November 1997 Public Policy Computer Graphics Column:

Bob Ellis
Judy Brown

This is the first of a regular column from SIGGRAPH's Public Policy committee. This first column includes a review of activities at the SIGGRAPH 97 conference and some commentary on why SIGGRAPH members and other computing professionals should be interested in public policy issues related to computing and computer graphics.

Our computing fields have long had the privilege of existing primarily for ourselves and our customers who are, if not technically sophisticated, at least willing to understand how computing can help them in their professional lives. However, low cost personal computers and widespread access to the Internet have changed the acceptance of computing as it is now. Computing is now available to people from a wide range of backgrounds who have taken the time to learn enough about computing to accomplish whatever they need to, but are not necessarily happy about it! In particular, they have difficulty seeing why computers should be so hard to use, software so error prone, and suppliers unwilling to adequately support the products (in the users' view). While they realize computing and remote access may be more complex than the telephone and electric power systems, these are the standards to which new technology is compared. There is the beginning of a call for some sort of regulation on the computer and Internet industries, particularly in consumer protection.

Examples abound. In the United States, Texas recently passed a law that all Internet service providers must provide their Texas customers with blocking software for WWW sites. At the U. S. Federal level there are bills in process which would make Internet gambling illegal, make it a crime to send unsolicited email, and many other areas which impact computing. And of course there was the Communications Decency Act of the Communications Act of 1996 which attempted to extend legal prohibitions on "indecent" material to the Internet

Because computer graphics provides a hospitable interface to computing and information, we as computer graphics professionals are in the middle of this movement. SIGGRAPH's public policy committee has recently developed a white paper on the Internet and computer graphics. We will summarize this white paper in a later column, but in it are a series of Internet policy issues which apply directly to computer graphics. These include: the provision of adequate communications and computation bandwidth to support sophisticated graphics, accommodating diverse users, access (including availability, affordability, and usability), the convergence of television and computing, and accommodating dramatic lifestyle changes such as telemedicine. The paper is available at http://www.siggraph.org/pub-policy/whitepaperGII.html. To get a printed copy, contact Judy Osteller, ACM, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, +1-212-626-0605, osteller@acm.org.

At SIGGRAPH 97 in Los Angeles, we held our annual committee meeting. Joining us was a visitor from the National Research Council's (NRC) Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. We reviewed the status of white papers, including one in preparation on computer graphics research. We discussed our attempt to hold a seminar on computer graphics for policy makers which had to be canceled due to lack of attendance. We reviewed Ellis' role on the ACM's US public policy committee and our participation in ACM's Policy98 conference to be held in Washington DC in May 1998 (both subjects of the next column). Finally we spent a great deal of time discussing the possibility of SIGGRAPH's participation in a potential NRC study on computer graphics research.

Also, we had the third SIG meeting on public policy at the conference. Although not highly attended (the competition is pretty tough!), the meeting offers an opportunity for us to meet SIGGRAPH members and for them to meet us. Attending this meeting was Mary Jane Irwin, ACM Vice-President. The meeting was notable for an attendee making us aware of the Conference on Freedom and Privacy, sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM, SIGSAC and SIGCAS, which already has a following among policy makers and might offer us an outlet for our activities.

Finally, we attended both the Thursday and Saturday SIGGRAPH Executive Committee meetings to report on our activities and get direction from the EC. Some concern was expressed about the computer graphics research white paper because of fears that areas it identifies could become an "official" list of research topics and perhaps stifle research initiative and funding. This has also been mentioned by a significant minority of others we talk to about the project. No such reservations were expressed to the potential NRC study.

Anyone interested in public policy may contact both of at: bob_ellis@siggraph.org or judy_brown@siggraph.org. Also, please take a look at our other WWW pages at http://www.siggraph.org/pub-policy/.