Net Conference| Session 1 - "New Businesses Emerging with Mobile Networks and Digital Home Appliances " | |
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 Digital Divide Barriers 1 | |
| From: Jim Johnson
(1) Moderator - Feedback and Questions | |
| This is Jim Johnson again, hoping to moderate some of the great free for all discussion we have had on a wide range of issues: Some feedback, and then some questions: 1. Even if your own parents are not using the Internet, you can be certain that B2B e-commerce is going to sweep the whole world in this decade. And that you and your children will be using it for every aspect of your lives, very soon. This technology is moving faster than any in history toward universal adoption. It is changing everything. It is not just a faster, mechanized way to do the same thing. It offers whole new concepts in personal services, business organizations, social relationships, political structures and processes, and delivery of everything for human needs. (John Chambers of CISCO - a serious man with lots of clout in the industry talks about refrigerators that will self-detect when you need milk and eggs, and send an order over the Internet to the grocer who will automatically deliver to your home ― and the homemaker won't even know that it is happening.) It challenges the very philosophies of whole societies and institutions. Democracies will work differently in a few years. Internet voter registration and voting is already online for the 2000 elections in the USA. People are meeting their spouses over the Internet. 2. Deeply homogenous cultures, such as Japan, are faced with serious cultural adjustments to try to keep abreast of the industrial world. Marja gives us the picture in Finland (Great to hear from you, Marja). Finland is a deeply homogenous culture with a language that is more unique than Japanese; but amazingly they are practically the Internet powerhouse of Europe. There are some cultural clues that Japan needs to learn from Finland. 3. Many of you have pinpointed government policies, and especially government owned monopoly telcos as a basic part of the problem for the digital divide. (I rather like to think of the digital divide as a clumsy phrase for all the collection of barriers that are still preventing people from transitioning into the true cyber world, and some of these are self-imposed!) What is amazing is that in spite of predatory access rates charged by monopoly phone companies, people are excited fighting for access to the Internet.( And look at China: three major government policy barriers to Internet access announced in the past three months, and yet huge growth in Internet access.) People everywhere are making end-runs on the phone companies. They are fighting their local companies for faster access, like Tony said - even in the Washington, D. C. suburbs. 4. The problems of process in doing business or transacting life over the Internet, such as those mentioned with payment systems, security, privacy, access speed, taxation, etc. are being addressed incrementally all over the world. What looks to most governments like a regulatory, public policy problem generally turns out to be a matter of applying new technologies to solve the problem. Certainly, privacy is solved by technology and business practices, more than government rules. 5. On taxation, I have been trying to get the USA's commission on e-commerce to think globally about taxation of business online. Unfortunately, they are mostly trying to solve the problems of the states in collecting sales taxes on out of state transactions. The challenge the states face is to harmonize their own definitions of what is taxable. Then all the e-commerce vendors will know what sales taxes to charge based on the point of delivery (or the billing address on the credit card) for the products purchased. And the credit card companies and the electronic money makers can serve as third party brokers to assess and distribute the right taxes to the right places. The Governors of the states have been whining about loss of revenues at the same time they are all awash in surpluses generated by e-commerce and the booming economy driven by huge efficiencies in B2B e-commerce. The US commission is going to ask for an extension of the moratorium to let the states get their act together. The real issues are what is the European Commission going to do? They are zealous in taxing e-commerce; and they are shooting themselves in the foot, too. And they are so zealous in protecting consumers that they forbid catalogue vendors on the Internet from offering absolute, 100% guaranteed customer satisfaction, no questions asked on replacements of products for the life of the product (i.e. LL Bean), because this is "unfair competition." EU Consumer advocates still can't figure out why credit card companies are offering full refunds and intervention with vendors on behalf of cardholders as a customer service. No law says they must. It is competition in a global cyber marketplace! The compelling power behind the growth of this phenomenon, inspite of its pitfalls, and its criminal hackers, and its trash sites, and its failings is that the Internet actually is proving a benefit to people who never imagined they could do something so new and important and helpful for themselves and their families and their communities and their nations. SO: ― What are some practical steps for Japan to take to insure universal access for all to the Internet? Does NTT need to be really, really broken up? Do MITI and the DOEd need to get out of the way to allow access to more foreign content? ― Can decisions about growth, using these technologies, be made a lower levels within Japanese companies? Can middle and regional managers be more trusted to make changes and innovate? ― Can Japan's employment social structure withstand people loosing jobs in one old company, retraining and then finding three new jobs in other smaller companies? ― How can the world embrace and pressure China to open up to allow its people open access to the Internet without government restrictions? ― Can Japan see itself as leading all of Asia in an Internet revolution? ― What is the impact of recent mega mergers of information and technology companies on the digital divide? Will the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or can we change that formula? | |
| From: Jim Johnson
(2) Moderator - You've Got Power | |
| Something about this Nikkei online discussion on Internet access, and telecoms and the digital divide must be pretty powerful. Japan's NTT announced today(Feb.10) that they are cutting the rates for Internet access. I guess they got tired of our trying to lobby them! Good for you! You have power! They finally realized that they were creating the digital divide in Japan, and choking the future growth of the nation's economy. Here are some new questions to ponder: 1. The European Commission is currently circulating their proposed policies for taxing online commerce. They are classifying digitally delivered "goods" (i.e. music, books, data, videos, etc.) as "services" and thus are proposing to tax them. QUESTION: Are digitally delivered products "goods" or "services?" 2. The U.S. Government is circulating a proposal for "protecting the security" of the Internet, and especially of networks used by government agencies. Many have criticized this proposal, and the powers of the government to track down hackers, as a violation of individual citizen privacy. QUESTION: Where is the balance between government's right to protect itself, and the right of citizens to be left alone in their privacy? 3. Hackers just brought down the websites of Yahoo, Amazon.com, e-Bay, and CNN, etc. Are hackers part of the free, ruleless, borderless culture of the Internet, or are they criminals? Do hackers create a digital divide by striking fear into the minds of those not yet online? What do you have to say?
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| From: Bradley L. Bartz
(3) Hackers | |
| Hackers are a menace. As you know attacks don't only come in the form of breaking and entering. Common are mail bombs and Denial Of Service attacks. Of course command centers like you have a league of engineers to stamp out evil.... blah. In Japan I believe the National Police Agency needs to have jurisdiction over cyber crimes to centralize skilled knowledge. Very few of the local police agencies have a clue about how to handle cyber complaints. Bill, what are your feelings about spammers? (2) Jim Johnson | |
| From: Takashi Tanemura
(4) Hackers | |
I agree with Brad that hackers are a menace unless they don't cause damage. One of the newspaper companies in Japan lost all the data in one of the servers because they mishandled one of the attacks recently. Of course, if they have reacted properly there would have been no damage, but if they haven't been attacked, there was no trouble at all. In this regard, I would say they could be regarded as criminals.(3) Bradley L. BartzI agree with Jim that they are actually driving the cost up for people who want to start something on the Internet. Hackers could be regarded a sales promotion tool for companies providing network security tools. | |
| From: Wolfgang Hennes
(5) Internet Developments in Japan | |
| I talked to some colleagues who are a little bit more experienced in the developments of the Internet in Japan. They told me that they think that Japan has made a big step forward in the last 2 years. While in the USA and Europe the Internet spreads in the homes and offices in Japan is a different way of development actual. Points of Information with Internet access at common places are spreading very fast (instead of USA/Europe, I looked for a public cyber cafe in New York 2 hours). Please advice if this is right. If yes it shows how cultural surroundings are forming new Internet developments in different regional areas. | |
| From: Bradley L. Bartz
(6) spam and permission email | |
| I know that I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with Spammers, anti-spammers and automated spamcop scripts. Ultimately one organization or indivdual is gaining profit from these spam emails. Electronic or automated controls of spam merely filter to /dev/null -- just trying to clear the way for legitimate traffic. As a free email provider to 300,000 Japanese our biggest problem is from the false use of JMAIL accounts as "return or reply-to" addresses. 90% of the time these accounts DO NOT exist on our systems. We just have to deal with Spammers sending millions of emails to dictionary@bigdomain.com -- with all the automated rejections (95%) and anti-spammer(5%) onslaught of reject emails. Again, someone is benefiting. Is our only true choice bigger, faster and cheaper filters and routers? I know that chasing with lawyers and detectives will be more expensive and time-consuming than Engineer's time. (and possibly cause retaliation / attacks and Internet Protection Rackets) | |
| From: Jim Johnson
(7) Moderator - Points to Ponder | |
| 1. In the earlier note "You've Got Power" I noted the announced reduction this week of Internet access rates by NTT in Japan - thus removing a barrier causing the digital divide. It turns out that NTT only lowered the rates for its own direct ISP service (where you have to dial into NTT's own ISP service). They did not lower the interconnect rates for other ISP service companies who are competing with NTT. Can our Japanese colleagues clarify what is going on with NTT? Should more pressure be brought on them to see the problem they are causing? 2. In response to my note about hackers bringing down several major websites, Bill had an interesting proposition. First of all it seems that hackers used both direct attacks on the security measure of these websites (which Bill maintains are very weak and the result of the carelessness of the website owners). And they used massive spamming techniques by flooding these sites with thousands of void messages, thus denying real users access. Now Bill characterizes these hackers as gallant knaves of the Internet roundtable who should be recognized for their free spirits and their pioneering and daring escapades. On the other hand he chastises the website owners for their failure to properly build suitable security fences. Perhaps these websites should first build technology moats around themselves, fill the moat with brackish water (not suitable for swiming or walking on) and then populate the moat with alligators and snakes (all technological security measures, of course). Then these weak websites should build high stone walls against intruders, topped by broken glass and spikes. And, of course, at the top of each tower is a boiling pot of hot oil ready to be dumped on any who dare to scale the walls. Of course, there should be only one draw bridge into the website, with passwords and secret handshakes. This paints an interesting picture of "globalization" and the wonderful world of noble people crossing borders of culture and language and economics to communicate freely and to learn and to transact mutually beneficial relationships of all kinds. I wonder why we cannot require a higher standard of noble behavior from these knaves who could be expected to limit the outright destructive results of their exercise of freedom. That might make for a global community! | |
| From: Nobuo Ikeda
(8) Points to Ponder | |
(7) Jim JohnsonNo. It's a trivial problem to reduce the telephone charge, because it won't be the main road to the broadband Internet. My colleague, Prof. Kumon, is arguing against such claims contaminated by "Bell heads": http://vox.glocom.ac.jp/opin/telref1.html I think it is much more serious problem that Japan's "digital broadcasting", via the broadcasting satellite to be launched this year, won't be able to interconnect to the Internet. The markup language of "data broadcasting" can only read the proprietary content of broadcasting stations, not HTML! It is wasteful to spend more than 100 Mbps only to broadcast the SAME program they are feeding on land. We are recommending MPT to open it to the broadband Internet.
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| From: Jane Smith Patterson
(9) goods and services | |
| Take a look at the latest document from NGA on telecommunications and taxes (www.nga.org). For the United Sates, we must move to really look at all taxes, not just taxing the "goods and services". You can determine the winners in the competitive digital economy for the providers of networks by how you tax them. Question Do you think that the US companies push government policies on the Internet that work to the detriment of other countries companies? | |
| From: Jim Johnson
(10) Ｍoderator - Japan and Developing Countries | |
| Bruno Lanvin of UNCTAD is having the most profound and consistent impact on bringing developing countries up to speed in the global e-commerce world. His work is an example even for many industrialized countries that are still struggling with policy and economic interest barriers that are keeping them from overcoming the digital divide. Are there parallels between the circumstances in developing countries, both positive and negative, and what is happening in Japan? Jane Smith Patterson has pointed, appropriately, to the work of the National Governors' Assn on finding reasonable ways for governments to tax online commerce. The coalition of corporate representatives who also participate in the Advisory Commission, with the governors, have a new proposal, as well which recognizes the need for governments to tax commercial transactions, but argues for a way to do this without impairing the growth of e-commerce. Is taxation of the Internet an issue in Japan, for purposes of the Nikkei Conference? What do you think?
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