From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 14:15:02 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Censorship
Message-ID: <199601210327.TAA18777@mailx.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Censorship:

In the past, whenever a new medium came into play, the new medium was
subjected to extraordinarily restrictive censorship, while censorship was
radically relaxed, or abandoned altogether, on the old media.  Thus when the
talkies came in, censorship on books was relaxed.  When TV came in
censorship on movies was relaxed.  I conjecture that this represents the
power of vested interests, and the relative weakness of new interests.  Now
if this pattern is going to be repeated, we would expect the FTC to attempt
to utterly strangle the internet in a straightjacket, on behalf of the
television interests that have largely captured the FTC.

Note that current proposed legislation, legislation containing Exxon's
severe censorship rules, gives the FTC ownership of the internet.  They may
claim to own it.  Let us see them try.

Censorship on television is now much tighter than it used to be:  Expect a
radical relaxation when internet use starts to cut into television time.

Remember the original Star Treck:  Every episode would have a fistfight, a
gunfight, a space battle between starships with really cheap cheesy special
effects, Captain Kirk would dip his wick (off screen) in a new exotic alien
female, and he would defy orders, or Starfleet regulations, and most
regularly and spectacularly, he would violate the prime directive. In most
episodes a redcoat or two would be killed in a completely senseless and
unnecessary manner, illustrating the cold indifference of the universe, or
the casual evil of sentient beings.  Whenever they introduced a new
character with a red coat, you knew that violent death was on tonight's menu. 

Now consider the bland successor show "Star Treck the Next Generation":  In
a bow to political correctness they changed the words from "To boldly go
where no man has gone before" to "To boldly go where no one has gone
before". The "Next Generation" universe is socialist, and socialism is
boring.  Worse still, on "Next Generation" socialism actually works, and if
there is anything even more boring that actual real life socialism, it is
socialism that works because everyone cares about each other and they are
all such very nice people. 

Well it came to pass that our TV executives woke up to the fact that there
was something missing from the boring "Next Generation" universe, so they
shift their plots to less perfect places. 

In an upcoming science fiction series "Osiris" the story universe has social
collapse and reversion to barbarism, the exact opposite of the sickeningly
perfect "Next Generation" universe.  A logical continuation of the gimmick
they pulled in "Deep Space Nine" in order to get the story out from the
deadly grip of socialism.  So far so good.  But guess what? Nobody in the
"Osiris" story suffers violent death, and the bad guys reproduce asexually. 

Asexually!!  

What would Captain Kirk do?

Probably sodomy.

And now let us consider the cartoons.  Remember Yosemite Sam with his fiery
temper and his two six guns?  Pow! Blam!


Well guess what?  In today's cartoons, Yosemite Sam has no guns!

Poor Captain Kirk.  Poor Yosemite Sam.

Under these circumstances we should expect a certain amount of friction
around such newsgroups as alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children,
alt.conspiracy, alt.sex.bestiality.barney, alt.nationalism.white, and so forth.

You will notice that political censorship goes hand in hand with censorship
of sex and violence:  Not only does Captain Whazisname of the "Next
Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" refrain from spreading his semen
indiscriminately across the galaxy and refrain from beating people up man on
man, he also obeys orders and regulations and never says anything that would
be controversial in his universe or ours.  They had to make Captain
Whazisname of "Deep Space Nine" black instead of the white Captain
Whazisname in "Next Generation" and young instead of old, because otherwise
nobody would have noticed that he was supposed to be different person,
played by a different actor.   Typical politically correct diversity:
Different colors, but only one voice.

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We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
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derives from this right, not from the	|  
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