From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 03:25:35 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Banning Explosive Speech
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960305165645.0071761c@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"I think that the tax serfs of AmeriKKKa should rise and throw off the
chains of their oppression by blowing up their nearest federal office
building.  Here is how they should do it.  Take 16 parts ammonium nitrate
and one part fuel oil (that's diesel  fuel if you like) mix them together..."

Voila.  I've just converted a discussion of explosives into protected
political speech.

I consider it highly unlikely that people will be doing much time for
so-called explosive speech.  The publisher of Paladin Press *is* being sued
civilly in a case of a customer who read his "How to Kill" series a bit too
closely and used some of the info contained therein.  Civil suits mean
little in our medium, however, because the cost of production is so low and
there are so many judgment-proof practitioners of net communications.

In Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown"
(http://www.usfca.edu/crackdown/crack_1.html) he discusses how the seizure
of 25 "outlaw boards" by the Secret Service was an electronic example of a
Vice Raid bust in which the LE's are not really trying to shut everything
down but just trying to "show the flag" and intimidate the rest of the scum.

The reason that Vice Raids probably won't work too well in cyberspace is
because we are harder to intimidate.  There are lots of us, we are spread
all over the world, and we can so easily disguise ourselves.  Note the
ineffectiveness of the recent German crackdown.

In addition, we don't think of ourselves as scum.  We have friends and a
pseudo community, we're not hidden, and we have plenty of support in our own
"counterculture."

Note too that Lady Di Fi's proposal to ban explosive speech did not try and
ban public discussion of same but merely the knowing transfer of such info
in criminal conspiracy cases.  It would not have reached public web sites or
newsgroups.

DCF

"I think that the American people have the right to see things like this --
Start Marlboro Man Commercial"  -- how to beat the Tobacco Ad ban.