On the Web, the world is a soapbox

Common folks use cyberspace to tackle the mighty

Published: March 17, 1996
San Jose Mercury News

BY DAN GILLMOR
Mercury News Computing Editor

The big and powerful are absorbing a hard lesson these days: On agenda.net, the world is a soapbox -- and much, much more.

Just ask McDonald's, the burger giant. Or Intel Corp., king of the microprocessor. Or the candidates for president. Or the tobacco industry.

The powerful spend mega-millions on advertising and public relations. They hold well-attended press conferences. But they're learning, often to their dismay, that they can't control cyberspace.

The World Wide Web, in particular, has become the medium of choice -- and an equalizer -- for activists, true believers, gadflies and just about anyone with an agenda. Not only is the Web a global medium, but just about anyone can publish on it at relatively low cost. Equally important, the Web is ideal for collecting and storing information, then seamlessly linking one collection to others.

So yesteryear's tinny soapbox voice can now be heard almost anywhere. The earnest pamphleteer now can build an encyclopedia that keeps growing -- a vibrant archive and organizing tool that others use and augment. Combined, they become an impossible-to-ignore, enduring force. Today, McDonald's can't duck the McSpotlight, a caustic collection of anti-McDonald's information on the World Wide Web (http://www.envirolink.org/mcspotlight). Volunteers in 14 countries are contributing to the site, according to Franny Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the effort. Intel can't bury ''Intel Secrets -- What Intel Doesn't Want You to Know,'' (http://www.x86.org) a compendium of information about the internal workings of Intel's microprocessors -- including flaws and some features Intel hasn't made public. ''I publish this material because I have just as much right to disclose it , as Intel has in keeping it secret,'' writes the page's author, Robert Collins. The politicians can't disguise the numbers in the Center for Public Integrity's campaign-contribution data base (http://www.essential.org/cpi). The center has gathered and posted on its Web site all sorts of public financial information about the candidates' own money, where they've traveled, who's paid them to speak, who's given them money and more. And the tobacco companies can't snuff out the Tobacco Control Archives (http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco), an assortment of documents that anti-smoking forces have found valuable in their war against the industry. The tobacco companies have used ''misinformation ... and manipulation of the legal system in hiding the information in these documents from the public and the government until now,'' says a description of some of the archived material. Activists have used cyberspace from the earliest days of computer bulletin boards -- and with definite results. Intel's Pentium bug came to light via on-line discussion groups, for example, sparking a barrage of complaints that ultimately forced a recalcitrant Intel to offer chip replacements to anyone who wanted one, not just those who Intel thought deserved new chips.

McSpotlight Web page tells all about the stuff the burgher maker -- and other multinational corporations -- would rather not publicize Gripe Sites Where there's an agenda -- social, political or otherwise -- that's a Web site. Here are a few of the more notable: McSpotlight (anti-McDonald's and anti-multinational corporations): http://www.envirolink.org/mcspotlight Intel Secrets -- What Intel Doesn't Want You To Know http://www.x86.org Center for Public Integrity (financial dealings and presidential politics): http://www.essential.org/cpi/database.html The Right Side of the Web (potshots at liberals): http://www.clark.net/pub/jeffd/index.html Tobacco Control Archives (gold mine for tobacco haters): http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco The Mart Sucks Page (anti-K Mart): http://www.concentric.net/~rodf/mart.htm Useless World Wide Web Pages (exactly what it sounds like): http://www.chaco.com/useless

And while the Web has galvanized a frenzy of global activity, time-honored motives prompt people to promote their agendas: changing the world, getting even, getting publicity, do-goodism, greed, sheer nastiness and more.

Sometimes the motive is pure practicality. The documents at the Tobacco Control Archives, based at the University of California, San Francisco ended up on the Web because it seemed logical to put them there.

Powerful medium

Stanton Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor who's been studying the tobacco industry and its political contributions to political candidates, said the university's librarians solved several problems by posting the material on the Web: getting the material to people who wanted it while saving time for university personnel. Only later did the power of the new medium become clear, he said, when anti-smoking forces elsewhere started using the material in their own campaigns.

The Web is ''a very important development,'' he said. ''It allows people like me -- kind of detail nerds -- to make the resources available, fairly inexpensively and in however much depth we want.''

McSpotlight was the result of an epic London court battle. McDonald's is suing two activists for libel, a case that has grown into a huge embarrassment for the fastfood giant. Not only have the activists worked hard to make McDonald's seem a bully, but court testimony has added fuel to the anti-McDonald's movement.

Excerpts from testimony found their way onto some ad-hoc Web pages. That became the catalyst for the much larger McSpotlight site, said Armstrong, the spokeswoman for the informal ''McInformation Network.''

McSpotlight itself is on a computer in the Netherlands, where libel laws are less strict than in Great Britain. It holds information about the trial including witness statements, scientific papers, and discussions of issues related to the fast-food industry and multinational corporations in general; plus links to Internet mailing lists and other related resources around the world.

''McDonald's spends over $1.4 billion a year broadcasting their glossy image to the whole world -- this is a small space for alternatives to be heard,'' the elaborate Web site informs visitors.

McDonald's didn't return a phone call seeking comment.

Collins' Intel Secrets site, based in Dallas, drew a letter from Intel warning Collins that he was violating Intel's trademarks. Collins changed his site's logo to what he calls an obvious satire -- therefore protected by law -- of the Intel logo. He says he was motivated both by what he calls Intel's ''improper behavior'' in handling information about its chips and his desire to create a valuable information resource for the industry.

Intel won't comment on the technical contents of the Intel Secrets site, however, and it urges caution to anyone who reads what's there. ''People can create and post'' anything, said company spokesman Howard High. ''But there's no central traffic cop who evaluates whether the information is true or not.''

Truth Squads

That's one of the Net's general problems, by many accounts: What's true or false isn't always obvious.

If activists can launch Web-based ''truth squads'' to report on multinational companies, they can also launch ''lie squads,'' said David J. Farber, telecommunications professor at the University of Pennsylvania. ''You can never catch up with misinformation on the Web.''

There's never been an organizing tool to compare with the Web, Farber said, but the flowing of power away from central authorities does have its potential negative side: It can lead to a more general destabilization that might prove dangerous.

''I like it, and I worry about it,'' Farber said, reflecting the ambiguity felt by many longtime Net users and observers. ''We're in for a period of vast readjustment.''

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