Otherwise, there is fear of the
concentration of control of the medium in a few hands. All
these things do happen - but the pace is so slow that the
initial fears are forgotten and public attention reverts to
fresher issues.
A new Communications Act was legislated in the USA in 1934. It
was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national
resource to be sold to the private sector which will use it to
transmit radio signals to receivers. In other words: the radio
was passed on to private and commercial hands. Public radio
was doomed to be marginalized.
The American administration withdrew from its last major
involvement in the Internet in April 1995, when the NSF ceased
to finance some of the networks and, thus, privatized its
hitherto heavy involvement in the net.
A new Communications Act was legislated in 1996. It permitted
"organized anarchy". It allowed media operators to invade each
other's territories.
Phone companies will be allowed to transmit video and cable
companies will be allowed to transmit telephony, for instance.
This is all phased over a long period of time - still, it is a
revolution whose magnitude is difficult to gauge and whose
consequences defy imagination.
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