The other day, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a cute little guide with their take on who’s who in Internet politics. The group names and descriptions were somewhat arbitrary and a bit silly in some cases, but that’s beside the point for the moment.
Strip away all that folderol and here are the groupings that ITIF came up with:
Team A: Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Team B: A large array of groups and individuals, including the Benton Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for Digital Democracy, Civil Rights Forum on Communication Policy, Consumer Project on Technology, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Press, Media Access Project, and Public Knowledge, and scholars such as Columbia’s Tim Wu, MIT Media Laboratory’s David Reed, and most of those hanging their hats at Harvard’s Berkman Center (among them Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler)
Team C: Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Pacific Research Institute, the Phoenix Center, the Progress & Freedom Foundation, and the Technology Policy Institute
Team D: Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and the Stilwell Center.
Team E: Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family
Team F: Law enforcement, some elected officials, government bureaucrats, and “public interest” advocates, veterans of the telecom regulatory wars that preceded the breakup of Ma Bell, legal analysts working for social engineering think tanks, as well as government officials seeking to impose restrictive regulatory frameworks on broadband
Team G: Established tech companies like IBM, AT&T, and Hewlett Packard to “teenagers” like Cisco Systems and Microsoft, and “youngsters” like Google and Facebook, as well as trade associations like the Information Technology Industry Council and the Association for Competitive Technology,
Team H: Producers, distributors and middlemen, such as retailers, car dealers, wine wholesalers, pharmacies, optometrists, real estate agents, or unions representing workers in these industries.
Team B is a winner. On intellectual firepower and moral dedication alone, Team B claims several advantages over the rest of the league. Furthermore, PK is proud to be included with this team. We couldn’t have drafted any better. We couldn’t be with a nicer, more dedicated and more astute bunch of people, all of whom are working to bring more people online, to make life online better and to make the online environment safer for everyone. Thanks, ITIF.