President Clinton says he'd like to bury the antiquated regulations, which obstruct electronic commerce - but he also says the government "must insure the protection of the public interest online."
On the one hand, in a memo to federal agencies Monday, the President says those antiquated regulations must be updated, regulations "developed before the advent of the Internet that may have the unintended effect of impeding business-to-business and business-to-consumer online transactions."
Clinton has even asked the Commerce Department to form a group to ask the public and each federal agency to identify such regulations. Wired says the group is supposed to report findings "in a timely manner," with Congress in most cases having to act to rescind regulations while some agencies could do others on their own.
This week, Yahoo! reported e-shopping had jumped over 400 percent from the same time a year ago, with a survey finding the Internet even surpassed travel agents for ticket sales among Thanksgiving travelers.
But Clinton's comment about "protecting the public interest" is also likely to mean something else - as Wired phrased it, "the odds of the Feds staying out of the Internet regulation business are just about zero," with the President observing some restrictions are now the subject of pending review, legislation, or litigation.
Those include one of Clinton's own notorious executive orders: outlawing the free export of privacy-protecting encryption programs, now subject of a lawsuit. It also includes the Child Online Protection Act, now the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit.
