Obstacles President Barack Obama may not have anticipated

Open government sounds good but is nearly impossible via the Web. No, I’m not talking about corruption and smoke-filled rooms controlling the White House’s desire to be open. I’m talking about commercial interests for copyright and other protections, as well as the flip side to those commercial interests — existing “fairness� laws — all put in place during the Clinton and Bush years. These are barriers against which Obama may have no recourse except to either try to pass legislation to overturn these protections — a process that will take months perhaps even years — or skip grand Web schemes and stick to TV and radio.

Federal agencies cannot supply information to YouTube, My Space or other commercial or charitable Web sites. Nor can they borrow content, ideas or other links from them. In short, service or use agreements with Web portals and friends’ groups online are out of reach for Obama.

Before he was elected, he was free to use any portals he wanted. From now on, it’s out of bounds.

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Let’s say the Commerce Department wants to run video or some sort of blog on a Web site. If they write fresh code, they can (subject to content, more on that later). But if they want to borrow or use other commercial software, they have to follow existing procurement and contracting rules. Add six months to any task. That’s not including the congressional oversight and meddling in the committee process.

If a federal Web site wants to include a blog or an answer-response or, heaven forbid, a link to some service like Twitter, they would have to remember that the First Amendment prohibits any filter on restricting free speech. Except for indecency, this pretty much makes any discussion open to abuse from weighted opposition, not to mention the delays in checking every response for such indecency — say a week or two and loads more staff — by which time the issue is stale.

Oh, and the Disabilities Act will require (as it does now) that any content be reasonably accessible for those with disabilities. If you change your Web site once a month, that’s do-able. If you update constantly with “open government� — well, you get the idea.

Now let’s say they want to conduct a survey to get the public opinion. There’s a law that requires detailed approval of the process and method if you canvas more than 10 people. How many was that? The White House Web site is getting 10,000,000 hits a day. Let’s hope they don’t ask a question, without the process being approved by Congress. If they do, they will break the law.

Oh, and they had better be awfully careful no one mentions a commercial entity or plugs a commercial product. Government cannot endorse commercial, private organizations and already most federal Web pages must not link to anything external (like newspaper articles, books, news programs, MySpace, YouTube, etc.). So, no pictures of Obama with his kids drinking Coke anymore.

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And last, but never least, there is the question of record keeping. Anything the government puts out has to be recorded, a copy kept. If you have a Web site that changes with the speed of light, tens of millions of people writing in and commenting, all that has to be logged, copies kept, records made and preserved forever. It is the law. I guess this will help unemployment at the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

All these reasons may be why the Web “openness� Obama sought may be taking place instead with more traditional media, press conferences and loads of opportunities for public broadcasting. He’s had more exposure at such events in one week than Bush did in a year.

It may also be why, faced with these laws and hundreds of others littering a bureaucratic Washington, that he’s turning to executive orders to get anything going. Not because he could not get laws passed with his congressional majority, but because he knows the process takes too darn long and opens the door to 300 voices all screaming about what’s in it for them instead of what’s good for the nation.

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As an aside: When Kirsten Gillibrand first thought of running for Congress, no one gave her a gnat’s chance in a hailstorm of winning. At meetings in our counties, she won people over with her charm, her competency as a real person coping in the real world we all live in, her understanding of rural life, and, never least, the presence of the man standing next to her, the name openly endorsing her abilities and motives: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he of Riverkeepers, he of intellect and morals, and he of discernment.

Let me be perfectly clear here: I believe Gillibrand is smart, capable, honest and is an asset to New York.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.