In an effort to set the agenda for global commerce in the digital age, the White House has drafted a sweeping framework outlining a market-oriented policy for the Internet.
The framework, released to Wired News over the weekend, encompasses a wide range of topics relating to online transactions, including tariffs, e-cash, domain name trademarks and key recovery. The document is an attempt to lend coherence to the administration's various Internet policies and to demonstrate a greater understanding of technology issues.
Foremost on the agenda is a push to deter other countries from imposing tariffs on products and services delivered on the Internet "before vested interests form to protect those tariffs," according to the blueprint. Tariffs on Internet commerce are now being considered by at least a dozen countries and, drafters worry, could hamstring the progress of global trade on the Net.
Ira Magaziner, a senior White House policy adviser who is heading the task force, describes the plan as a "work in progress," and said the administration was "concerned that governments would act in ways that would prohibit electronic commerce."
"For the past 50 years we've been trying to bring down tariffs and duties," said Magaziner, who was made famous as head of the administration's ill-fated task force to overhaul the nation's health-care system. "Why introduce more through this new medium?"
Peter Harter, public policy counsel for Netscape and a consultant on the project, said that part of the agenda's significance comes from the fact that it was drafted with the cooperation of major high-tech businesses, including Sun Microsystems, Netscape, and IBM. "Early in the discussions, the drafting of a White House policy became an inclusive process" between the administration and businesses, he said.
The latest blueprint includes the Clinton administration's cryptography policy of key recovery. The highly controversial key recovery plan requires that keys for encrypted products be stored with a third party - usually the government - which would have authorization to release the keys if a court deemed it necessary during a law enforcement investigation.
"Encryption has an independent life of its own, but we wanted to catalog our position on it," Magaziner said. "Of course, our position is still evolving."
In 1995, sales on the Internet were estimated at US$200 million, and by the dawn of the millennium, commerce on the Net could total several billion dollars.
"The law will never catch up to technology," Hartner said. "If they manage to achieve even one of [the document's] proposals in the next four years, that would be quite an achievement."
The framework, which will soon be widely circulated among business and policy leaders, incorporates the views of federal departments including Commerce, Treasury, Justice, and State, as well as those of the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. The policy paper could be presented to the president in early 1997, provided the feedback is positive, Magaziner said.
