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In a room jammed with officials from the high-tech industry, consumer groups, and the government, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday announced a blueprint for electronic commerce that they hope will not only ensure the growth of worldwide electronic commerce but secure their place in history as the first truly wired administration.
"Today we establish a new framework for electronic commerce for the digital age," Gore said, adding that the framework is "helping to make sure that commerce goes digital and business goes global."
"A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce," the result of 15 months of work by an interagency task force and industry leaders headed, by White House policy adviser Ira Magaziner, addresses a wide range of issues, including copyright protection, tariffs, trade, encryption, and content regulation.
The framework aims to lay down basic rules for US e-commerce policy: no Net taxes or tariffs, protection of consumer privacy, and copyright protection. And although it also holds fast to a policy on data-security technology that puts law-enforcement concerns ahead of free-market incentives, industry leaders heralded the paper as a good first step.
"We will work with the administration to fully deliver the promise of a networked world," said Louis Gerstner, president and chief executive officer of IBM, who emphatically described the Net as a "borderless, sleepless marketplace."
Indeed, the potential for Net growth is huge. Online sales in 1995 were US$200 million, and it's possible that revenues through e-commerce could reach more than $1 trillion by 2010.
But despite the free-market approach to almost every aspect of e-commerce, the administration still is looking toward a key-management infrastructure for encryption - a plan that many industry leaders say will hurt US firms in the global market and that builders of encryption products say is a costly, risky, and virtually unworkable solution.
The president, describing himself as a "technophobe" who is getting more into the Net now that daughter Chelsea is going off to college, announced he would direct Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Commerce Secretary William Daley, and Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to oppose new taxes on the Net and eliminate barriers to free e-trade, and charged them with establishing basic consumer protections and a legal framework. He also said all corners of the administration would reevaluate their policies on e-commerce to make them consistent with the framework. Daley and Magaziner will travel to Europe next week to present the paper.
As for the sticky issue of content regulation, the administration "supports industry self-regulation, adoption of competing ratings systems, and development of easy-to-use technical solutions," the framework says.
"We need to find a way to protect children that is consistent with the First Amendment," Clinton said, alluding to last week's Supreme Court decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act, which would have chilled speech on the Net in the name of shielding kids from "indecent" material.
The president also said he would convene a meeting later this month with parents, industry leaders, and consumer groups to develop an "equivalent to the V-chip" for the Internet. He stressed that a free-market approach to e-commerce "does not mean indifference when it comes to protecting children."
