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From...
Newly relaunched Internet Alliance hopes to fill leadership vacuum
by Elizabeth Wasserman
June 18, 1998
Web posted at: 1:09 PM ET
Most trade associations thrive on adding new member businesses, not turning them away.
But as part of an 18-month "attic to basement" review, the 15-year-old Interactive Services Association relaunched as the Internet Alliance and has streamlined its focus to better serve the consumer-oriented Internet industry. Some constituencies, such as the interactive television industry, had to be dropped.
The new Internet Alliance – which includes America Online, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, IBM, Microsoft, Netcom and Netscape among its 243 members – seeks to become the launching pad for the Internet industry's self-governance initiatives. The group will be working to advocate public policy on behalf of members not only in Washington, D.C., but in state capitals, Europe and Asia as well.
"Our real goal was to focus on those issues in which we had a strong vested interest so that the online medium will become the mass-market medium of the 21st century, as we all believe it will," says Jeff Richards, the organization's executive director. "The greatest threat to delivering on that goal is the vacuum of leadership for our members in Washington, Brussels and throughout Asia."
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For 15 years, the ISA helped educate consumers about interactive services and spur demand. Now that the industry is out of its formative years, the medium has led regulators, lawmakers and the public to call for action on such issues as privacy rights, spam and online pornography. Some of the measures working their way through legislative bodies could be harmful for the industry and, ultimately, for consumers, Richards said. One of Richards' concerns is that the industry has splintered into competing trade associations, coalitions and interest groups, causing response to government action to be fractured when it needs to be unified.
For example, the ISA has avoided taking a stance on legislation providing for online copyright protection, which has already been approved by the Senate and is now moving through the House of Representatives. That legislation, which would bring the U.S. into compliance with a treaty reached in 1996 with the World Intellectual Property Organization, has sometimes pitted Internet and online services against media companies over who should be liable for enforcing copyright violations of subscribers.
But the new alliance believes there are more concerns that unite members than divide them. Priority issues that the Internet Alliance plans to work on include consumer privacy, unsolicited e-mail, content regulation, Internet taxation, children's marketing online, electronic commerce and fraud.
Separately, two other industry groups, the Internet Advertising Bureau and the Internet Local Advertising and Commerce Association, have agreed to merge. The deal will boost the IAB's membership to more than 300 companies.