Usenet and the Internet, as part of this new medium, hold the promise of guaranteeing that the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press means as much to each individual as to Time Warner or The New York Times. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that, at least in theory, freedom of the press applies as much to “the lonely pamphleteer” as it does to the editors of a major urban daily newspaper. But the Net puts this theory into practice. And it is precisely because the Net holds the promise of being the most democratizing communications medium in the history of the planet that it is vital we prevent the fearful and the ignorant from attempting to control your access to it.
Predictor: Godwin, Mike
Prediction, in context:A 1995 article for Wired magazine carried part of the text of a speech that Mike Godwin gave at Carnegie Mellon University in November 1994, after the university banned several Usenet newsgroups from campus computers. Godwin says: ”For the first time in history, we have a many-to-many medium where you don’t have to be rich to have access, and where you don’t have to win the approval of an editor or publisher to speak your mind publicly. Usenet and the Internet, as part of this new medium, hold the promise of guaranteeing that the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press means as much to each individual as to Time Warner or The New York Times. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that, at least in theory, freedom of the press applies as much to ‘the lonely pamphleteer’ as it does to the editors of a major urban daily newspaper. But the Net puts this theory into practice. And it is precisely because the Net holds the promise of being the most democratizing communications medium in the history of the planet that it is vital we prevent the fearful and the ignorant from attempting to control your access to it.”
Biography:Mike Godwin was an attorney specializing in Internet issues and the outspoken chief counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the cyber-liberties organization in the 1990s. (Legislator/Politician/Lawyer.)
Date of prediction: November 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Censorship/Free Speech
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: alt.sex.academic.freedom: The Only Perversion on the Carnegie Mellon Campus is the Administration’s Rape of Academic Freedom
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/cyber_rights_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney