Futplex makes the news!

rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga) wrote:

 > I just heard on WBUR (NPR) here in Boston that our own L. (I 
 > know his real first name now...) "Futplex" McCarthy was busted
 > by the UMASS diginarks for putting "Nazi material" on the 
 > internet. This must be one of those Nazi-mirrors I've been 
 > skipping articles over...

Horrors.  

We seem to be discovering more and more side effects from the 
defense of free speech for the unpopular.  The Holocausta Nostra
is cheering wildly at the opportunity to present the works of
Mr. Zundel under a banner reading "Nazi Scum".  Zundelsites are
being set up by people whose views are so disgusting they probably
offend even Mr. Zundel himself.  And now our very own "Futplex" 
will have to live the rest of his life branded as a electronic
distributor of "hate literature" by the forces of political
correctness at UMASS.  

It may be time to regroup and take inventory of what we are 
suposedly trying to accomplish here. 

--
X-Signature: Mike Duvos
X-Signature-File: c:\netcom\mail.sig


On a completely different note, which I am appending so as to waste
as little bandwidth as possible, Cypherpunks messages to my netcom
account stopped dead two days ago, and I am getting no response from
either majordomo@toad.com or cypherpunks-owner@toad.com.  

I am currently reading the list quite nicely on 

        news://news.hks.net/hks.lists.cypherpunks

using Netscape so it really isn't a big deal, but I was just curious
if there was a routing problem or some other Net glitch.

Please EMAIL any replies.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Mike Duvos wrote:

> It may be time to regroup and take inventory of what we are 
> suposedly trying to accomplish here. 

I believe we *have* regrouped sufficiently, and I am doing my best to give
followup stories what I believe to be the correct spin. 

UMass will be *humiliated* if we play this right. Whom do we call?

For what I think is a good story (I wish they'd credited cypherpunks and 
other people more, but they do need to play up the local angle), see:

 http://www-Daily.stanford.edu/2-2-96/NEWS/index.html

AFAIK, futplex is the only person who has suffered any kind of negative
impact from these events. Except for cpunk reactions to my very poor
postings here, and *one* person who thought I was a Nazi (and who was
corrected, and apologized), I've been getting nothing but praise. 

IMHO, the correct response is to stop whining and trumpet victory, loudly,
and slam Exon and the CDA while we're at it. 

"This story shows that the so-called Communications Decency Act is just 
as ill-advised. If only four people at a handful of major universities 
can defeat German censorship of someone everybody hates, how can we 
expect mere laws to prevent the spread of indeterminate 'indecent' 
material on the Internet, which any teenager is interested in."

- -rich

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBMRKUXI3DXUbM57SdAQF3FQP/aVjiP4/yTj7Atuq409NJCuCB7deEpqvF
JcebTz1jG8D4M08VGhjOgFDGs+cNJ1zKXB3AZ9OLuCDnTr4oONsvPo2e3RnbZUYe
YMHBFsKNisq5FRAGOy2UwBbukI+NauFDAzKvCfQJBs5iPpk6aE8sEtwu+ja5nYBs
y8zjtjSuMDQ=
=jUPV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----