Re: Webpage picketing (fwd)

Hi,

Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 23:57:47 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com>
> Subject: Re: Webpage picketing

> Pickets arise from a peculiar set of circumstances that arise in
> meatspace, including public streets. Sure, you can picket The Gap at the
> store up the block from my office on Connecticut Avenue. But try to wave
> those signs outside The Gap in the Pentagon City mall not far away, and
> you'll be chased off by the security guards. It's a private space;
> different rules apply.

Pickets arise from people getting pissed off about some aspect of their
economic life and using their right to free speech to express it.

Absolutely, but I can most definitely picket the mall and the store at that
point with complete impunity from the sidewalk. And please correct me if my
geometry/geography is wrong, but in order to get into the private parking
spot at the private mall you do have to drive off the public street ACROSS
the public sidewalk where all those picketers are standing. After all, if
the mall won't let me express my opinions then I have an economic right as
a consumer to express my displeasure and try to warn other consumers of the
danger. It is irrelevant to my goal as a economic consumer whether I picket
the store inside the mall or outside. What IS important is that I have legal
access to ALL the customers using that business(es).

> And I think that we should be very careful about calling the Net a public
> forum. Sure, places like Usenet resemble a public forum in some ways, but
> it's not the same.

But I am not calling the net a public forum. I am specificaly talking about
a special case that might arise if we are not aware of the consequences. In
short it is a statement that it MIGHT be possible to use publicly funded
network backbones to seriously impede communication using the system against
itself.

> I think Greg has it right: you want to forcibly intervene in a
> communication between two consenting parties. What you want is similar to
> the right to come into my home and prevent me from speaking freely to my
> friend or lover. 

Not at all, unless you are implying the same expectation of privacy on a
public street (or backbone) that you would get in your home (or intranet).
I am stating the status quo, the level of expectant privacy on a public
street (internet) is in no way nearly as comprehensive as in your home
(intranet). Should you doubt this, walk around your living room with the
blinds drawn butt-naked and then try that again in the middle of downtown
at 5pm. If you want to go to store A and it is covered in picketers, you
WILL hear and see them even if you don't want to. Their right to speech is
such that if you want to use that business you must submit to an exposure of
their views however brief. My thesis is that it may be possible to extend
this legaly supportable model to a backbone which derives some or all of its
income from public funds. This could be a BAD thing, is it and why?. If it
is acceptable use of publicly funded resources in meatspace why should
publicy funded resources in bitspace be exempted? No more, no less.

   _______________________________________________________________________
  |                                                                       |
  |            Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.              |
  |                                                                       |
  |                                     Slovenian Proverb                 |
  |                                                                       |
  |     Jim Choate                                 ravage@ssz.com         |
  |     The Armadillo Group                        www.ssz.com            |
  |     Austin, Texas, USA                         512-451-7087           |
  |_______________________________________________________________________|

I'm in NYC now and have to leave for work in a moment, so I'll keep
my response to Jim brief.

> In short it is a statement that it MIGHT be possible to use publicly
> funded network backbones to seriously impede communication using the
> system against itself. 

Jim's fundamental misunderstanding below seems to be, as far as I can
tell, confusing public funding with public forums. Just because an entity
receives most, or all, of its funding from the state does not mean that
that entity or the service that entity provides becomes a public forum for
the purposes of First Amendment analysis. After all, many research
universities receive half their revenues from Federal grants but they do
not become public fora. I suppose part of the analysis in this case might
turn on whether the state is setting up such networks itself and "owning"
them or whether it's providing grants to a private entity.

> I am stating the status quo, the level of expectant privacy on a public
> street (internet) is in no way nearly as comprehensive as in your home
> (intranet). Should you doubt this, walk around your living room with the

Again, the Internet is not a public street. It is not owned by the public. 
It is not a public forum, which is a term with a special legal meaning. It
is a privately-owned collection of networks. (Part of the problem here is
that we use "private" to mean both individually-owned and "expectation of
confidentiality or security.")

But I agree with Jim on the broader point, that we should question state
funding of network infrastructue. 

-Declan



On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Jim Choate wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 23:57:47 -0400 (EDT)
> > From: Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com>
> > Subject: Re: Webpage picketing
> 
> > Pickets arise from a peculiar set of circumstances that arise in
> > meatspace, including public streets. Sure, you can picket The Gap at the
> > store up the block from my office on Connecticut Avenue. But try to wave
> > those signs outside The Gap in the Pentagon City mall not far away, and
> > you'll be chased off by the security guards. It's a private space;
> > different rules apply.
> 
> Pickets arise from people getting pissed off about some aspect of their
> economic life and using their right to free speech to express it.
> 
> Absolutely, but I can most definitely picket the mall and the store at that
> point with complete impunity from the sidewalk. And please correct me if my
> geometry/geography is wrong, but in order to get into the private parking
> spot at the private mall you do have to drive off the public street ACROSS
> the public sidewalk where all those picketers are standing. After all, if
> the mall won't let me express my opinions then I have an economic right as
> a consumer to express my displeasure and try to warn other consumers of the
> danger. It is irrelevant to my goal as a economic consumer whether I picket
> the store inside the mall or outside. What IS important is that I have legal
> access to ALL the customers using that business(es).
> 
> > And I think that we should be very careful about calling the Net a public
> > forum. Sure, places like Usenet resemble a public forum in some ways, but
> > it's not the same.
> 
> But I am not calling the net a public forum. I am specificaly talking about
> a special case that might arise if we are not aware of the consequences. In
> short it is a statement that it MIGHT be possible to use publicly funded
> network backbones to seriously impede communication using the system against
> itself.
> 
> > I think Greg has it right: you want to forcibly intervene in a
> > communication between two consenting parties. What you want is similar to
> > the right to come into my home and prevent me from speaking freely to my
> > friend or lover. 
> 
> Not at all, unless you are implying the same expectation of privacy on a
> public street (or backbone) that you would get in your home (or intranet).
> I am stating the status quo, the level of expectant privacy on a public
> street (internet) is in no way nearly as comprehensive as in your home
> (intranet). Should you doubt this, walk around your living room with the
> blinds drawn butt-naked and then try that again in the middle of downtown
> at 5pm. If you want to go to store A and it is covered in picketers, you
> WILL hear and see them even if you don't want to. Their right to speech is
> such that if you want to use that business you must submit to an exposure of
> their views however brief. My thesis is that it may be possible to extend
> this legaly supportable model to a backbone which derives some or all of its
> income from public funds. This could be a BAD thing, is it and why?. If it
> is acceptable use of publicly funded resources in meatspace why should
> publicy funded resources in bitspace be exempted? No more, no less.
> 
>    _______________________________________________________________________
>   |                                                                       |
>   |            Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.              |
>   |                                                                       |
>   |                                     Slovenian Proverb                 |
>   |                                                                       |
>   |     Jim Choate                                 ravage@ssz.com         |
>   |     The Armadillo Group                        www.ssz.com            |
>   |     Austin, Texas, USA                         512-451-7087           |
>   |_______________________________________________________________________|
> 
>

At 11:42 PM 6/3/97 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>Pickets arise from people getting pissed off about some aspect of their
>economic life and using their right to free speech to express it.

A solution that doesn't involve legislation (the only kind to promote,
IMHO) would be to have a www.socially-aware.org site containing the links
to the various businesses, where your picketers can plant their signs, etc.
 Then, as a socially-aware consumer, I would begin my surfing at
www.politically-correct.org, read the union notices, the PETA notices,
etc., and then connect to www.beef-n-fur.com via their links.

This is a win-win-win type solution.  Best of all, there are no legal
intrusions being thrust upon anyone.  If I'm Joe Sixpack, paid my union
dues for the last 25 years, I'm sure as hell going to go through the
www.labor.com page to check out the retailers before shopping there.  If
I'm Jane Greene, I'm gonna make sure no baby seals were clubbed in the
making of my hemp shoes, so I'll do my surfing through links from
www.green.org's web site.  And, if I'm one of the other 80% of the people
who don't give a damn about union labor problems, baby seals, or the plight
of migrant grape pickers, it'll save me the trouble of ignoring them as I
walk by.

So what if they only get to preach to the choir?  What about the rights of
the atheist to not have preaching in their private home, on their modem?

(This brings to mind another solution:  "The Christian IP Network.
Guaranteed to not deliver unto you the E-vil packets of the Demons of
Pornographers, Terrorists, Narcotics Traffickers, Money Launderers or
Cypherpunks.  We're the ISP that delivers only Family-Valued, God-Blessed
and Jesus-Approved packets to your customers.  Send lots of money now,
censors are standing by."  Hey, if they want to hide behind a whole
firewall full of censors, that's just fine by me.)

If Organized Labor or VerdurePax wants to start doing something like this
today, they're certainly welcome to do it.  For all I know, they might be
doing it now.  That's the beauty inherent in the system -- if I don't
personally care about their issues, they're not sucking up my bandwidth
with their propaganda.  And say what you like about free speech, since I
have to pay MONEY and waste my time on my modem connection, I have the
right to not download the bits I don't care about.

John
--
No one's right to free speech was trampled on by the existence of this
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delivers it, or you're voluntarily reading it in a publically available
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