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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Whither The Voice Of The Internet?
by Bara Vaida
"The Internet industry needs a genuine, prime-time Washington presence." That was the rallying cry of Bill Burrington, America Online's former director of global public policy, in a 1998 press release announcing the creation of the advocacy organization the Internet Alliance.
But like so many organizations tied to the Internet, the promise was greater than the reality. Late last month, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which bought the alliance two-and-a-half years ago, laid off its long-time director, Jeff Richards, thus ringing the final death knell to the organization that had been fading from relevancy over the past several years.
Crumbling Alliances
The alliance still exists as a state research organization and follows global cyber-security issues, but its Web site no longer exists and the DMA, rather than the alliance, now will work to represent the Internet's interests on federal legislation. A DMA spokesperson said Richards' job was eliminated after an evaluation of how to make DMA's entire organization more efficient.
The virtual elimination of the alliance leaves only one player in the lobbying field that aims to represent "pure-play" Internet companies: the NetCoalition. And that organization, which named a new executive director, Kevin McGuiness, two weeks ago, also faces questions about its future relevancy, industry sources have said.
Last year, two of the NetCoalition's founding members, Amazon.com and eBay, pulled out of the organization, and the group has yet to show itself as a powerhouse. CEOs who belong to the NetCoalition have yet to visit Washington together to push a particular issue, though the group was created two years ago.
The Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) is one tech coalition whose members do act cohesively. Its membership includes 11 high-tech CEOs from large computer and telecommunications makers. At least a half-dozen of them visit Washington twice a year to lobby on issues specific to their sectors, such as computer export controls.
In an interview last week, McGuiness said the NetCoalition would work to increase its Washington profile. But its struggles and the woes of the Internet Alliance have some observers wondering about the future of the Internet-based lobby in the nation's capital.
Competing Visions
George Vradenburg, AOL Time Warner's outgoing executive vice president for global and strategic policy, whose company is a member of both the Internet Alliance and the NetCoalition, is among those who sees the troubles as just a reflection of market realities. "The centrality of Net-centric organizations has diminished," he said.
Other industry sources say the organizations' struggles indicate that Internet-based companies exist in a fast-paced and ever-changing market, and their business models make it too difficult for them to act cohesively on public policy. "To me, what this all says is that Internet companies have less in common than you would think. Their business models are all very different. EBay's business model is not the same as Yahoo's or Amazon's," said one former alliance staff member.
Not long after the NetCoalition's creation in summer 1999, for example, a squabble emerged between eBay and other coalition members over what direction to take on database-protection legislation. EBay supported one version of legislation, H.R. 354, in the 106th Congress. The bill aimed to provide stronger protections for database manufacturers.
The rest of the NetCoalition, as well as financial services companies, libraries and universities, backed another bill, H.R. 1858. The legislation would have banned the wholesale duplication of someone else's database while still permitting individuals to take data and transform it into new uses. It also would have guaranteed online brokers access to real-time and historical market data.
"We worked to create the NetCoalition and then almost as soon as we were formed, the rest of the companies started taking a stance that was different than our own," said an executive at eBay. Since pulling out of the NetCoalition, the company has joined no other association, preferring to lobby its issues independently.
The impact of business realities upon public policy stances also can be seen at the Silicon Valley lobbying group TechNet. While valley firms banded together in 1997 to fight for relief from securities litigation, the 200-plus members of the group have struggled to agree on public policies, so the group each year has chosen to lobby on just a few issues, such as education reform or accounting rules.
Though online privacy policy has been a topic of discussion in Congress for years, TechNet just decided this month to develop privacy guidelines, reflecting the disagreement within the industry on how to approach privacy policy.
"Part of the problem for the tech industry in lobbying is that their issues tend to be temporal rather than static, hence the industry remains fractured," said another former Internet Alliance staff member.
A Troubled History
That can be seen in the alliance's history, which for years struggled to find a direction. Richards first entered the technology industry in 1983, when he created the Videotext Industry Association to represent the few companies, like Knight-Ridder and CBS, that were experimenting with devices to send text material to subscribers via television.
As that industry changed, Richards in 1991 renamed the group the Interactive Services Association. It included a wider array of companies, including the 1-900 telecommunications industry and a then-fledgling online company, America Online. AOL's Burrington then joined the alliance board and helped shape the organization.
But not until 1994, when Congress began considering the Communications Decency Act (CDA), did the alliance started focusing in earnest on federal public policy. After successfully fighting the CDA, the group in 1998 renamed itself the Internet Alliance and spun off the 1-900 industry companies. They also commissioned a $250,000 study to help the group determine what issues an Internet-based organization should target.
The alliance failed to secure the membership of Internet players like eBay, however. Not long after the NetCoalition formed in 1999, Richards found financial backing from the DMA, which was looking for an Internet advocacy group to promote marketers' online interests.
Since then, the Internet has become a mainstream medium for other sectors of the economy, and the large high-tech trade associations, such as the Information Technology Association of America and the Information Technology Industry Council, have taken a greater role in representing the Internet industry. There are other Internet trade associations, such as the U.S. Internet Industry Association and the American Internet Service Providers Association, but they represent a cross-section of communications, hardware and software companies rather than "pure-play" companies.
On the Hill, aides to lawmakers who focus on technology policy said that while Internet companies have done a better job at lobbying on their issues than a few years ago, they remain unfocused and less effective than they could be. "There isn't a clear picture of where they are going compared to the bigger high-tech associations," said one Democratic aide.
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