Many issues arise from the multiple roles of government with respect to activities in the NII. These roles include provider of public services, protector of consumers, protector of the indigent and other disadvantaged persons, codifier of standard commercial practices and legal standards of proof, investigator and prosecutor of criminals, protector of inventor and authors, educator of the citizenry, and sponsor of advanced research and development for the NII.
Registration of ordinary users should be simple and non-restrictive so as not to interfere with the rights of free speech and peacable assembly. Some type of competent governmental body needs to be established in order to determine that telecommunications are being used in an acceptable way.
The NII should establish security systems adequate to protect the privacy of individuals, the confidentiality of documents, and intellectual property rights. Guarding intellectual property rights is of utmost importance so that software and video producers have an incentive to develop and disseminate their works over the NII. Government, business and education must work together to guarantee the security of this information.
Users, especially educators and students, will depend on the marketplace to offer services that are guaranteed not to contain categories of potentially offensive information. Precautions such as a rating service must be taken to ensure the proper use of the NII.
One example of government regulation is the Clipper chip which will enable users to encrypt conversations or data messages. With the issuance of a court order, the Clipper Chip will also allow the government to decode these conversations and messages.
Is this going a bit overboard in terms of governmantal regulation? Mark Vorhees thinks so.
All parties involved must come up with a regulatory sytem that does not allow too much control for one specific sector.
