From: Stanton McCandlish <anton@hydra.unm.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 May 93 09:20:24 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: PGP, and TANSTAAFL!
Message-ID: <9305041619.AA08996@hydra.unm.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> A-ha!  You've just caused me to "un-lurk," Stanton; thanks for the great
> opening.

Hmm not sure if that is a good thing or not <wink>
> 
> > Privacy should be free, just
> > like freedom should be free, and the right to say what you want should be
> > free.  This is not to say well made tools for ENSURING these rights should 
> > be free.
> 
> Here you seem to be confusing the issue.  How can you say that privacy
> (the right?) should be free, when defending privacy shouldn't be free? 
> Can someone walk up to you and _give_ you privacy?  I always assumed you
> had to be willing to go out and get it yourself, by hook or by crook. 
> Without defense of a right, the right is moot.  _With_ defense of a
> right, the right is moot:  In that case, you already have what you want!

No, no that is not quite what I am meaning.  What I mean by "<insert fave
right here> should be free" is that we should be presumed to have that right,
and that it should not be abridged in any way whatsoever, especially not
for a fee.  As an example, we have a right to bear arms.  You should not 
have to pay a fee for that right.  You certainly *should* have to pay for
the arms you bear, or make your own.  I think YOU are slightly confusing the
issue.  Rights are not property, but are concepts.  I argue that what one
should pay for are items of property, as well as services, whether they are
tools for excercising a right or not.  You don't get things for free. But
rights are not really "things" in that sense at all.  Imagine if you had to 
buy an annual Free Speech Registration from the FCC.  Without this registra-
tion certificate, you may only use words in The Official FCC Dictionary, and
may only construct phrases that follow the rules of The Official FCC Style
Guide, and may only talk about subjects delimited in The Official FCC Subject
Index; any violation of these policies will result in punishment not to 
exceed $10,000 and/or 10 years in prison.  This may seem an absurd example,
but one most of us are familiar with if we have read _1984_.  
And no, no one can walk up and hand you a box full of privacy.  Rights are
there or not there, conceptually speaking.  I don't think that not defending
a right makes the right moot, per se, though you may lose it.  Thing is you
should not have to defend it.  Any attempt to extinguish a right is by def-
inition a violation of it.  Unfortunately, people are only too happy to 
violate other's rights, so we have to defend them.

> I suppose I also have a "right to lunch," too, with the caveat that each
> I must "ensure" my right to lunch by tripping down to MacDonald's and
> buying it.  Why bother with the right?  What is free here?  The fact
> that MacDonald's is open for business?  But I'm not even guaranteed that!

No, the "right" is in your right to actually leave work, and go get something
to eat.  If you employer demanded a $15 dock in pay to take lunch, or refused
to let you have your break (and in most states I believe there are labor laws
that mandate that employees get a certain length-of-time break for every x
amount of work) that would be a violation of your right to have lunch.  Like-
wise if someone put a gun to your head and said "thou shalt eat no lunch".

> Are rights a useless construction?

*I* don't think so, personally.

> > While this is true, I would urge people to keep in mind that while we can 
> > be expected to pay for tools to help us maintain our rights, no one can
> > charge us a fee for those rights themselves.  Privacy is free, it is our
> > birthright.
> 
> I hope I'm not getting off list topic here on my first post, but the
> "privacy is free" meme looks to be potentially damaging for us.

How so?

> Perhaps
> you mean, Stanton, that privacy as a commodity should not be traded for
> U.S. dollars, Deutsche Mark, or Mexican Pesos, but for some other
> currency?  Sweat, perhaps?  If you pay in sweat, it isn't free--you
> could have paid someone else to sweat for you.  Surely this hasn't
> boiled down to a question over valid currency for trade in privacy?

Nope.  I don't think privacy (or any other right) is a commodity. I see the
2 categories as mutually exclusive.  When a "right" becomes a commodity,
it is no longer a right, but a privilege.
 
> I think the fundamental question here is whether rights are free. 
> [Whether they "should be" free doesn't mean ANYTHING; what does "should
> be" mean?]  Look around; you'll see a lot of people "fighting for their
> rights" to do X.  I don't think you can tell _them_ that "the right to
> do X is free."

Sure I can.  All of us here, or many of us, are fighting for at least one
of our rights, namely privacy.  I have yet to see someone say that we should
BUY our right, or that we are fighting to be allowed to purchase or get a 
license for that right.  Rather we are fighting because some people in the
govt with big egos or someother mental problem are trying to destroy that
right, to nullify it.  FIGHTING for the right may not be free, since again
one must purchase tools to do that with, and also "services" (if you can call
legal and court fees a service >:).  But the right itself has no price tag.
 
> Cheers, TANSTAAFL, and I hope I haven't offended Stanton over a minor point,

Nope not at all.  Few things offend me, and debate is one of the last things
I'd be offended by.

> P.S.  If anyone knows what rights are, mail me.  I'm extremely
> interested. Don't perpetuate my possible topical error by sending it to
> Cypherpunks, unless you think everyone else will be interested. (Maybe
> Extropians would be...)

I think they would indeed, and the cypherfolk also.  I can think of few groups
more concerned with our rights and protecting them.

Thanks for the comments, this is a good thing to talk about, to hash out.
-- 
Testes saxi solidi!  **********************   Podex opacus gravedinosus est!  
Stanton McCandlish,  SysOp:  Noise in the Void Data Center BBS
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