The IRS audit of OPN has caused many of us here to stop and ask ourselves a few soul-searching questions about the nature and purpose of our organization. I think that's all to the good-- we should stop now and then and reflect on what we're doing and why. Humor me for just a moment while I indulge in a two-kinds-of-people- ism: One way of dividing humanity into two groups is to consider the differences between people who believe, on the one hand, that everyone should pull their own weight, and those who believe, on the other hand, that we're all in this thing together. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between-- we should do our best to pull our own weight as individuals AND we should have enough compassion in our hearts to spend some of our energy helping those less fortunate than ourselves. Our society has a developed many institutions to guarantee us a level playing field by transferring unfair advantages from one group of people to offset unfair disadvantages suffered by another group of people. There are many examples. Consider the much-maligned US Postal Service. The USPS delivers a first-class letter anywhere in the US for 32 cents. The rate is the same whether you're mailing a letter across Manhattan island or from Ekalaka, Montana to Oakridge, Oregon. From time to time, private companies have tried to cherry pick the mail business by offering to deliver urban mail for about half the first-class rate, but they are always shut down. If such cherry-pickers were allowed to continue, they'd only externalize the cost of providing mail service to rural people while internalizing the profits of serving urban areas. If these private urban mail services were allowed to continue, they would starve the USPS of the profit centers that allow them to serve rural areas inexpensively and the USPS would have to raise their rates up to the average cost of delivering a rural letter which is much higher than the average cost for all letter deliveries. The net effect would be the creation of a two-tier postal system-- a cheap system for urban dwellers and a prohibitively expensive system for rural people. It was decided long ago that the "technology" of mail delivery was far too important for a democracy to allow only city dwellers to have access to it. After all, how democratic can a society be if it costs some people ten times as much to write to their congressional representatives? So our country developed an efficient system to serve all US citizens equally. When electricity was invented, it was first provided as a service in urban areas only. It took the Rural Electrification Act (REA) to make it possible to share the benefits of electricity with people in rural areas. My grandfather's memoirs mention the happy day electricity came to the Ohio farmhouse he grew up in. Think of all the fires prevented in America's country homes by conversion from gas lighting to electric lighting. What kind of a society would condemn its farming families to continue living in danger when safer, better technology was available? Thankfully, not ours. The telephone quickly proved itself to be indispensable in a democracy. Imagine the skewed public opinion polls that would result from telephone polling if, say, only half of the citizens could afford telephone service. Fortunately, great leaders stepped forward in the early days of telephone and declared that the technology was far too important to be left to the laissez-faire mechanisms of an unregulated market. Laws were enacted that made it possible for all citizens to afford telephone service through a rate structure that subsidized residential phone service with higher business phone service rates. The benefits of automobile transportation lead to the creation of the US interstate highway system. Can you imagine how many toll booths and billboards there'd be on a privately owned highway system? The phrase "information superhighway" has been rendered almost meaningless by overuse, but it was supposed to mean that the internet needed to be an infrastructure open to everyone-to Mercedes' and old Chevettes too. Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the television, used to tell his children about his invention: "There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your diet, your intellectual diet." His story is a fascinating one and it wasn't aired on NBC or CBS or the Fox Network. It was on PBS. If you missed it you can read the transcript at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/technology/bigdream/bigdreams.html Public Broadcasting has spoken eloquently about the nature and purpose of public broadcasting in their fundraising spots: "If we don't do it, who will?". Public broadcasting has enriched our society by telling us our history in ways that commercial television can't or won't touch. Commercial television may be entertaining for some, but public television educates-- and education is the foundation of democracy. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." (By the way, I'm not the sort of guy who memorizes TJ quotes. I knew Jefferson once wrote something on the subject of educating voters and I thought it had the phrase "educate them" in it. I went to Alta Vista and searched for "jefferson" AND "educate them". Even though the phrase "educate them" wasn't in the exact quote, paraphrasing in the commentary of http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7970/jefpco39.htm matched my query and I soon had the quote I wanted. The net is a very powerful tool. But, perhaps I digress too much.) If education is truly the key to democracy, who should be allowed to decide what to teach people? Who should control the content of that educational process? With all due apologies to TJ, I know of no safe repository of the power of content control but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to publish web pages with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to seize their virtual printing presses or to screen the URLs they access, or to limit the USENET newsgroups they can read, but to inform their discretion by e-mail or a contrary web page. That is the true corrective of abuses of the internet in a democratic society. Ironically, if OPN restricted your on-line access to topics traditionally considered "educational" or topics traditionally associated with an "informed electorate", it would almost certainly have an easy time qualifying as a tax-exempt non-profit. But, who's to say what's not educational and what doesn't lead to a better informed electorate? Not us. In spite of OPN's work with over 500 non-profit organizations and OPN's public access sites and OPN's on-line community pages, there are some who dismiss OPN as a mere "non-profit ISP". OPN is, of course, much more than that, but I want to say that even IF OPN were "merely a non-profit ISP", merely a publicly-owned on-ramp to the infobahn, it would be a resounding success. My point is that many human enterprises are best implemented with a we're-all-in-this- together approach. Not all, just some. In my opinion, the internet is far too important a technology for a democratic society to allow it to be shaped by private interests alone. I think the internet is one of those technologies that must be publicly managed or publicly owned so that everyone can have equal access to its benefits-city dwellers and country dwellers alike, rich and poor alike, young students and senior citizens alike. For me, that's what OPN is, and always was, about. All the rest is icing on the cake. What kind of a society will we have if ISPs are allowed to continue ignoring the needs of rural would-be netizens? What kind of a democracy will we have if only those who can afford up-to-date computers can effectively access the home pages of their government representatives? I've found phone numbers for Oregon government officials on the web that were not in the Eugene phone book and that no one would give me over the phone. Won't the words "equal opportunity" ring hollow when only those with internet access can find out about the best jobs available? Where are the leaders who recognize the importance of the internet for democratic society? (Project Vote-Smart at http://www/vote-smart.org doesn't seem to cover this issue yet.) Where are the leaders spearheading efforts to craft national legislation guaranteeing universal internet access? Not in Washington D.C., that I've noticed yet. Not in Salem, that I've noticed yet. They're right here. They're you and the staff and volunteers at OPN. OPN is about internet in the public interest. We are the ones saying that the internet is more a right than a privilege or a product. We're the ones saying, "Let's build the internet in the we're-all-in-this-together way" not the "Look out for number one way". We are on our way to becoming an IRS test case of national proportions. It's time to ask ourselves, just like our un-related kindred service OPB asks its viewers, "If we don't do it, who will?" OPN needs you: your volunteer time, your letters to your government representatives and your tax-deductible donations to improve our service, to help grow the infrastructure to rural Lane country, to keep serving low-income members and to get our message out so that people understand why we do what we do. Thank you. Please take a moment and mail a check today (payable to "Oregon Public Networking" or "OPN") to: OPN, Attn PO Box 1914 Eugene OR 97440-1914 Remember to write your user-id (login name) and "New Equipment Fund" on the check in the "memo" or "for" space in the lower left. Thanks for your support!