Its been a good summer for the internet in the nation's capitol... free speech has won out over a well- intentioned but blatantly unconstitutional attempt to keep pornography offline. And now President Clinton wants to pave the way for global electronic commerce by keeping government out of the way.

While policy geeks in Washington and Silicon Valley are having a field day pouring over the relatively short document called, "A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" [?], you may have wondered what exactly it all means to you. Not much in the short run -- that is over the next year or so. Getting all of this theory put into law is going to be hard and keeping governments from passing laws is going to be even harder.

For example, Clinton wants everyone to agree not to place new taxes on digital commerce. [Taxes already in place are OK, but] the white house wants to make sure governments don't tax goods delivered over the internet like software and documents. I hope governments show some foresight and self- restraint in this area -- You can envision some pretty insane ways of slapping surcharges on internet users this way. But already, local governments in THIS country have blocked a bill that would have prevented new taxes on electronic commerce. I find it highly unlikely that politicians are going to pass up all that "free" money.

Another of the nine provisions in the framework calls for self- governance when it comes to online pornography -- exactly the opposite point of view the White House had taken before the Supreme Court. The CIinton Admin's strident defense of the Communications Decency Act has -- in just a few short sentences -- been relegated to a "do-over." Whoops, we didn't mean to waste everyone's time in court and we agree that parental controls and software can do a better job of protecting kids from Bad Things than government can.

Encryption -- the act of electronically scrambling data so only authorized eyes can read it is the one area where the Framework for Electronic Commerce falls completely flat. Clinton wants people to be able to use strong encryption, but only if government has controlled access to the keys to decode it. And of course the government would *never* abuse this power. This from a white house that has placed more wire taps than any in history acording to Wired magazine and which sought the power to place wire taps without a court order -- all with a logic frighteningly similar to that put forth in defense of their stance on encryption.

There's lots more in the document which you can get from the white house web site -- most of it very laudable and very theoretical. Still, its the most positive thing this administration has done regarding the internet. But reading this treatise full of bureaucratic jargon, you get the sense that the feds are none to happy about a government of the people by the people and for the people. Instead big business seems to capture their fancy. There is an underlying tone of reluctance to celebrate the power of the individual in the Framework -- its all about government regulation and business rules.

But speaking as someone who has actually helped companies build electronic commerce sites on the web, the success of the internet as a global market place is as much about the end users as it is about taxes and tariffs. No one knows the perfect way to sell products on the internet and a worldwide consortium of governments sure isn't going to solve the problem.

The reality of electronic commerce is that only a handful of companies are doing it in any meaningful way anyway and even those are making it up as they go along. For most businesses, the question is not how to you tax stuff sold online, its "how the heck do I it at all?"