From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 06:52:09 -0800 (PST)
To: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>
Subject: Re: Censorship on cypherpunks
In-Reply-To: <199611042347.RAA08151@smoke.suba.com>
Message-ID: <3280A5D9.35E8@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


snow wrote:
> > > It's only authoritarianism if the government is involved.
> > > Clearly, the government isn't involved in this matter.

[snippo]

> The closest anology I can find in real life would be a bar, were people
> any person (well, any person old enough, but we'll ignore that) is allowed
> to wander in, order a drink, watch TV, shout at the screen ocassionally
> eat the pretzels and etc. Off in the corner you have a drunk dancing off
> time to the noise on the jukebox, but most of the patrons can ignore him.
> Vulis is sitting square in the middle of the bar, sloshed to the gills
> throwing pretzels and peanuts at both fans of the opposing team, and
> fans of his team. Screaming at the top of his lungs about the quarterback
> for a totally different team fumbling the ball in the 1970 world series.

[snip, snip]

A vastly more accurate analogy is that the "Doctor" is not in fact inside of the bar,
as none of the cypherpunks are inside of anyone's home but their own.  Vulis is some-
where else, sending his brand of beer to the bar in competition with a number of
other "vendors".  Customers and vendors alike complain that Vulis' bottles have
offensive portraits on them, possibly famous sports figures in an unflattering light.

So the bar owner bans Vulis' beer, but he sends it in anyway through a third party,
and several patrons discover that they can easily remove the outer label from the
bottle and see the original portraits.

There are similarities to Prohibition here.

Now the bar owner, being the owner, can throw out anyone he wants to anytime, and he
gets away with this with little or no trouble lawsuit-wise, since the courts are much
more lenient with owners of bars and rock-n-roll venues that with, say, Denny's
Restaurants.

As I've said before, all forums on the net can be arranged at some point in the future
to be "privately" owned, and the question is, can there be a free speech forum where
you won't be arbitrarily banned?