860 lines
46 KiB
Plaintext
860 lines
46 KiB
Plaintext
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty
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From: aq817@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steve Crocker)
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Subject: Political & Social Implications of the Net
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Date: 5 Jul 1994 09:14:07 GMT
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Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
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Message-ID: <2vb88v$gtq@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
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Lines: 850
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The following is a little something I wrote up a couple of years
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back, with a few update notes attached to the end. I'm posting it
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here because I think it has relevance to the occasional voices on
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this thread who have suggested that the appropriate arena in which
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to conduct the fight for Constitutional freedom is in information
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space. I hope at least some here will find it of interest.
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-Steve
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This document is a heavily edited compilation of my writing on a
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variety of occasions on the implications of the Net for the questions
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of political freedom and democracy in the U.S. Because it is a
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compilation, different sections may vary in emphasis, style, language
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and clarity. I've tried to smooth out the rough spots and to the extent
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possible work this document into a coherent whole. If I wasn't entirely
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successful, feel free to concentrate on the sections that have
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something worthwhile to say to you, and ignore the rest.
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-Steve Crocker 10/9/92 (Spell checked 10/29/92)
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THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE NET
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There have been increasing conversations lately about the
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importance of the Net as a vehicle for positive change in our
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society. I want to set down a few of my thoughts about why the Net
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is important, what forces might threaten its viability as a force
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for change, and some priority issues to be considered by those who
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have a commitment to maintaining and expanding the Net as an
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uncensored medium of widespread communication.
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PROLOGUE - THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN BANDWIDTH
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The word "bandwidth" is one of those unique terms which is almost
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universally socialized within the cultural environment of the net,
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but relatively little known off-line, except in highly technical
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contexts. On the Net it is understood by the technically literate
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as a fairly precise measure of information transmissible per unit
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time. To others, it has a more casually defined meaning, relating
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to the amount of information that can be comfortably dealt with
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in a given context. I will be using the term primarily in this
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more casual sense, but with the technical meaning consistently
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lurking in the background to more richly inform the metaphors.
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So, let me begin with a few thoughts on limited bandwidth, and
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how the variety of responses to the bandwidth problem have helped
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both shape and pervert society. Limited bandwidth is the dilemma
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faced by the anarchist who advocates absolute political freedom, and
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the LSD enthusiast (being epistemologically anarchist), who advocates
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total PERCEPTUAL freedom.
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ANARCHISM REFUTED - THE NEED FOR HIERARCHY
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We cannot know everything, we cannot even pay attention effectively to
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everything in our immediate surroundings, and as social beings, we
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cannot pay attention to all possible inputs, or even all relevant
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inputs from those around us. So the solution is structured limitation
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of our attention. We pay attention within certain more or less rigidly
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defined patterns of time and space. In addition our attention is
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organized hierarchically. That is to say that our attention is
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focussed on certain trusted "gatekeeper" concepts or individuals or
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institutions which we permit to direct and structure our attention
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within their particular subordinate domains. For example we may trust
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a friend or a literary critic to recommend a good book or Time, CBS
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and the AP to define our news. Within individual perceptions,
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concepts play a similar role. Something that appears genuinely new we
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examine closely in all its uniqueness, while something that fits in
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one of our existing pigeonholes we will respond to automatically, based
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on its concept-label.
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So if this is a perhaps regrettable but necessary function, where
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is the problem? Are not the conservative critics of LSD philosophy
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right all along? Do we not NEED perceptual and conceptual structures
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to make any sense out of the universe at all? Do we not dissolve
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them, even partially and temporarily at our peril? Is it not true
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that society could never truly live at the intense fever pitch of
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revolutionary change, in which all may be questioned, and the pillow
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you sleep on tonight may be washed away with the flood of the new dawn?
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BUT ALL HIERARCHIES ARE NOT CREATED EQUALLY USEFUL
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Welllll.... Yes and then again hmmmmm....
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Some time ago I got hold of the book "Coup D'Etat - A Practical
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Handbook by Edward Luttwak. Although I did not read most of it, I could
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not help but be struck by his opening observation that in a coup d'etat,
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unlike a popular revolution, it is the security force of the State which
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is subverted and caused to strike against the State. The parallel here
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should escape no one. Our structures of percept, concept and individual
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and social attention are the security structures of our individual and
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social consciousness. They perform the necessary function of insulating
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us from the raw flood of pure information (pure chaos) which at absolute
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intensity would be survivable only by the Creator. But what happens when
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the gateways of our consciousness are manned by alien sentries? What
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happens when the security forces of our mind are subverted by those whose
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purpose is not to Create but to destroy?
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We are in deeeeep shit!
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The LSD revolution attempted to address this problem by breaking
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down partially and temporarily the structures of consciousness, in
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the hope that from the raw flood of information could be Created new
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conceptual systems which would be more appropriate to the latent
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structures present in the Chaos. The main reason it didn't work
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appears to have been signal to noise ratio. To descend from poetic
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metaphysics and speak plainly, LSD makes just too darn good a
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brainwashing tool (although perhaps brain-sculpting would be the
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truly appropriate phrase). It is just too easy for unscrupulous
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people to feed Acid to those too inexperienced to judge their trip
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environment, and subject them to the imprinting of proprietary
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control structures (and in the case of eg. Charlie Manson,
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extraordinarily destructive ones). Thus Acid, which once appeared to
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hold hope as a solution, now appears as part of the problem.
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Well, obviously we have to address the bandwidth problem somehow.
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Equally obviously this is much too important to be left to the Usual
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Suspects.
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THE LAST UNCENSORED MASS MEDIUM
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WE LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY (NOT!)
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I have called the Net the last (accidentally) uncensored mass
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medium. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that "they"
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decide what appears in newspapers, magazines, books, and on radio
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and TV, whereas WE decide what will appear on the Net. If anybody
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sincerely believes that the presently restricted level of access to
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the more conventional mass media is due to the completely
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accidental interplay of technical, economic and social forces, you
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may well not sympathize with the rest of this analysis. If you feel
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that access was restricted at least in part due to a deliberate
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effort to prevent the widespread dissemination of viewpoints that
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might threaten the "stability" of the status quo, then don't feel
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like the Lone Ranger. It should not have escaped anybody who has been
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paying attention that America is presently ruled by an oligarchical
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elite which is, if not yet outrightly fascist, certainly proto-fascist.
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It is clear that such a group can only maintain its rule while
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preserving nominally democratic forms of government if it is able to
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establish limits on allowable large-scale public discourse. In other
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words the oligarchy needs a veto power on ideas that can be effectively
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expressed in mass forums. As long as the mass forums were limited to
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the 3 major networks and the 2 wire services and a handful of leading
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newspapers and magazines, it was fairly straightforward to accomplish
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this level of control behind the scenes through old boy networks,
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financial influence and the time honored principles of "follow the leader"
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and "monkey see, monkey do". As communication becomes less centrally
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controlled, it becomes increasingly possible that "rogue elements" from
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outside the oligarchical consensus might earn the attention of a
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significant number of people. To forestall this possibility the oligarchy
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needs a social consensus establishing mechanisms and conditions of
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censorship. This is one of the not so hidden agendas of the "PC"
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controversy - whether a category of "hate speech" can be created which
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can be suppressed either by law as the liberals would have it or
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by the voluntary exercise of property rights on the part of the
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privately owned mass media as would be preferred by the free
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enterprisers.
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WHO CONTROLS SOCIALIZED IMAGES CONTROLS BEHAVIOR
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Our behavior is largely controlled by the image bank we carry
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around in our brains. These images are our primary tools of
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conceptualization, which we use in understanding who we are, where
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we are situated in society and in history, and what actual or
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potential significance our activities have in life. To draw an
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extreme example, somebody who grew up reading biographies of
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Abraham Lincoln or Amelia Earheart will view their aspirations in
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life quite differently from someone who grew up watching Budwiser
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commercials. Our SOCIAL behavior is similarly directed by the
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images we have SOCIALIZED - images we collectively share with those
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around us. Nuclear power plant operator Homer Simpson is a
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socialized image. The "nuplex" concept of integrated
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nuclear-industrial complexes as described by nuclear engineer Jon
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Gilbertson, among others, is not. If I want to comment on some
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issue of the day to a cab driver, a co-worker, or somebody I see in
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the bar, it had better be an issue which has been "validated" by
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showing up on the evening news or in USA Today (or in other circles,
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The New York Times, the Washington Times-Post, the New Republic/National
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Review, etc.) Sure, if I know another person REALLY WELL, I can talk to
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them about something that I thought up myself, or read in a "fringe"
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publication. But to be able to talk to casual acquaintances about issues,
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it is necessary to repeat sound bites.
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BUT TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON
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And then along comes the Net. Because of decentralized origination of
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messages, the inability of one poster to interrupt another, the lack
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of a mechanism to censor content, and the speedy but non-sychnronous
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mode of the conversation it is possible for "fringe" ideas to be heard
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and to rise or fall on their merits, alongside conventional ideas.
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Thus, we have a real possibility, for the first time in many years,
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to create communities of thought in which our socialized images are
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constructed in a participatory fashion, and can reflect reality as we
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actually experience it, rather than as some central authority has
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decided it is appropriate to appear. To most of the world off-line
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Danny Casolaro, the investigative reporter who died investigating the
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network of corrupt government officials and others he called "The
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Octopus", is still "Danny Who?". On the Net a small but active community
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exists that believes that knowing what happened to this inquiring mind
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will give us an important clue to what happened to our country.
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And the Net is not just an information source. The Net is interactive.
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Increasing the aggregate bandwidth available to people concerned with
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stopping the New World (Fascist) Order will make possible new levels of
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conversation and consensus not possible under more limiting regimes.
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Ultimately, we may actually realize the ideal of the old New Left (and
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the Founding Fathers !), of democratic participation of the people in
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shaping political programs.
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I keep coming back to the image of old Ben Franklin and his printing
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press. Franklin understood that the British Empire was a dinosaur. Its
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bandwidth was no longer sufficient to support the extent of its body.
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So he used the innovative medium of his time to CREATE bandwidth, thus
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setting into motion a form of social organization which could move
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faster and plan smarter than its obsolete competitor. So today we have
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the Net, the last accidentally uncensored mass medium in existence.
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Is it a toy of the rich and the ivory tower, or is it potent? Already,
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even in its adolescence, the stories are beginning to be told. Whispered
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through keyboards at midnight, downloaded around half a world through
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a web of invisible satellite links and gossamer fiber optic are the
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legends that tell of a time when brave men and women stood and fought
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and fell and died for a thing called freedom in a place called Tianemen
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Square, and the Net stood and fought beside them, and though it did not
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in the end defeat the Enemy, the Enemy was not able to kill it. So, will
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we allow such legends, such benign myths, to shape our sense of who we
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are? Will we allow ourself to be possessed by the vision of a Net
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whose purpose is to help create and support HEROES? Or will we dismiss
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it all with a keystroke, and get back to the REAL FUN STUFF on
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alt.flame.joe.schmuck.the.world's.greatest.poophead ?
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Maybe Marshall McLuhan was right. Maybe the medium is the message.
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Maybe the Medium is the Movement. Maybe the only way to ultimately
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defeat an organism such as the Octopus is to create an organism of
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superior design which will be capable of outthinking, outorganizing
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and outmaneuvering it. Maybe the Net is already the existing nucleus
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of such an organism.
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The thing which has permitted the Octopus and its masters to rule while
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maintaining outwardly democratic forms is the combination of an
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other-directed culture combined with the ability to shape the images
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portrayed in the national mass media, and thus shape our socialized
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perception of political and cultural reality as a set of programmed
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constructs. If the Net Culture already existing in usenet, Fidonet, and
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other anarcho-democratic forums can actually be ported to an expanded
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on-line mass community, then the Oligarchy would ultimately be faced
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with either relinquishing power, or abandoning the mask of democracy.
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The Net presents the irony of a subversive institution originated and
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largely financed by the government. I like to think that some social
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genius in the long ago days of early ArpaNet and Usenet foresaw the spread
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of networking beyond the realms of .gov, .mil, .com, and .edu. I like to
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think that one of the reasons we are configured with decentralized routing,
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decentralized origination, and redundant links is that that same genius
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foresaw the need for a network that would exhibit "survivability" not only
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in the face of enemy attack, but in the face of an attack by our own
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rulers. But whether the architects of the Net wrought better than they
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knew, or exactly as they intended, the result is the same. We enjoy the
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last uncensored, and for the moment uncensorable mass medium in the U.S.,
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and perhaps in the world. This has got to be making certain people rather
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unhappy. (Unless anybody thinks that George Bush and his ilk ENJOY having
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all the facts and all the plausible rumors of their crimes and treasons
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posted here for an ever growing number of the educated elite to read). So
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what is the solution?
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TWO BASIC PRINCIPLES WORTH DEFENDING
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A recommendation - maintain at all costs decentralized administration of
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Net related hardware and redundant links. NO SINGLE INSTITUTION, INDIVIDUAL
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OR ORGANIZED VIEWPOINT SHOULD BE IN A POSITION TO MAKE A CREDIBLE THREAT TO
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SUBSTANTIALLY DISRUPT TRAFFIC.
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I think this is worth codifying as Crocker's first law of net.freedom.
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And the second is like unto it:
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CONTINUE THE CUSTOM THAT MOST GROUPS ARE PUBLICALLY READABLE
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AND A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF THESE ALLOW UNMODERATED POSTING.
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BALANCING FREEDOM AND STRUCTURE - THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
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The central operational problem for defining a Net which is
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simultaneously structured and free would appear to be the technical
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one of providing gatekeeping and attention structuring mechanisms
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which are firm and stable enough to perform their function but are
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sufficiently decentralized and flexible to prevent them being taken
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over by aliens [*]. If I had the answer to that one, I'd stop working
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for a living and run for God. I could probably manage a few
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provocative suggestions, though.
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[*] By "aliens" I refer to the Bad Guys, The Net-Fascists, the
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Conspiracy, the Reactionaries, George Bush, the FBI/CIA/NSA/IRS/ETC,
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the Politically Correct Liberals, the Corporate Culture, the Yuppies,
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the Media Elite, the Entertainment Industry, the Mindless, and anyone
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else who we can agree by consensus ought not to be allowed to
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dominate our consciousness, our culture or our Net. (Obviously this
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is my intensely personal list of villains - your mileage may vary).
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AS THE NET GROWS - ISSUES TO CONFRONT
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In many ways, the Net is only an adolescent, with the incredible
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combination of brilliance and stupidity and of promise and rampant
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silliness which has probably characterized adolescence forever. To
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cause it to actually live up to its potential, there are things
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which need to happen and things which need to be avoided.
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EXPANSION
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I think we all have wished that the Net were more universal. We are
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vastly underrepresented in areas such as poor people, industrial
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workers, housewives, young children, policy makers, and senior
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professionals. We need to find effective means of outreach to all
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these groups, and more. And that's only in North America. The
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extension of the Net into the Third World is a problem, parallel in
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some ways to that of including the poor and under-educated of North
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America, but also complicated by unique problems of infrastructure
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and political economy.
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The question of technical and educational barriers to access is
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relevant here. Many poor people also lack basic educational skills.
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Even many people who may be high school graduates who work and support
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a family may lack the familiarity with computers to feel comfortable
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with today's Net interfaces. To remedy this, we need not only
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conventional computer literacy, and more user-friendly interfaces,
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but also more hands-on access to the Net in schools, churches,
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union halls, libraries, and the like.
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I believe that the Net can and should play an important role
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in making representative democracy work in the 21st century in the
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way it was envisioned in the 18th. I hope to be around when the
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time comes that open advisory groups of net.citizens routinely
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advise their representatives on the issues of the day, and when the
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net.community is strong enough at the polls to defeat any representative
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who routinely and casually disregards the net.consensus. And by that
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time, this had better be a Net of the people, by the people, and for
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the people, or else we will have wrought nothing better than an Athenian
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style "democracy" existing on the backs of a disenfranchised lower class.
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Expansion is not an unmixed blessing, however. As we expand there is
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a danger of having the cultural traditions which have been developed by
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trial and error over the years overwhelmed. These customs, although not
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perfect, have by and large been successful in allowing the Net to WORK.
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A first approximation suggestion would be to attempt to manage Net
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expansion in such a way that at any given moment, the population of
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Net citizens online for less than (say) 6 months should constitute
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a minority of the total Net population. This will allow our culture
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to evolve in a somewhat orderly way, rather than simply being swept
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away by ignorance, well intentioned or otherwise.
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ECONOMICS
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This is a central issue related to the problem of expansion. To
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those of us with moderate or better incomes, computers and Net
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access appear to be cheap. But cheap is relative. To those for who
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a phone or an automobile is only a dream (and I count several such
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among my own acquaintance) Net access is an essentially meaningless
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luxury. However, it's not QUITE as bad as that sentence makes it
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sound. Most people who don't have cars still find somebody to give
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them rides. Most people who don't have phones have phones somewhere
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they can use, and, amazingly, even many of the very poor manage to
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have a TV and even have a friend or relative with Cable. So, I
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think if we can get the price of a net capable box down around that
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of a used TV, and a Net connection down around the price of a phone
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line, or of cable, we can probably provide at least sporadic Net
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access to all but the bottom 10% or so of the population. My
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recommendation here is to establish a means of cheap or free Net Access.
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Anybody who has a phone or a TV should find it economically feasible to
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access the Net. An absolute upper limit should be a cost comparable to
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getting cable, but I would prefer to see it substantially lower.
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OVERLOAD
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This problem exists on two distinct levels. The bandwidth of the
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available hardware does not YET appear to be seriously threatened
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by the growing volume of traffic, but to anybody who can recognize
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an exponential curve when they see one, it is surely only a matter
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of time. It appears that between the NREN initiative and the
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falling price of net capable boxes and mass storage stat particular
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saturation point is still comfortably far away. (Although NREN does
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raise questions of control - to be addressed further on).
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The danger of HUMAN overload is more serious. Already, a limiting
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factor in the usefulness of the Net to individuals is the inability
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of a person to read more than a minute fraction of even the news
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they are actually interested in. This will never be completely
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solved, but there are both technical and organizational steps which
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can alleviate it.
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At least one question is probably answerable and should be addressed as
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a preliminary to any such effort. That is "What, in practice, is the
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effective limit (actually a range) to the amount of News, Mail, etc
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which can be read per day or per week by the "average" Net dweller.
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This would serve to suggest an upper range to the size of an on-line
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community of posters (newsgroup in Usenet, Echo in Fidonet, etc.) It
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would also give some parameters as to how many online communities of
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varying size a Net being could effectively participate in. All this
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merely gives specific content to the bandwidth problem as it exists in
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our particular medium. By itself it could serve as the rationale for
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the most repressive forms of Net-Fascism. Further insight is still needed.
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On the technical end we need better newsreaders. I normally post
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with a really primitive homebrew reader here on Cleveland FreeNet
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whose powers of selectivity are nearly non-existent. I have used rn
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and it is clearly better, but the interface is not very intuitive
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beyond the most simple functions. Rumor has it that trn offers more
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flexibility, but I haven't seen it and can't comment. We need
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simple and intuitive software to answer questions like "Which
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newsgroups, which threads, which articles, and material from which
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individuals contain the kind of content I've said I'm interested
|
|
in. Show me enough of a brief summary so that I can decide what I
|
|
want to read now, later, or not at all. I like the way this poster
|
|
thinks, tell me about what else they have posted. I'm interested in
|
|
what is new, particularly in the newsgroups I read most often. Let
|
|
me see a summary of the new threads. This article is especially
|
|
interesting. Are there other articles anywhere on the system with
|
|
similar content?" In short the News Reader (both Software and Human)
|
|
needs to have improved mechanisms for searching the News base. These
|
|
need to be simultaneously more powerful and more user friendly. (Yes, I
|
|
know that's normally a trade-off but maybe with a truly excellent design
|
|
team...?) I guess I'm thinking of something like Hypertext indexing
|
|
with tunable parameters, with the tunability transparent to those who
|
|
aren't sophisticated enough to use it. That means some Real Good
|
|
defaults, as well as a cottage industry to provide parameter packages
|
|
for those who want Different or even Better defaults. Now none of this,
|
|
as far as I can tell, is beyond the range of today's computing power or
|
|
programming technique, but somebody needs to DO it.
|
|
|
|
The problem of noise is always going to be with us. I deal with it
|
|
on alt.conspiracy by just not reading any discussions on Holocaust
|
|
Revisionism or detailed physical evidence of the JFK case. With a
|
|
newsreader based on my wish list above, I'd do the same, but a lot
|
|
more elegantly.
|
|
|
|
On the organizational end, we have a lot of what we need already.
|
|
There are mechanisms for starting new groups when old groups get
|
|
too big, and mechanisms for creating alternative forums like
|
|
mailing lists and moderated groups to meet special needs. We need
|
|
to keep an eye on these as the Net grows, to be sure that it is
|
|
always easy to "move west" when the local territory gets too
|
|
crowded or too civilized. At the same time, we need a counterweight
|
|
to the newsgroup splitting mechanisms to encourage overlapping
|
|
membership so groups do not become too insular.
|
|
|
|
|
|
ACCESS CONTROL - MANAGED PARANOIA
|
|
|
|
On the Internet scene, the two major events catalyzing a "phase
|
|
change" in network management attitudes toward security were
|
|
unquestionably the publication of Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg"
|
|
and the release of the notorious "Internet Worm" by Robert Morris Jr.
|
|
|
|
WHO STOLL OUR ACCESS?
|
|
|
|
Lest I be misunderstood, I certainly don't think Cliff Stoll is wittingly
|
|
participating in a campaign against net.freedom. I think he believes he
|
|
is sounding a warning against an evil which might have destroyed the Net
|
|
had he not acted. Look at the results, however. One of the oldest regional
|
|
networks is MERIT in Michigan, which interestingly enough administers the
|
|
Internet backbone under contract with NSF. They have long maintained an
|
|
anonymous dialin service from major Michigan cities which allowed users
|
|
anywhere in Michigan to log on remotely to their home account. With the
|
|
rise of the tcp/ip protocol they implemented a telnet client available
|
|
again through anonymous dialin which allowed remote access to any host
|
|
on the Internet. In the wake of the Cuckoo's Egg and rtm incidents, the
|
|
NSF announced a policy of "no anonymous access to the backbone". Merit
|
|
quickly complied by restricting the dialin telnet client to accessing
|
|
the regional subnet only. From a naive perspective this sounds perfectly
|
|
reasonable, as any good repressive policy should. The effect, however, is
|
|
to erect an economic barrier to Net access from Michigan. Although MERIT
|
|
has never charged a fee for dialin telnet, and still nominally does not do
|
|
so, there is a fairly substantial fee for setting up a MERIT account which
|
|
would comply with the "no anonymous use" rule. Alternatively, one may
|
|
acquire an account at a MERIT member site which will be recognized by the
|
|
MERIT authorization server. Policies on these are still in flux as of this
|
|
writing, however I haven't heard of any of them that are going to be cheap.
|
|
The debate over subsidy versus cost recovery for Net access is a legitimate
|
|
one. However, I think it is only fair that it be conducted in the light of
|
|
day with the issues being called by their correct names. To sneak a charge
|
|
for Net access in the back door under the guise of a security issue as
|
|
was done in this case is cowardly and shameful.
|
|
|
|
JUNIOR AND SENIOR
|
|
|
|
"No job's too big
|
|
No job's too small
|
|
We're Father and Son
|
|
We do it all."
|
|
-Construction company advertising jingle
|
|
|
|
Although I believe Cliff Stoll to be innocent of sinister intent in this
|
|
affair, the case of the rtm worm is a little different. Maybe I've just
|
|
been reading alt.conspiracy too long :), but I can't overlook the
|
|
possibility of some sort of collusion between Robert Morris Jr. of the
|
|
rtm worm and Robert Morris Sr. of the National Security Agency's National
|
|
Computer Security Center. Robert Morris Sr. figures prominently in the
|
|
Cuckoo's Egg as one of the few high level officials to show serious
|
|
concern about hacker attacks. He introduces Stoll to the Assistant Director
|
|
of NSA and arranges for him to tell his story to the National
|
|
Telecommunications Security Committee. We are not told whether Morris also
|
|
encouraged Stoll to publish his popular account of this affair, but it is
|
|
certainly a plausible possibility. Then in 1988 we encounter the famous
|
|
rtm worm which brings down a substantial fraction of the Internet. When
|
|
the dust settles, the author of this worm emerges as Robert Morris Jr.,
|
|
the son of Robert Morris the famous security expert. Well, I suppose it
|
|
could be some kind of innocent Oedipal thing, rebellion against the
|
|
father figure and all that. Or it could have been that the famous claim
|
|
of the hacker legions finally came true for once. "We did it as a service
|
|
to alert you to the holes in your security". Whatever the reason, the rtm
|
|
worm along with the Cuckoo's Egg forced an attitude shift among system
|
|
administrators in which security began to take priority over service and
|
|
helped create an attitude in which casual access to the Net by
|
|
unauthorized people was ended almost before it began.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CENSORSHIP AND CONTROL
|
|
|
|
But all is still not well. Although the potential rush of great
|
|
unwashed citizens into Internet access has been slowed, if not
|
|
stopped, Usenet is still alive and growing and as uncensored as
|
|
ever. I would not put it past the enemy for a minute to try to
|
|
attack Usenet based on the existence of the sexually oriented
|
|
newsgroups. This is, however, a blunt instrument that may not
|
|
by itself have the intended effect. It's not like the oligarchy
|
|
really CARES who reads alt.sex.bestiality.hamster.aluminum.baseball.bat.
|
|
I think they probably do MUCH stranger things to their own hamsters
|
|
in the privacy of their off-line existences. It could, however, be
|
|
used as a precedent to encourage individual sites to drop
|
|
"objectionable" newsgroups. And now we come to the curious case
|
|
of the "Holocaust Revisionists", who have been known to post
|
|
huge quantities of material to politically oriented newsgroups
|
|
denying the existence of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
|
|
In light of the sensitive nature of the subject, and their
|
|
complete lack of headway making converts to their views, I have
|
|
began to wonder if there might not be a hidden agenda at work here.
|
|
Perhaps the covert purpose of this mass of offensive material
|
|
is to prove to any "reasonable" person that free and open net.discussion
|
|
of controversial subjects does not work and ultimately cannot be
|
|
permitted. Perhaps they are intended as the "horrible example" of what
|
|
happens when people take freedom of speech seriously. Maybe they are
|
|
here to show us all that the First Amendment wasn't really such a
|
|
great idea after all.
|
|
|
|
Does the idea of Holocaust Revisionism make you sick and angry?
|
|
Congratulations. You are reacting the way they want you to. Does
|
|
it make you sick and angry enough to want to close the Net to these
|
|
people? Hopefully not. But if not you, probably somebody a little
|
|
quicker on the trigger and a little less attached to the ideals of
|
|
freedom. For if the Net is closed to such as these, it can by that
|
|
precedent be closed to anyone who is sufficiently offensive to the
|
|
powers that be.
|
|
|
|
BANDWIDTH AGAIN
|
|
|
|
But we have an intriguing double-bind here. Gresham's Law in economics
|
|
states that "bad money drives out good". I wonder if we don't have a
|
|
similar problem with "noise driving out signal". When I show any of
|
|
my friends alt.conspiracy I always feel I have to apologize for the
|
|
mass of Holocaust posting. There are people I don't DARE show it to,
|
|
because I don't expect them to have the patience to pick and choose
|
|
among the many garbage posts to find the worthwhile ones. So is this how
|
|
the Net ends? Do we either accept censorship, let ourselves be drowned
|
|
under the onslaught of noise, or finally find the political newsgroups
|
|
dropped from more and more sites as "objectionable"? Or is there
|
|
another solution? Can the accumulated wisdom of the hyperconsciousness
|
|
which IS the Net find an answer which compromises neither integrity or
|
|
survival? (See the section on OVERLOAD above for some suggestions).
|
|
|
|
For in the end, it really doesn't matter whether the Holocausters
|
|
are doing this on purpose or not. The threat is real either way. The
|
|
Net, like any young growing organism, has reached a crisis point at
|
|
which it must mature or die.
|
|
|
|
|
|
COMMERCIALIZATION - ONLINE MATERIAL AS PRODUCT
|
|
|
|
The question of commercialization of online activity comes into
|
|
play here in a couple of forms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SHOULD FREEDOM OF INFORMATION BE FREE ? (WOULD YOU BELIEVE CHEAP?)
|
|
|
|
Much of the relative power imbalance between citizens on the one hand
|
|
and professional politicians or bureaucrats on the other stems from
|
|
the latter's greater access to specialized information. Citizens
|
|
cannot responsibly exercise their democratic responsibilities of
|
|
oversight and advice to government if they are deprived of timely
|
|
and complete information on government activities. The legal maxim
|
|
"ignorance of the Law is no excuse" becomes a mockery when the "law"
|
|
occupies an ever expanding stack of shelves at the local law school
|
|
library and the only people NOT "ignorant of the law" are highly
|
|
trained professionals who sell the fruits of this knowledge for
|
|
a substantial price.
|
|
|
|
Much of the problem alluded to above (which is fundamentally a
|
|
form of the Human Bandwidth problem) could be alleviated by a
|
|
policy of easy online access to legal and bureaucratic databases.
|
|
However, now come services such as Westlaw which offer to sell
|
|
you such access for a substantial sum. Opposed to them are access
|
|
proposals from groups like the Taxpayer Asset's project whose
|
|
draft bill would mandate online access to Federal databases at
|
|
only the cost of providing access. Even should such a proposal
|
|
be implemented, however, it will be merely an important first
|
|
step. A raw online data base merely transfers the Human Bandwidth
|
|
dilemma into the online environment. The key issue is easy
|
|
searchability. The user of a government document access service
|
|
needs to be able to quickly find documents and passages relevant
|
|
to their needs, without having to wade through a mass of noise.
|
|
Any online access service put into place needs to have the
|
|
search and interface technology in place to address that issue.
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE THREAT OF "QUALITY"
|
|
|
|
Should "quality" productions, including multimedia and the
|
|
writing of high profile authorities become a dominant feature
|
|
of Net traffic ? Should large commercial BBS systems become
|
|
a major player in the online environment?
|
|
|
|
<sarcasm on> Can we look forward to a Brave New Cyberspace in which
|
|
anyone can get Net access for $50 per month, read reports "cybercast"[*]
|
|
by the most prestigious on-line journalists, post freely to newsgroups,
|
|
all of which are moderated by only the most respected experts in their
|
|
fields, and say absolutely anything, with the obvious exception of posts
|
|
which are offensive, flaky, off the wall, or clearly a waste of limited
|
|
bandwidth? Gee whiz! Doesn't the thought make you positively drool?
|
|
<sarcasm off)
|
|
|
|
[*] "Cybercasting" is an existing concept being promoted by NPTN
|
|
(National Public Telecommunication Network). Read all about it on
|
|
Cleveland Free-Net.
|
|
|
|
The potential threat from developments like these comes in the
|
|
possibility of an economic "crowding out" effect with respect
|
|
to available bandwidth. In real estate economics it is easy to
|
|
observe the tendency for land to be used for whatever provides
|
|
the highest rate of return. If K-Marts are more profitable than
|
|
farms on a particular piece of land, the tendency is to sell your
|
|
farm to somebody who will build a K-Mart. In the BBS world, the
|
|
ability to make MONEY running a BBS will ultimately encourage
|
|
telephone service providers to charge BBS's enhanced rates. On
|
|
the Net, providers of commercial quality traffic will need to
|
|
charge fees to recover the costs of production. Noticing that
|
|
these providers are making money from their product, there will
|
|
be a tendency for Net access providers to charge what the traffic
|
|
will bear. The long run effect of this would be for the commercial
|
|
quality products to crowd out the efforts of unaffiliated individuals
|
|
who merely want to be heard.
|
|
|
|
Fortunately, the analogy with real estate is weak. Unlike land,
|
|
bandwidth is something we CAN make more of. Unlike physical
|
|
location, which is relatively fixed and whose value changes
|
|
according to the existence of relatively costly infrastructure
|
|
projects (e.g. freeways), location in cyberspace is much more
|
|
virtual, and the value of a given location is subject to change
|
|
based on the real-time perceptions of the Net community.
|
|
|
|
To summarize, commercialization of online products is a trend
|
|
which should be watched closely. It will probably not succeed
|
|
in crowding out non-commercial traffic as long as the quantity
|
|
of available bandwidth remains large. Should the quantity of
|
|
bandwidth become scarce, however, whether through monopoly,
|
|
government regulation, or market forces, there will emerge a
|
|
tendency for non-commercial use of the online environment to
|
|
suffer.
|
|
|
|
SOME RECOMMENDATIONS
|
|
|
|
(A) Support for the efforts to mandate free or cheap searchable
|
|
access to legal and bureaucratic information at all levels of
|
|
government.
|
|
|
|
(B) Continuation and expansion of the custom of talented amateurs
|
|
giving time and resources to serve as Sysops, News Administrators,
|
|
Newsgroup or Mailing list moderators, etc. Community recognition for
|
|
their services.
|
|
|
|
(C) Encourage an on-line cultural ethic which would discourage
|
|
the commercialization of net access or net news editing services.
|
|
Certainly these can and should exist, but their flavor should not be
|
|
allowed to dominate. Let us recognize that a unique value of the Net
|
|
is the grassroots participation, which by its nature is not subject
|
|
to being "marketed" (at least not without changing its character to
|
|
the point where much of its value is lost).
|
|
|
|
|
|
NREN AND THE GOVERNMENT CONTROL PROBLEM
|
|
|
|
I have to admit here that I am not as familiar with NREN as I should be.
|
|
Thus, this will be one of the weakest sections of this document, limited
|
|
to suggesting some rather obvious things to watch out for. The first and
|
|
most obvious is blatant government control. If the government owns NREN,
|
|
will it have the right to regulate access and/or content? The FBI has
|
|
already sought legislation which would permit them easy access to digital
|
|
communications carried over conventional phone lines. Will NREN be designed
|
|
along the same decentralized lines as the present Internet, or will there
|
|
be capabilities for access control on a centralized basis, and perhaps
|
|
even a "Panic Button" to bring down the Net in a state of "National
|
|
Emergency". Overall, I have to favor building NREN. Bandwidth is good.
|
|
But advocates of net.freedom who have the technical expertise needed to
|
|
critique working papers and design proposals should stand watchdog over
|
|
every step of the way, ready to blow the whistle in the event that an
|
|
attempt is made to design away any of the freedoms we as net.citizens
|
|
now enjoy.
|
|
|
|
The other possible problem with NREN is commercialization. This project
|
|
is going to be expensive and there will undoubtedly be moves to make
|
|
it pay off. Presently, we have a lot of free services on the Net, free
|
|
in part because there is no effective way to charge for them. I would
|
|
Hate to see the day come when everything on the Net costs money. The
|
|
last thing we need is for the Internet to become another Compuserve.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CONCLUSION - TOWARD A CONCEPT OF VIRTUAL HIERARCHY
|
|
|
|
At the beginning of this document I argued the need for hierarchies,
|
|
but balanced against this was the realization that our present social
|
|
and communication hierarchies have been pre-empted by autocratic forces.
|
|
I've talked about some of the ways in which I hope the Net can serve
|
|
as an antidote to this problem. The concept I ended up groping toward,
|
|
I've called "virtual hierarchy". It's vaguely related to Andy Warhol's
|
|
"everybody is famous for 15 minutes" principle. The idea here is of
|
|
hierarchies that can come and go, and be dynamically restructured as
|
|
the need arises. The existence and operation of the Net suggests that
|
|
from an information flow viewpoint, we now possess the technical basis
|
|
to bypass static hierarchies in favor of flexible hierarchies in which
|
|
attention patterns can be dynamically configured based on the information
|
|
needs and resources of the people at any given moment.
|
|
|
|
I see the Net as a prototype and proof-of-principle experiment in such a
|
|
system. Not that I would wish to radically abolish traditional static
|
|
hierarchies. They are probably appropriate and necessary in many areas of
|
|
human life. Not, I think, for the political decision-making processes of
|
|
a free people. I see the virtual and static hierarchies potentially
|
|
evolving into a kind of check and balance system. I believe it would be
|
|
wise to embody the ultimate political authority in society in a flexible
|
|
hierarchy, on a similar basis to the principle that our military is
|
|
always under ultimate command of civilian authority. (The military here
|
|
is analogous to static hierarchies).
|
|
|
|
When the U.S. Constitution had finally been ratified, someone is supposed
|
|
to have asked Ben Franklin "And what kind of a government have you given
|
|
us, Dr. Franklin?" to which he replied "A republic - if you can keep it".
|
|
We have been given a free and decentralized Net, the last uncensored mass
|
|
medium, and a possible means to make representative democracy work in
|
|
America. If we can keep it.
|
|
|
|
-Steve Crocker
|
|
East Lansing, Michigan
|
|
10/9/92
|
|
aq817@Cleveland.Freenet.edu
|
|
ad626@yfn.ysu.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
<postscript - 9/21/93>
|
|
|
|
|
|
And some late hot flashes. We all surely know by now that cyberpunk made
|
|
the cover of Time a few months back. Oldsters and historians will recall
|
|
this as the same scenario that launched the hippies. Time-Warner and other
|
|
entertaiment firms have expressed their intention to move agressively
|
|
into net.based delivery of their product (will they help put the "terminal"
|
|
back into "terminally stupid"?) And just two weeks ago, Delphi, who had
|
|
already recently purchased Bix, was bought out by Rupert Murdoch's "news"
|
|
organization.
|
|
|
|
And now to mentionin one more point on the graph. I was for a short time
|
|
a "member" of Prodigy. Yep. Prodigy. And yes, it's every bit as bad as
|
|
people think, at least as far as the technical limitations of the
|
|
software and the authoritarian attitudes of the management. But
|
|
demographics, have they got demographics.
|
|
|
|
What I mean by that is that the human mix there is very different than
|
|
here on usenet, and in some very exciting ways. The advertising
|
|
campaign which was supposed to bring in computer-shy Yuppies and get
|
|
them to buy plane tickets on line ended up recruiting a mix which
|
|
included many older folks and women. These folks, though not techies
|
|
are the kind of people who will be the first to try something new which
|
|
will expand their horizons. The community was huge, easily rivaling
|
|
usenet, and I saw only small parts of it. But it was exciting. I spent
|
|
most of my time among a community of grass-roots populists organizing
|
|
against the One World Government, Outcome Based education, etc. Plus
|
|
there was another fairly separate group going after the JFK assasination.
|
|
The folks there were more activist and less abstract than here. Many of
|
|
them used Prodigy to compare notes and share support for their organizing
|
|
efforts off-line (We here could take lessons...). Then the blow fell.
|
|
Prodigy changed its flat rate policy to timed charges for access to the
|
|
discussion forums (BB's). This was done in a way to cause maximum
|
|
resentment. I mean they didn't even try to put up much of a front.
|
|
Claims of financial necessity were made, but oddly enough, strategies
|
|
which would have enhanced revenue while retaining the ability of
|
|
affordable interpersonal communication were not considered.
|
|
|
|
For a couple of months, a mass migration to Genie appeared to be
|
|
the way to go. There were many Prodigy refugees there already,
|
|
from an earlier round of Prodigy repression dealing with email.
|
|
Many still had dual membership and were helping those who wanted to
|
|
make the move. This was beginning to gather steam when the other shoe
|
|
dropped. Genie (General Electric) followed Prodigy (IBM/Sears) into
|
|
the netherworld of timed charges for discussion groups. Last I heard,
|
|
those who could make it into their lifeboats were heading for
|
|
National Videotext Network which still offers flat rate. I haven't heard
|
|
how this ended up.
|
|
|
|
<and the latest 10/11/93>
|
|
|
|
Just last night, I stumbled onto a monster thread over on misc.legal
|
|
dealing with the problems of copyrighted material on the Net. Apparently
|
|
many sysadmins already have dropped alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, due
|
|
in part to concern over liability due to copyright violations (under
|
|
recent law, apparently a Federal felony!) by people scanning in gifs from
|
|
their favorite magazines.
|
|
|
|
One fellow emphasized his support for the freedom of speech for all sorts
|
|
of controversial and obnoxious folks on his system, but was vehement in his
|
|
zeal to "call the FBI" on copyright violators.
|
|
|
|
<Later still 7/94>
|
|
|
|
In the June 6 issue of the New Yorker is an interesting story by
|
|
John Seabrook (who did the email interview with Bill Gates) about
|
|
getting flamed and how violated and uspset it made him. Lots of not
|
|
explicitly stated suggestion that maybe somebody will need to control
|
|
all this, and some very confusing material suggesting to the non-technical
|
|
that viruses or worms may be sent via email messages. "Is this free speech?".
|
|
But the chilling passage in the article is on page 77 where the writer says
|
|
|
|
>Dr. Clinton C. Brooks, the N.S.A.'s lead scientist on the Clipper Chip
|
|
>told me, "You won't have a Waco in Texas, you'll have a Waco in cyberspace.
|
|
>You could have a cult, spaeking to each other through encyrption, that
|
|
>suddenly erupts in society - well programmed, well organized - and then
|
|
>suddenly disappears again."
|
|
|
|
Getting scared yet?
|
|
|
|
And now comes the June 13th issue of the Nation with an article
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called Static in Cyberspace. This is a critical look at the concept
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of fredom of speech on the Net, complete with Serdar Argic, Karla
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Homolka, gun control flames, and libel cases. The article never says
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"there oughta be a law". But then, it doesn't really need to, does it?
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-Steve
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