Notes and quotes from Ithiel de Sola Pool's "Technologies of Freedom"

• A public network interconnecting computers must be licensed and, according to present interpretations of the 1934 Communications Act, may be denied a license if the government does not believe that it serves “the public convenience, interest, or necessity” p. 3
• The Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8, gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce, but in the First Amendment, equally explicitly, it excludes one kind of commerce, namely communication, from government authority. Yet here is the FCC trying to figure out how it can avoid regulating the commerce of the computer industry (an authority Congress could have given, but never did) while continuing to regulate communications whenever it considers this necessary. The Constitution has been turned on its head. p 3
• The phrase “communications policy” rings oddly in a discussion of freedom from goverment. But freedom is also a policy. The question it poses is how to reduce the public control of communications in an electronic era. A policy of freedom aims at pluralism of expression rather than at dissemination of preferred ideas. p 8
• Communications policy can be mapped on a few central questions
  • Definition of the domain in which the policy operates
  • Availability of resources
  • Organizations of access to resources
  • Establishment and enforcement of norms and controls
  • Problems at the system boundaries p 9
• The physical printing plant was potentially hostage to state action and so the physical