From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 08:28:52 +0800
To: stephan.mohr@uni-tuebingen.de (Stephan Mohr)
Subject: Re: free speach and the government
In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960203234059.2eb7ed1c@mailserv.uni-tuebingen.de>
Message-ID: <199602040002.QAA11844@slack.lne.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Stephan Mohr writes:
> 
> Well, I feel that I agree with the people on the right of free speech for
> i.e. the neo-nazi stuff or other political, ideological and/or religious
> ideas. But there is still something that leaves me uneasy: imagine there
> would be a way to easily make a powerful poison, easily applicated to
> your town's water-reservoir, or a very easy way to build some strong
> explosive device. etc. Actually, I think that stuff like this does exist
> already.
> 
> But the idea that one day I just put 'easy made deadly poison for millions'
> into my webcrawler and whoop there it is on my screen or on the screen of any
> other fool, doesn't sound to right to me. I would like things like this
> to be better put aside and locked up.

You can't put the genie back into the bottle.
Once something is invented or described, the knowledge
is out there.  Someone who wants to use that knowledge
for "wrong" purposes can find it.

Maybe a lot of people around the world could agree that
the knowledge to make something really dangerous (say Sarin nerve gas) 
should be suppressed.  But where do we draw the line?  If
we, or rather our government acting obstensibly in our interest, decides
to supress the information on how to make Sarin, not too many people
will complain.  But the tendency of governments is to regulate and
restrict and tax more.   What happens when governments suppress
knowledge on how to make gunpowder?  Or printing presses?  Or
encryption?

Many people argue (rightly IHMO) that once started on the slippery slope
of suppressing knowledge there's no stopping until we're all
under the boot heel of the police state.

[..]
> I know, of course, that by accepting that there is something that
> shouldn't be available on the net, we would need something to decide what
> and how to ban. So I wonder what would be a more 'net'-like way of handling 
> this type of thing and how to prevent that some 'strong-armed' governments
> take the net over.

So far the "net-like" way to deal with the problem is to not
supress information at all, and instead assume that people are
intelligent enough to make their own choices on what to do
with "dangerous" information.

 
> I do not see tokay's governments being prepared for the net (at least not
> the German one). But I see them trying to put the 'old' laws onto the net.
> Not because they are mean, but because they don't know any better. So, I
> think it would be nice to have something to offer to them. I do not think though
> that they will accept the totally right of free speech (yet). 

No government will accept net-speech that's any freer than
any other speech in that country.

In the US the media is by and large controlled by huge
media conglomerates with a vested interest in maintaining
the status quo and delivering up their audience to their
advertisers in tidy packages.

The government is along for the ride, being part and parcel
of the same system.  They won't rest until net-speech is
by and large controlled by huge media conglomerates all
busy delivering up the net-public to advertisers in tidy
packages... I'm not saying that there's a Black Heliocopters
type conspiracy, or any other for that matter.  There doesn't
have to be, there are huge political forces moving things
this way.  So there might as well be a conspiracy, as the
end effect on us is the same.


I think that any compromise with government censorship is a bad idea.
All we'd do is give them a little more while on the way towards the
inevitable.  If we don't give them all the censorship power they
want they'd just take it anyhow.  Better to hold out as well as
we can while we can.


-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
 Fuck Exon and the Communications "Decency" Act!  US off the Internet now!
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