From: jamesd@echeque.com
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 02:47:07 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: A Cyberspace Independence Refutation
Message-ID: <199602161631.IAA25897@news1.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



James Donald writes:
>[in reply to strata]
>> Your other arguments casually dismiss the very real power that large numbers 
>> of able people with good communications can exercise, have just exercised
>> very recently.

At 05:03 AM 2/16/96 -0500, lmccarth@cs.umass.edu wrote:
>Large numbers of able people with good communications very recently exercised 
>their putative "very real power" against the passage of the CDA. They had no
>substantial impact AFAICS. (I intend no slur against the effort.)  Could you
>name some examples, and add some qualifications that made the difference in
>those cases ?

1.  President Clinton declared CDA unconstitutional and directed 
the Justice department to refrain from enforcing it.

2.  The normal course of events, when a new medium starts 
competing against an old medium, is for the new medium to 
be censored to an utterly ludicrous degree, analogous to 
the law requiring a man with a red flag to walk in front 
of horseless carriages, while the old medium has censorship 
radically relaxed.  In the normal course of events one would 
expect a strict ban on pictures of women in clothes cut 
below the neck or above the ankles, and a ban on any 
unpleasant or disturbing subject.  (For example the comics 
code, and the TV rule that married couples had to have 
separate beds)

Instead alt.pictures.binaries.erotica.children is still 
going strong.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com