[Ecommerce] Standard on Jeff Chester

[James Love]

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                       THE INDUSTRY STANDARD'S  
         I N T E R N E T  A R C H I T E C T  S P O T L I G H T
               Selected from The Network - The First-Ever
                   Who's Who of the Internet Economy
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                                       | http://www.thestandard.com |

Wednesday, June  21, 2000

PROFILE:
* Jeffrey Chester: Guardian of the Last Mile
Worried about broadband access? So is Jeffrey Chester, who's fighting
to ensure that the Internet of tomorrow is as free and open as the Web
of today.


Jeffrey Chester: Guardian of the Last Mile
By Jenn Shreve

If you've followed the major events of the Internet over the past
couple months, chances are you've come across Jeffrey Chester. In
articles about broadband, AOL-Time Warner and media mergers in
general, the press often calls upon Chester to present a sober voice
of reason. It's not surprising; the executive director and cofounder
of the Center for Media Education counts "schmoozing the press" as
among his most important activities, alongside the more common
activist tasks like lobbying and writing articles.

As Web users seek increasingly faster ways of logging onto the Net,
Chester has argued long and hard for open-access to cable lines. After
all, the battle for the "last mile" is heating up. AT&T has spent over
$100 billion buying up cable properties like MediaOne. The AOL-Time
Warner merger, of course, provided the world's largest ISP with the
world's best source of cable lines.

"When each new technology in the last century was created - first with
radio in the '20s, then television in the '50s, and cable in the '70s
- people like myself called for policies to make sure it was going to
be accessible," Chester says. Many of those efforts, he acknowledges,
have failed.

To read more about Jeffrey Chester, click here:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/1,1151,16205,00.html?nl=ias


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JEFFREY CHESTER IN BRIEF
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Executive director 
Center for Media Education 

2120 L Street N.W.
Washington, D.C.   20037   
Phone: (202) 232-2234 
Fax: (202) 232-2893 

Email: jeff@cme.org 
http://www.cme.org 


Job History
~~~~~~~~~~~
  Center for Media Education 
  Executive director 

  Teledemocracy Project 
  Director 

  National Campaign for Freedom of Expression 
  Cofounder 
  1991 - 1992 

  Various 
  Journalist and filmmaker 
  1981 - 1990 

  Psychiatric social worker 
  1979 - 1981 


Education
~~~~~~~~~
  San Francisco State University 
  B.A. psychology 
  1975 

  University of California at Berkeley 
  M.S. clinical social work 
  1979 


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JEFFREY CHESTER QUOTED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You are introduced to someone at a cocktail party. Describe what you
do in two or three sentences.
I run an advocacy group working to promote the democratic potential of
the Internet. I am currently running a campaign to ensure that the
broadband Internet will be open, competitive and foster democratic
applications - not just a shopping mall.

What do you consider your greatest professional achievement? 
Working to mobilize groups to take up policy decisions about the
future of the Internet. Some of my work led to the school and library
community's initiaive to create the E-Rate, which helps to ensure that
everyone can have some guaranteed access to the Internet. I also
helped lobby in the country's only federal fund to support independent
film and TV production, the ITVS. My work - my wife - tracking and
analyzing new Internet e-commerce strategies led us to expose
profiling and one-to-one marketing practices early on, which led to
the first law regulating privacy on the Internet (the Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act). Our work in this area "woke-up" the
Federal Trade Commission to the problems emerging from many e-commerce
business practices.

Tell us the URL of one site (other than your own) that you think is
essential for doing business on the Net, and why.
Epic.org. The best site on privacy and related issues. It helps to
warn people of the dangers of electronic eavesdropping and what you
can do about it. They are a model advocacy group.

If you weren't doing what you're doing now, what would you be doing? 
Writing more reflective pieces and spending time engaged in a more
spiritual orientation. But always involved in the issue of renewal of
self and community.

Who's your hero? 
Ralph Nader and Carl Jung. 


READ MORE ABOUT JEFFREY CHESTER



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James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
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