INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS Panel Says International Communications Will Play Integral Role in Future U.S. Policy By aya Noronha Hoya Staff Writer

A representative from the Federal Communications Commission, a former member of the Department of Commerce, Georgetown professors, and a former attorney for MCI WorldCom discussed technology in terms of standards, competition, privacy, data security and intellectual property. Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology Program (CCT) played host to the panel entitled “The Future of the United States International Communication Policy” to about 60 graduate students.

“We have gone through a first age of telecommunications. The US was a leader in the liberalization of the market and spurred on liberalization in other countries,” a former MCI WorldCom chief policy counsel and former director of the Office of Policy & Strategic Planning in the Department of Commerce Jonathan Sallet said. “The Europeans and the United States will have to engage in a lot of discussion as we enter the next generation of telecommunications policies.”

Panelist Jonathan Aronson explained that the information technology arena is highly complex. He said, “The international telecommunications industry is one of the most exciting and challenging fields. You need to know something about law, economics, business, politics, technology, and culture. Internationally, you need to know all that in several countries.” Aronson is the director and professor of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California and member of the Council on Foreign Relations,

Chief of the International Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission Don Abelson remarked that attempts for regulation are growing along with the communications field. “There are over 105 independent regulators. Five years ago, there were only five,” he said.

“[Communications regulation] involves taxation, privacy, and security. It’s not surprising governments become interested – the question is how much the government should be involved,” panelist Elliot Maxwell said. Smith is the senior fellow for the digital economy at the Aspen Institute and former Special Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce for the Digital Economy.

For example, the French government asked Yahoo – and Internet portal – to restrict the French access to auctions of Nazi regalia, according to Maxwell. “Governments are interested in drawing borders on what was a borderless Internet,” he said.

Abelson asserted that the FCC is “driven from the perspective of the public interest” while many foreign countries regulate for the financial interests of the largest private company.

Simona Folescu, a graduate student in the CCT program, said she enjoyed Abelson’s remarks. “It was intriguing to hear the FCC speaker. He alluded to the diminishing influence of the FCC as technology develops and becomes more Internet-based. He seems to be admitting that they are merely advisory and being taken out of the picture,” Folescu said.

The panelists also discussed how the information/technology industry often works at opposite ends than the government. Encryption programs make users appear anonymous but can restrict the effectiveness of law enforcement officers to police the Internet, they said. For instance, the Internet can be used to both sell term papers and to sell programs to professors to check if their students are plagiarizing, according to the panelists.

Intellectual property rights also come up in the communications industry with the creation of programs such as Napster that offer sharing of copyrighted material, the panelists said.

The panelists also discussed whether a nation, or a regulatory body like the International Telecommunications Union, has the right to legislate other nations around the world. “Especially since 9-11, there are questions of security. There are so many questions, we don’t always have the answers,” Aronson said.

The CCT program of Georgetown University Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences was the first graduate program to focus on an interdisciplinary approach to the social, cultural and political influences of new information technologies.

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