admires has a couple of issues that he is less than wise on.

Sunstein’s general outlook about the Internet and what it is doing to society. In Republic.com, Sunstein argued that the Internet is destroying opportunities for a mingling of the masses and shared social experiences. The hyper-customization that specialized websites and online filtering technologies (blogs, portals, listservs, political websites, etc.) offer Americans is allowing citizens to create the equivalent of a highly personalized news retrieval service that Sunstein contemptuously refers to as “The Daily Me.” Actually, the phrase “The Daily Me” was coined by Nicholas Negroponte in his brilliant 1995 book Being Digital to describe what he argued would be a liberating break from traditional, force-fed media. But what irks Sunstein about “The Daily Me” is not the amazing new array of choices that the Internet offers Americans, it’s that the Internet and all these new technologies allow citizens to filter information and tailor their viewing or listening choices to their own needs or desires. While Negroponte welcomed that filtering and specialization function, Sunstein seems to live in fear of it, believing that it creates extreme social isolation and alienation.

While Sunstein has a point about the social isolation that the net can cause, he is dead wrong that allowing people access to more information is bad for the Republic. It is not the access to the information that is bad - it is what people do with it. People who do live in the echo chamber are going to be an echo chamber themselves. The left's issue with additional information is that their echo chamber is no longer the ONLY one out there. For years they domoniated the access to information - in the universities, on the National nightly news, in most major city newspapers, on NPR and a whole host of other outlets. Then along came talk radio and almost instantly the calls to silence it began.

He argues that unrestrained individual choice is dangerous and must be checked or countered in the interests of “citizenship” and “democracy.” In his own words: “A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.” In other words, as I noted in my review of his book in Regulation magazine back in 2000, Sunstein is essentially saying that the Internet is breeding a dangerous new creature: Anti-Democratic Man. And government should not hesitate to act to counter it.

It is ironic, to say the least, that the ideas that fought so hard to open up the country to discussion of ideas back in the '60s are now hell bent on shutting discussion down via fiats like the so-called "Fairness Doctrine".

However, this column does countradict one of the accusations of the WND column and that is the accusation that Sunstein wants to establish a "Fairness Doctrine" for the 'net.

Sunstein’s views about the Internet and what it is doing to society are troubling enough. Far more problematic, however, is what Sunstein has suggested we should do to deal with this supposed problem. After Sunstein worked himself up to a boil about all this in Republic.com, he tossed out what I believe is the single most dangerous public policy idea for the Internet suggested in the past 10 years: mandatory “electronic sidewalks” for cyberspace.

Sunstein called for popular or partisan websites to be forced to carry links to opposing viewpoints. Think of it as a combination of must carry mandates and the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet...

Importantly, in his 2006 book Infotopia, Sunstein seemed to pull back from these views and proposals somewhat, although he still bemoaned the supposed dangers of “The Daily Me.” But in this November 2007 interview with Salon, Sunstein seemed to completely abandon his old proposal:

I have thought over the years of whether it makes sense for the government to have a regulatory role [for the Internet]. But the Internet is too difficult to regulate in a way that would respond to these concerns. The first book ["Republic.com"] had suggestions that government should consider fairness-doctrine-type mandates on Web sites. It suggested that it’s reasonable for government to think about creating the equivalent of linking obligations and pop-ups, so that you’d be on one site — say, a conservative site — and there’d be a pop-up from a liberal site. I now the believe that the government should not consider that — that it’s a stupid and almost certainly an unconstitutional suggestion.

Sunstein is certain correct when he says that it is a "stupid - almost unconstitutional" suggestion. There is simply no way to enforce what he proposed in his first book. Give him points for learning a lesson.

So what about the most ridiculous proposal of the bunch....the mandatory "24 Hour cooling off period" before sending angry emails? It was a very real proposal!

In Nudge, a book about how small proposals or policies can have major social influences, Sunstein and his co-author Richard Thaler describe as their “favorite proposal,” a so-called “Civility Check” for online speech and interactions. Here’s what they say:

The modern world suffers from insufficient civility. Every hour of every day, people send angry emails they soon regret, cursing people they barely know (or even worse, their friends and loved ones). A few of us have learned a simple rule: don’t send an angry email in the heat of the moment. File it, and wait a day before you send it. (In fact, the next day you may have calmed down so much that you forget even to look at it. So much the better.) But many people either haven’t learned the rule or don’t always follow it. Technology could easily help. In fact, we have no doubt that technologically savvy types could design a helpful program by next month.

We propose a Civility Check that can accurately tell whether the email you’re about to send is angry and caution you, “warning: this appears to be an uncivil email. do you really and trulywant to send it?” (Software already exists to detect foul language. What we are proposing is more subtle, because it is easy to send a really awful email message that does not contain any four-letter words.)...

When I first responded to Sunstein and Thaler’s “Civility Check” notion, I went a little hard on them calling that idea “absurd and horrendously elitist.” What I should have made clear is that there is a difference between suggesting this sort of thing as an industry “best practice” as opposed to mandating it by force of law.

Indeed, in October of last year, Google launched a new Gmail feature called “Mail Goggles” that, according to the launch message on Google’s Gmail Blog, will help users “stop sending mail you (will) later regret.” The feature — perhaps better labeled a “Drunk Check” — “will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email” by asking you to “solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind.” It’s not identical to what Sunstein and Thaler have in mind, but it’s close. And I’m fine with Google adding such a feature to their Gmail service, especially since you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.

I agree with Sunstein and Thaler that there is "insufficient civility" in our society. It is not hard to find - whether it is in the business world or the sports arena or on the internet...especially on the internet. It is so easy to hide behind "anonymous" and leave some of the nastiest comments to other peoples thoughts and beliefs. However, mandating civility is impossibly and incredibly naive! It is (as Mr. Thierer points out) a great best practice - but mandating it? What utter nonsense!

Mr. Thierer points out one of the nasty realities of DC life in his conclusion....

Will Sunstein continue to push any of these views in his new position as Obama’s regulatory czar at OIRA? If so, how much impact will Sunstein’s views have on others in the Obama Administration, especially at the FCC? Or, have his views changed enough that we really shouldn’t worry?

Who knows. It may be that Sunstein will be too busy trying to mediate fights between agencies and other “czars” in the Administration — of which there seems to be no shortage these days!

Which is yet another reason to pare down the size of government. However, there are good reasons for ALL internet users to be concerned. With the make up of Congress and the far left ideals of White House, it is not out of the realm of possibility for a internet "Fairness Doctrine" to be enacted. Before my friends on the left start gearing up their campaign to get it done, I would just ask them to stop and think about how that could effect them come the day when the Republicans get back into power. Think about how it could be used on you. Would you want YOUR free speech silenced because you do not agree with the "powers that be". Yes today, your people have the power, but that will not last forever and a 'net "Fairness" doctrine will last longer in office than your guys will. Are you willing to live under that? If the answer is no, then you need to make sure that you impress on your people the dangers of censorship - not pushing the idea further along for temporary gain.

Think about it...