free speach and the government

Well, I feel that I agree with the people on the right of free speech for
i.e. the neo-nazi stuff or other political, ideological and/or religious
ideas. But there is still something that leaves me uneasy: imagine there
would be a way to easily make a powerful poison, easily applicated to
your town's water-reservoir, or a very easy way to build some strong
explosive device. etc. Actually, I think that stuff like this does exist
already.

But the idea that one day I just put 'easy made deadly poison for millions'
into my webcrawler and whoop there it is on my screen or on the screen of any
other fool, doesn't sound to right to me. I would like things like this
to be better put aside and locked up.

Well, maybe my imagination isn't strong enough to make my point. But do
you fighter for free speech, in principle, think that nothing, really
nothing, shouldn't be prevented of being published? And by being
published, I mean published in the net, not at loompanics (who knows
loompanics?).

I know, of course, that by accepting that there is something that
shouldn't be available on the net, we would need something to decide what
and how to ban. So I wonder what would be a more 'net'-like way of handling 
this type of thing and how to prevent that some 'strong-armed' governments
take the net over.

I do not see tokay's governments being prepared for the net (at least not
the German one). But I see them trying to put the 'old' laws onto the net.
Not because they are mean, but because they don't know any better. So, I
think it would be nice to have something to offer to them. I do not think though
that they will accept the totally right of free speech (yet). 

There is something that is closely related to the right of free speech but
not the same and that is the right of privacy. And I think there is a big
danger of the issue of free (public) speech been taken over to the right of
privacy. Governments may, by arguing to control the public net, start to
prohibit the use of strong cryptography. It seems important to me to
separate this two issues. Maybe it will be necessary to agree to some kind
of (hopefully self organized) control of the public net. But it is totally
unacceptable to allow whatever organization to look into someone's private life.

Comments and hints to information on these topics very much welcome

Stephan

Stephan Mohr writes:
 > Well, maybe my imagination isn't strong enough to make my point. But do
 > you fighter for free speech, in principle, think that nothing, really
 > nothing, shouldn't be prevented of being published? And by being
 > published, I mean published in the net, not at loompanics (who knows
 > loompanics?).

Well, if it's OK to publish via Loompanics I don't see what your point
is.  Anybody psychotic enough to poison a municipal water supply won't
be deterred by being denied on-line access to information.

Remember that far, far more people walk in and out of bookstores and
libraries every day than log into a computer connected to the
Internet.

______c_____________________________________________________________________
Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX    * I want more, I want more,
       m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com          * I want more, I want more ...
      <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101>         *_______________________________

Stephan Mohr writes:
> 
> Well, I feel that I agree with the people on the right of free speech for
> i.e. the neo-nazi stuff or other political, ideological and/or religious
> ideas. But there is still something that leaves me uneasy: imagine there
> would be a way to easily make a powerful poison, easily applicated to
> your town's water-reservoir, or a very easy way to build some strong
> explosive device. etc. Actually, I think that stuff like this does exist
> already.
> 
> But the idea that one day I just put 'easy made deadly poison for millions'
> into my webcrawler and whoop there it is on my screen or on the screen of any
> other fool, doesn't sound to right to me. I would like things like this
> to be better put aside and locked up.

You can't put the genie back into the bottle.
Once something is invented or described, the knowledge
is out there.  Someone who wants to use that knowledge
for "wrong" purposes can find it.

Maybe a lot of people around the world could agree that
the knowledge to make something really dangerous (say Sarin nerve gas) 
should be suppressed.  But where do we draw the line?  If
we, or rather our government acting obstensibly in our interest, decides
to supress the information on how to make Sarin, not too many people
will complain.  But the tendency of governments is to regulate and
restrict and tax more.   What happens when governments suppress
knowledge on how to make gunpowder?  Or printing presses?  Or
encryption?

Many people argue (rightly IHMO) that once started on the slippery slope
of suppressing knowledge there's no stopping until we're all
under the boot heel of the police state.

[..]
> I know, of course, that by accepting that there is something that
> shouldn't be available on the net, we would need something to decide what
> and how to ban. So I wonder what would be a more 'net'-like way of handling 
> this type of thing and how to prevent that some 'strong-armed' governments
> take the net over.

So far the "net-like" way to deal with the problem is to not
supress information at all, and instead assume that people are
intelligent enough to make their own choices on what to do
with "dangerous" information.

 
> I do not see tokay's governments being prepared for the net (at least not
> the German one). But I see them trying to put the 'old' laws onto the net.
> Not because they are mean, but because they don't know any better. So, I
> think it would be nice to have something to offer to them. I do not think though
> that they will accept the totally right of free speech (yet). 

No government will accept net-speech that's any freer than
any other speech in that country.

In the US the media is by and large controlled by huge
media conglomerates with a vested interest in maintaining
the status quo and delivering up their audience to their
advertisers in tidy packages.

The government is along for the ride, being part and parcel
of the same system.  They won't rest until net-speech is
by and large controlled by huge media conglomerates all
busy delivering up the net-public to advertisers in tidy
packages... I'm not saying that there's a Black Heliocopters
type conspiracy, or any other for that matter.  There doesn't
have to be, there are huge political forces moving things
this way.  So there might as well be a conspiracy, as the
end effect on us is the same.


I think that any compromise with government censorship is a bad idea.
All we'd do is give them a little more while on the way towards the
inevitable.  If we don't give them all the censorship power they
want they'd just take it anyhow.  Better to hold out as well as
we can while we can.


-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
 Fuck Exon and the Communications "Decency" Act!  US off the Internet now!
PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03  92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com> writes:
> Stephan Mohr writes:
> >
> > Well, I feel that I agree with the people on the right of free speech for
> > i.e. the neo-nazi stuff or other political, ideological and/or religious
> > ideas. But there is still something that leaves me uneasy: imagine there
> > would be a way to easily make a powerful poison, easily applicated to
> > your town's water-reservoir, or a very easy way to build some strong
> > explosive device. etc. Actually, I think that stuff like this does exist
> > already.
> >
> > But the idea that one day I just put 'easy made deadly poison for millions'
> > into my webcrawler and whoop there it is on my screen or on the screen of a
> > other fool, doesn't sound to right to me. I would like things like this
> > to be better put aside and locked up.
>
> You can't put the genie back into the bottle.
> Once something is invented or described, the knowledge
> is out there.  Someone who wants to use that knowledge
> for "wrong" purposes can find it.

Either some information is being suppressed, or no information whatsoever is
being suppressed. Whether it's the knowledge how to made strong crypto, or how
to make the A-bomb, or now to make Sarin, or _Mein Kampf_, or uuencoded
pictures of naked kids, really doesn't matter. E.g., many people perceive the
dissemination of Nazi teachings to be as dangerous as the dissemination of a
Sarin recipe. One can't be "a little big pregnant".

I believe that any exception to unlimited free speech, be it libel, or
copyright violation, or child pornography, or Nazi propaganda, or Chinese
dissident materials, just isn't compatible with the cpunk agenda. No censorship
is acceptable. That's an absolute.

[...]
> In the US the media is by and large controlled by huge
> media conglomerates with a vested interest in maintaining
> the status quo and delivering up their audience to their
> advertisers in tidy packages.
>
> The government is along for the ride, being part and parcel
> of the same system.  They won't rest until net-speech is
> by and large controlled by huge media conglomerates all
> busy delivering up the net-public to advertisers in tidy
> packages... I'm not saying that there's a Black Heliocopters
> type conspiracy, or any other for that matter.  There doesn't
> have to be, there are huge political forces moving things
> this way.  So there might as well be a conspiracy, as the
> end effect on us is the same.

There's a widespread misconception that most journalists support freedom of
speech for non-journalists. I deal with journalists occasionally, and my
impression is that the attitude of some of them can be summarized as follows:
"I'm an important guy because I can say something that hundreds of thousands of
people will see/read; and I can libel another person and s/he won't be able to
respond". People with this attitude are very threatened by the Internet. I'm
not saying that all journalists are this way; I'm just pointing out that it's
foolish to assume that just because a person works in the media, s/he's in
favor of free speech, especially unlimited free speech.

> I think that any compromise with government censorship is a bad idea.
> All we'd do is give them a little more while on the way towards the
> inevitable.  If we don't give them all the censorship power they
> want they'd just take it anyhow.  Better to hold out as well as
> we can while we can.

>From the technology point of view, there's no difference between helping
Chinese dissidents circumvent their government's restrictions on the net,
and helping neo-Nazis in Germany and helping child pornographers in the
U.S. No one can determine which of the countless bits of information that
travel over the Internet every second are false, or harmful, or subversive,
or otherwise not worthy of transnmission.

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps