早稲田国際教養AO, Supplemental Material, Media Monopoly

Read the following excerpt from “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy” by Robert W. McChesney and answer the question.

The Internet and the broader digital revolution are not inexorably determined by technology; they are shaped by how society elects to develop them. Reciprocally, our chosen way of development will shape us and our society, probably dramatically. I have highlighted a number of policy issues and suggested the type of reforms we ought to be debating, which could put the Internet and our society on a very different trajectory. These issues include:

●  Establishing comprehensive media literacy education in schools to give people a critical understanding of digital communication;

●  Strict regulation of advertising;

●  Elimination of advertising directed to children under the age of twelve;

●   Elimination of broadcast candidate advertising;

●  Elimination of sharp reduction of the tax write-off of advertising as a business expense;

●  Strict ownership limits on a broadcast stations;

●  Expansion of the nonprofit broadcast sector;

●  Management of the electromagnetic spectrum as a public resource;

●  Broadband availability to all for free as a basic right;

●  Strict limits of copyright, returning to precorporate standards with expansion of the public domain and protection of fair use;

●  Heavy regulation of digital “natural monopolies” or conversion of them to nonprofit services;

●  Large expansion of funding to public, community, and student media;

●  Steps to make cooperative and nonprofit media and journalism more practical;

●  Large public investments in journalism, including citizenship news vouchers;

●  Net neutrality: no censorship of or discrimination against legal digital activities;

●  Strict online privacy regulations so that online activities are regarded in the same way as one’s private correspondence in the mails; and

●  Strong legal barriers against militarization of the Internet sand use of it for warrantless surveillance.

　　

Enacting these measures would change America for the better and make it a much more democratic society. They would go a long way toward enabling us to address what seem like intractrable social, economic, and environmental problems. Enactment might even make the capitalism of the catechism work much more effectively, producing a solid basis for free markets and competition in the context of a more democratic and humane society. Yet none of these policy reforms has a chance; only a few even have hope of being debated in the corridors of power.

Question: Which of the policy issues the author lists are you most interested in ? Why? Include at least one specific example or reason based on what you have experienced or learned in your explanation.