I&D Blog

Open access to scholarship and information on the Web is one of the core principles of the Berkman Center, and by extension the Internet and Democracy Project. We are extremely pleased that the Harvard Law School faculty recently voted unanimously to to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free–making it the first law school to commit to a mandatory open access policy. This will help to bring down the barriers to open scholarship that are unfortunately created by journals, scholarly databases and publishers that charge fairly high fees for access to work that should be made available for free online at places like faculty Web sites, Google Scholar, and other online repositories. This effort was led by Berkman’s own John Palfrey who was recently appointed Vice Dean of Library and Information Resources (congratulations John)! Finally, the vote follows a similar effort and unanimous vote for open access by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences–a first by any academic institution in the US. We hope this helps build the open access movement as the idea spreads to other schools and faculties around the country.

Following yesterday’s post on the the democracy deficit in the Middle East, I noted with interest Thomas Friedman’s op-ed where he brought up my point about the inverse correlation between the price of oil and democracy. Friedman writes: “I’ve long argued that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation — which I call: ‘The First Law of Petro-Politics.’ As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up.”

He also sites Larry Diamond’s excellent new book The Spirit of Democracy, which we liked very much and have added to our library of resources for studying democracy and democratization–along with others from Diamond, including Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation. According to Diamond, none of the 23 countries that rely on oil and gas for 60% or more of their exports are democracies–including Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria.

I’d like to see some empirical analysis of oil prices against democracy indicators–similar to what Mike Best has done with Internet penetration against Freedom House indicators. Another major question that remains unanswered is what happens when the price of oil goes back down. The price of oil has traditionally fluctuated in boom and bust cycles, similar to the business cycle. Perhaps not coincidentally, in 2003, when the price of oil was in the $30 to $35/barrel range, Iran’s reform movement was going strong, while today the price has recently reached near $120/barrel and the conservatives are firmly in control. Obviously, this may be no more than correlation, but it is indisputable that Iran is highly dependent on oil. A crash in the price of oil could lead to a major economic, and perhaps political, crisis.

However, experts now debate if the price of oil will ever come down, as demand is expected to continue to climb from the developing world including China and India, supply may not be able to keep up. If we believe Friedman’s law of petro-politics, that is not a good sign for democracy.

After being detained for four months, Saudia Arabian blogger Fouad al-Farhan has been released. Al-Farhan was detained in December without official explanation, but he was arrested “after authorities warned him about his online support of an activist group.” According to the Washington Post, Farhan said that he had been warned by an official from the Interior Ministry “that he would be detained for his online support of a group of [political critics]…arrested in February 2007.”

Despite the Saudi Government’s attempt to insulate its internal activities from foreign coverage (foreign journalists are rarely granted visas), Farhan’s arrest garnered a substantial amount of publicity at foreign media outlets, in addition to attention brought by the criticism of a plethora of bloggers (including 200 in Saudi Arabia).

While some argue that restraints on speech have diminished King Abdullah came to power in 2005, the 2007 report from Reporters Without Borders argues that “the Saudi regime maintains very tight control of all news.” Its ability to exert control is due both to its direct ownership of media outlets, but also by its willingness to shut down other media outlets that do not practice self-censorship sufficiently. This includes internally blocking both Fahran’s blog and the Free Fouad website set up by supporters.

And although coverage of Farhan’s arrest implies that he is one of the first online critics to be targeted through detention, his arrest could easily be seen as the (albeit slow) continuation of an established policy. In 2005 the Saudi Arabian Government made a wholesale attack on blogs by attempting to block access to blogger.com, but has shifted to targeting particular blogs since then.

Despite the chilling effect Farhan’s arrest will likely have, it may also be an acknowledgment of the potential of blogs to move political discourse. As Saudi Jeans blogger and Global Voices contributor Ahmed al-Omran points out,

“The arrest was scary and intimidating to bloggers but also empowering. It made bloggers know that their blogs are influential, and now they feel more of a responsibility and take their blogs more seriously.”

Speculations about what kind of sea change the Internet has enabled for campaigning and how that sea change will translate on election day for the US president have been ubiquitous (really, it’s difficult to avoid a media outlet that isn’t opining about how the Internet is helping the Obama campaign with grassroots organization and fundraising). But news sources are starting to take note that another consequence of the unprecedented success of online fundraising will be the complete irrelevance of public campaign financing.

Although both McCain and Obama both pledged to opt into the public financing system for the general election if the other party’s candidate did the same, The Wall Street Journal reports that “Obama is poised to run the first privately financed general-election presidential campaign since Watergate”. Obama had previously said that he would “aggressively pursue” a publicly funded campaign, but according to the article, Obama “has laid the groundwork, through seeking a Federal Election Commission ruling, to reject traditional taxpayer funding.”

Because Clinton’s private fundraising would also likely exceed the amount that the public financing scheme would provide her, there is good reason to believe that she will opt out as well.

Because of the restrictions that accepting public financing imposes on candidates, candidates that opt out of the system would be far more independent of state parties and their respective party’s National Committees and would not need to coordinate with them for “get-out-the-vote efforts”. Or, as one of the lawyers from Kerry’s presidential campaign explains, “It’s just easier. You don’t have to talk to anybody. You can just write the check.”

And taking the relationship between Obama and the Democratic National Committee as an example, the unprecedented fundraising of individual campaigns that the Internet seems to have enabled may mean an outright shift in dependence. With only $5 million on hand, the DNC has entered a joint fundraising agreement with the Obama campaign and is negotiating for an agreement with the Clinton Campaign.

Of course, Presidential candidates have been relying less on public financing since the 2000 election, when now President Bush opted out of the system for the Republican primary. For the 2008 election, Obama, Clinton, and McCain have all opted out of the system for the primaries.

Still, it will be interesting to see how the ability to be structurally independent from public financing will alter the dynamics between candidates and national parties, local parties, and state politicians.

The BBC highlights how London’s mayoral candidates are using the Internet to reach potential supporters. Like the reports on this side of the Atlantic focusing on Obama and Clinton, the BBC report compares how each candidate is making use of social networks, video sharing websites, and blogs to garner support. But it also incorporates some skepticism regarding the notion that the “Internet is the great leveller for candidates with tiny marketing budgets.”

At least as between London’s mayoral candidates, it points out that although the clips on YouTube of the smaller party candidates get roughly as many views as the larger party candidates, the numbers of views is small. This is particularly true of clips that do not incorporate gaffs or embarrassing missteps. While Conservative candidate Boris Johnson’s election related clips have peaked at “7,385 hits”, the entry featuring him with the most views is “of the Tory MP indulging in an over-enthusiastic tackle at a charity football match”.

With perception of the importance of the Internet for electoral victory rising, candidates–as for example Labour’s Ken Livingstone who has hired Blue State Digital (the company used by the Obama Campaign)—will have to invest campaign funds into coordinating and updating online activity, creating graphics, applications, infiltrating online social networks, etc.

Although the article doesn’t mention it, at least with regards to the Obama-Hilary campaigns, a sizable part of the heavily viewed entries on YouTube feature footage from sponsored debates to which the 3rd party candidates are simply not invited. And that inability to participate in the dialogue in the brick and mortar world also seems likely to undermine the “leveling” effect of the Internet.

Another interesting points BBC report did mention was that Livingston “used a YouTube video to hit back at Conservative candidate Boris Johnson’s first party election broadcast - something that would not have been allowed on TV, with its strict rules on balance.” As the US presidential race moves into the period where the more stringent campaigning regulation comes into effect, it will be interesting to track how candidates will use the Internet to undermine the campaigning laws they supported as Senators.

Time Magazine reporters Micahel Scherer and Jay Newton-Small seem to think so, or at a minimum imply it in a recent article. As evidence Scherer and Small highlight how the Internet has facilitated the grass roots campaigning of a Pennsylvania couple Tom and Mary Bashore and compare the success of online fundraising for McCain, Obama, and Clinton.

Without passing judgment on how the candidate’s web endeavors actually fare compared to each other, the article’s evidence for its suggestion that Obama’s online success stems primarily from the quality of his website or that this online success “could spell trouble for John McCain come November” does not adequately address other possibilities.

It seems probable that Obama supporters have more reason to contribute now than later in the campaign. His nomination, while likely, still remains uncertain. Calls from the Obama campaign for a pressing need of volunteers and donors seem more credible and supporters probably feel a sense of urgency: if they don’t contribute or volunteer now, they may not get the chance to vote for him in November.

McCain supporters are certain that he will be the Republican nominee. The need for volunteers or contributions now does not carry urgency.

Also, without the fervor that accompanies supporting a “team” in a struggle (as between Clinton and Obama), McCain supporters aren’t operating under the same incentives as their Obama (or Clinton) counterparts.

The article also doesn’t do a particularly better job of showing why success in online fundraising will translate in an election victory. Judging by the Republican primaries, where Ron Paul’s ability to mobilize support through the Internet was extraordinarily disproportionate to his success at the polls, dexterous use of the Internet may only help at the margins. Of course, its possible that success at the margins may be enough in November, but the article did not really go further than to point out a disparity in online fundraising.

After Comcast admitted to stuffing seats at the FCC hearing at Harvard Law School February 24th, the FCC decided another hearing was necessary. They chose to hold it at Stanford April 17 and I’m watching the FCC’s videocast of the event, which is oddly appropriate, since the focus of the hearing is video on the internet.

After an introduction by Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer, FCC Chairman Martin explained that every ISP, excepting Lariat Networks from Lariat, Wyoming, was invited and declined to attend this hearing: Comcast, Verizon, Time/Warner, and AT&T. Comcast has stated it is working with an industry consortium on a Consumer Bill of Rights. The hearing begins with each of the FCC commissioners making a statement, then proceeds through panels and then opens to questions.

Commissioner Copps states that a free internet is a requirement for the type of growth, a fact we’ve seen from Silicon Valley. If network operators consolidate their control, which is more likely with fewer network operators, they’ll prevent inventors from bringing their innovations to consumers and make investing more risky. So Copps wants to eliminate and punish discrimination.

Indicating how huge this issue has become, Commissioner Adelstein states that 45k dockets were filed with the FCC for this hearing, and the vast majority of them came from public citizens. He warns that the recent consolidation across internet providers from the backbone to the largest service providers will lead to more FCC regulation. He advocates greater competition in the broadband market place since 90% is dominated by cable and telephone companies. This gives the companies who control the “last mile” (the distance from the backbone to the consumer’s computer) the ability to discriminate over packets that reach end users. He’s concerned about allegations like Verizon’s refusal to send pro-life text messages and AT&T’s censoring of Pearl Jam online. He would like a 5th principle on the FCC policy statement to address this as well as enforcement and compliance. Broadband providers should declare in clear plain English what their policies are.

Commissioner Tate applauds the industry-wide effort to create a bill of rights for P2P users and ISPs. She has a strong preference for industry based collaborative solutions over direct regulation.

Commissioner McDowell wants to ensure that the FCC takes the anticompetitive allegations, such as the text messaging one, seriously. Comcast is alleged to have manipulated packet allocation of video - video is something Comcast provides and runs the pipes for other competitor, so Comcast appears to discriminate against
bit torrent for anticompetitive reasons not just for traffic management. McDowell, like Commissioner Tate, would like to see the industry develop is own solutions to these problems such as what might come from the industry consortium Comcast is involved in and says “engineers should solve engineering problems not politicians.”

Chairman Martin states the four principles the FCC adopted in August 2005 in their internet policy statement (”Powell’s Four Freedoms”).

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and
4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

Larry Lessig, Professor at Stanford Law School, is the first speaker on the first panel.
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MIT’s Communication’s Forum hosted a debate between Professor Benkler and Professor Sunstein on how the Internet has affected and will affect democratic participation. Although I can’t claim to represent the feelings of other attendees, I found myself leaving largely unsatiated (even assuming that their factual assertions were correct): on the one hand it was quite difficult to discern how they represented competing positions and on the other hand, to the extent that there were disagreements, the “so what?” question seemed largely unanswered.

The moderator, Henry Jenkins, began with a good attempt to establish metrics for judging how democratic participation might be judged. And within the first 10 minutes it was clear that Professor Sunstein was much less satisfied than Professor Benkler with the affect of the Internet. But insofar as they described their particular views on how the advent of the Internet has reshaped democratic participation, their views did not seem to be inconsistent.

Professor Sunstein posits that the Internet diminishes the likelihood that people will come into contact with ideas they are biased against, but will restrict their contact to those who agree with them, creating an echo chamber effect. At the same time, the increase in sources of information and competing narratives for events diminishes the likelihood that there will be a common narrative for the participants in the democracy. But, at least as a descriptive matter, this does not seem inconsistent with Professor Benkler’s position that the Internet has enabled more democratic participation by breaking down the concentration and hierarchy of power and dispersing the power to set the agenda.

The differences might have been salient if they were presented as competing metrics for judging democratic participation. But it seems highly unlikely, at least from the discussion, that either advocated a metric that excluded the values that the other metric incorporated. Professor Sunstein did not advocate a state of affairs where a small set of individuals within a strict hierarchy of power set the agenda; Professor Benkler did not suggest that echo chamber effect was a benefit proffered by the Internet.

There seemed to be a glimmer of a normative argument when Professor Sunstein suggested that the development of norms that would push back against the echo chamber effect. But the argument was not developed enough to counter for me Professor Benkler’s point strongest point: that systems should be judged against practically available alternatives.

Last Thursday April 10 MIT hosted a debate/discussion between Yochai Benkler and Cass Sunstein (audio can be found here). Both are Harvard Law Professors (Sunstein coming here from Chicago in the fall) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the discussion became very philosophical. Both have written prolifically on technology and our future, especially Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks and Sunstein’s Infotopia and Republic.com 2.0. Henry Jenkins is moderating. he is co-director of Comparative Media Studies and Professor of Humanities at MIT. Jenkins is using those three books as the basis for his questions.

The first question Jenkis poses asks for metrics on how to measure the quality of online democracy. He quotes from both Sunstein and Benkler’s books to set off the dueling:

Sunstein1: “Any well functioning society depends on relationships of trust and reciprocity, in which people see their fellow citizens as potential allies, willing to help, and deserving of help when help is needed.”

Sunstein2: “A well functioning society of free expression must have two distinct requirements: first, people should be exposed to materials that they would not have chosen in advance, and second, many or most citizens have a range of common experiences.”

Benkler: “The new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and in an increasingly information-dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.”

Jenkins asks the professors to give the current space a grade. Sunstein ranks it a C- since there is still babble and chaos and cruelty, even though there is order and brilliance and ingenuity. He likes Benkler’s idea of a self-reflective culture willing ot appraise itself, but his sense is that the internet is the opposite of self-reflection and provides only for entrenchment of pre-existing views.

Benkler gives a higher grade than C- and ascribes this to the importance of the degree of constraint on action being lower on the internet - this is determinative of how evaluate “normative life lived as a practical matter”. He agrees that a well-functioning society depends on trust and reciprocity but finds this in existence on the web through pervasive collaboration. He contrasts this with the authority driven approach traditionally used by the main stream media.

Benkler states that Sunstein takes too passive a view of citizenship in his description of the requirements of a system of free expression. He doesn’t envision citizens as passively exposed to streams of information and equipped with some pre-existing common frame of reference. Benkler imagines a capacity to act, intake, and filter for accreditation and salience, and ultimately set the current agenda. He sees freedom of expression manifested in part by participating in production of the agenda and claims this view will make the networked public sphere more attractive than Sunstein sees it, which will have the result that main stream media will appear more attractive.

At this Sunstein concedes his grade of C- was probably too harsh and he meant it in comparison to a realistic ideal, rather than a historic comparison. We’re doing better than in 1975. In response to Benkler’s point about passivity he states that his calls for exposure to new materials and shared experiences are only necessary conditions and they act as a counterweight to the notion that with unlimited free choice comes a capacity for self-sorting of internet communication. His sense is that “real internet geeks” come close to being libertarians in the University of Chicago tradition, so this notion of capacity becomes idealized as follows: if you are sovereign over your choices we have reached the ideal. Sunstein resists this and says we need to judge by outcomes: in a well functioning system you don’t construct a Daily Me and your attention needs to be grabbed or else you’ll never realize your interest in other issues. Self-sorting alone is too risky to be a reliable mechanism for people to get a good understanding of issues, so his two conditions become necessary features of the web and preconditions for a well functioning democratic society.

He thinks this paints a picture of people’s interaction with the web as more passive than what he meant. Active citizenship is fueled by shared experiences and unanticipated exposure to new materials and ideas. He cites national holidays like Martin luther King day or July Fourth and enabling us to see each others as involved in a common enterprise. This engenders a participatory approach to societal life among citizens.

Benkler responds that the difference between his and Sunstein’s position is power and context, freedom and constraint. He questions whether Sunstein’s proposed necessary condition of a common experience would result in something closer to traditional main stream media being desirable, where the sharing of experience was often through a government controlled agency or a newspaper. Benkler defines an elite as someone who can affect the agenda and observes that today that is a few million versus how it used to be a few thousand. So power is being diffused in myriad different ways. The example he gives is from the net roots of the Democratic party: citizens can now move their donations to marginal seats away from the war chest of safe seats rather than this being an internal decision by the party bosses. This freedom, what Benkler calls the “I can affect” freedom, is what he is interested in.

The second question Jenkins poses also starts with quotes, and he asks whether we are in danger of excessive fragmentation on the web:
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This is a one day conference to commemorate Martin Luther King’s “The Other America” in his 1967 speech at Stanford, and heed that speech’s call to create a more just world.

Mark Gonnerman, director of the Aurora Forum introduces the event by noting that economic justice is the main theme of King’s legacy. He references King’s 1948 paper where he lays out his mission as a minister, in which his goal is to deal with unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. He doesn’t mention civil rights. So the effect of Rosa Parks was to turn him in a difference direction from his original mission, to which he returned, which is the gulf between rich and poor. Gonnerman reminds us of the interdependence of global trade and how, even before we leave the house for work, we have used products from all parts of the globe, rich and poor. He quotes King that the agony of the poor enriches the rest.

Thomas Nazario, founding director of The Forgotten International, outlines the face of poverty. He lists the 5 problems in the UN Millennium Report as the charge for the coming generation:

1. global warming
2. world health, including basic health and pandemic avoidance
3. war and nuclear proliferation
4. protection of human rights
5. world poverty

He describes world poverty in two ways: the first is by focusing on the gap between rich and poor. He says there are about 1000 billionaires and claims their money could provide services to half the people on Earth. The second way is to focus on the suffering associated with poverty. Nazario shows us some compelling images of poverty and busts some myths: children do go through garbage and fight rats and other vermin (usually dying before age 5); impoverished people tend to live around rivers since the riverbank is common land since it floods regularly; images of Ethiopia in the 1980’s war, conflict and famine (he notes that when there is extreme poverty, there is extreme fragility of life - any perturbation in the environment will cause death). He says 6 million children die before the age of 5 of hunger and lack of medical care. He also busts the myth that most of the poverty in the world is in Africa - it is in Asia, especially in India. There are 39 million street children in the world, often living in sewers. Of course, poverty is a cause of illiteracy not only because of the cost of education but because the impoverished children usually work to survive.

Amartya Sen is Lamont Professor and Professor of Economics and HIstory, Harvard University. He is a 1998 nobel prize winner in economics and I wrote a book review here of his book _Development as Freedom_. His talk has two components: he speaks first about global poverty and next about human rights. He begins by noting that hope for humanity, as Martin Luther King emphasized, is essential for these topics. Sen hopes the easily preventable deaths of millions of children is not an inescapable human condition and the fatalism about this in the developed world recedes. He also takes on the anti-globalization viewpoint by noting that globalization can be seen as a great contributor to world wealth. He insists globalization is a key component to reform, as there is an enormous positive impact to bringing people together, but the sharing of the spoils needs to be more equitable. Sen advocates a better understanding of economics to help us reform world development institutions, but with a caveat: “a market is as good as the company it keeps.” By this he means that circumstances such as the current conditions governing the distribution of resources or the ability of people to enter market transactions for example, depend on things such as the availability of healthcare and the existence of patents and contract laws conducive to trade.

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