I was discussing with a coworker the announcement that AT&T, Disney and Microsoft were negotiating something having to do with AT&T Broadband. He was pessimistic about the future of free speech. I trotted out the old saw about how freedom of the press belongs to the guy who owns the press.

I said, without meaning to make the pun, that once upon a time mass communication was the exclusive province of the church, which is why the church opposed the printing press. Of course their reasoning was that the printing press was used primarily for production of pornography/erotica.

So a communication technology is invented with the express intention of bringing enlightenment and personal empowerment (before they used that term) to individuals, and the existing power tries to block its adoption with claims of immorality.

Any of this sound familiar? Is it any different from the gripes against VCRs? Movie studios don't want to give up their power, but the arguments against it all pointed to the porn. And cable. TV Networks didn't want to give up their power, but the arguments are all about the porn. And violence! Porn and violence, yeah, that's it. For the Children!

Oh, and chat rooms! There's immorality there, too! (And frank movie reviews that travel faster than the fluff the studios pay for, but that's a coincidence.)

Has there ever been a new means of mass communication that wasn't first opposed on moral grounds? And wasn't the group making (or funding) these arguments always the same group that already owned the existing means of mass communication?

That the first mass communication was in the form of churches[1] happens to make a good pun made for a good line. But the point was to try to put current hand wringing into perspective. We all like to think that our particular problem is unique in The History of Man(tm), but the consolidation of mass media looks to me like just the latest telling of a very old story.

[1] No research was harmed in the forming of this pronouncement.

Are you saying that the effect I described actually predates the church's[1] opposition to the printing press? I hadn't thought of it before, but I suppose the Hemlock could be a pretty graphic example of someone shutting down free speech.

[1] Although I'm using "the church" here to mean specifically the particular denomination that happened to be opposing the press, for the larger point I was thinking powerful organized religion in general.

Except that I hadn't heard that one about the LaserDisk. Based on the outcome, though, I'm not surprised. Just confirms the trend.