Op Ed: Internet Policy Demands Wise Decision

"Fast is fine," but Congressional Internet policy demands wise decision. Congress Must Extend Internet Tax Moratorium, THEN Set About Deep Commission-Study for National Policies.

“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." That was Wyatt Earp’s longtime rule, assisting the famed Western gun-shark to continue his successes for a long time. Gunfight at the OK Corral courtesy: harryj.net

(BEND, Ore.) - “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."

That was Wyatt Earp’s longtime rule, assisting the famed Western gun-shark to continue his successes for a long time. It was so successful that he never suffered the likely death-by gunfire highly probable in his confrontations, but died peacefully at home after numerous victories.

That Western history should now help Sen. Gordon Smith, as he contemplates what the U.S. Senate must do, SOON, about taxing access or other usage of the Internet, world-famed open-and-free foundation system for the Information Age now reshaping our entire world and the way we all live.

The Senate must act before Nov. 1st to preserve and extend the moratorium on declaring the Internet an open zone for what may be a wild run of taxation by states and municipalities eager --some say desperate-- to cut out their share of new revenues as rapidly as possible, “before others beat them to the new bonanza.”

Many states, in an initiative underway since 2000, are already at work establishing their diverse approaches and specific demands for the essential actions needed in adapting their current laws and coverage.

What happened to Wyatt can happen to the U.S --and the entire world, since U.S. Internet innovation and development will inevitably shape-the-whole. But only if national action to establish overall policy and meet worldwide expectations is undertaken and accomplished well.

We should make doubly sure that we are “accurate” in this ongoing confrontation between commonweal and corporate interests, since the outcomes (and unforeseen consequences !) may well become a monstrous dividing line protecting us from further corporatism worldwide.

Current statement by some Senate leaders is that they will now insist on “no Internet taxes in perpetuity”.

That means “for life” --or at least for a long and undetermined period.

Given the overwhelming and continuing speed of innovation and elemental change which has always characterized the Internet and all its surroundings, that’s not the wisest way nor even the most efficient way to tackle this complex problem, surely demanding special care and deep concern since what the U.S. does NOW will impact impossibly to change on what the whole world continues to make of the Internet.

Once so established and in-action, as with almost every tax ever exacted, this one (or rather THESE ONES, since there are multi-taxing agencies inevitably involved) they may well continue “in perpetuitY, too.

Far better it may be to simply extend once again this surely shaping U.S. action - by whatever term seems wise and winning of time to work out the best --and most flexible ways to handle this inevitable action. The time it takes is surely better spent than will be the massive monies otherwise at risk all across this nation.

Surely the Internet --now becoming the most promising of new channels for every phase of 21st Century life AND commerce-- will inevitably and inexorably need to find some “fast and accurate” way to pay for its further development and deep impacts on us all.

An active and effective U.S. commission study, as for other previous parallel problems, may well be the ultimate solution --and will be widely welcomed around the world as demonstrating a return to U.S. long-lost leadership in these matters of massive meaning for all.

One sure thing we know from all past encounters with the shaping technologies with which we must live in the 21st Century: Somehow, they must produce both effectively and efficiently for millions across the world, thus generating the huge and otherwise overwhelming returns to pay for still further constant development, OR they will fail and fall into “the wastebins of history”, driven by that desperate reality of capitalism: Schumpeter’s theory “of ‘creative destruction’, in which the old ways of doing things are endogenously destroyed and replaced by the new.”

Rapid decision to meet demands of corporate interests already now “bundling” telephone and other services provided via cable for Internet, thus avoiding current and coming taxes, is NOT the motivating force needed for “fast and accurate” decision on this one.

But naturally that depends on personal stock-holdings, if any.

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Reader’s Note:
Complexity of this whole issue is clearly laid out in the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, shaping legislation in 20 states representing 30 percent of U.S. population., already under way since 2003.

Compelling and stressful questions concerning state actions and interests remain, and may eventually demand further Supreme Court decision.

For full coverage of these complexities, surely shaping the necessity for fateful --and ultimately “accurate”! - national decision, only reachable by comprehensive further study, “See with own eyes” at: cfif.org.

Please note that Senator Ron Wyden is co-author of one bill under consideration.

Do you agree that we now must have a comprehensive national policy covering this and many other Internet necessities , to maintain the freedoms and opportunities available ONLY in a “free Internet’?