Ira Magaziner and Steve Case have apparently been drinking the same rhetoric of Internet growth and governance, but from different sides of the goblet.
Both the Clinton administration's Internet policy pointman and the America Online CEO chatted up students and faculty at last week's Harvard University gathering on the Internet and society, telling of the inevitable growth of the medium and the necessary avoidance of outside interference.
Magaziner's take was that the growth of the Internet will lead to deregulation in the telecommunications and broadcast industries. Case's route: For the Internet to become a mass medium, people have to trust that their privacy will be protected, which can come only if some regulations are in place.
Whichever tacts either man took, their shared sentiment laid in Magaziner's comment: "The private sector needs to lead in this new environment, not the government."
