From: Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 20:58:29 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
Message-ID: <199701230505.XAA08921@einstein>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:08:41 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>
> Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
> 
> On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> > 'We' shouldn't, it is their own country and it is up to their populace to
> > stop it. Do you really want Singapore or China having a say in how we run
> > our web? I certainly don't, and won't support any move to force any
> > particular view on them.
> 
> I don't want China or Singapore to have a say in how the web is run which is

There is no 'the web'. I run a Internet site which is connected 24 hours a
day at my expence which contains a web site. If you think that is 'your' web
then drag your ass to Austin, TX. and start paying the $600 of bills each month
for 'your' web. Quit thinking that what you have and want is what everyone
else has or wants. Grow up. The goal is to keep THEM from bothering YOU, not
the otherway around, they will take care of that using the same tools and
techniques you do.

> exactly why I would support any effort to make their filtering systems useless.
> What I put on my web page is my business and I can change the location of the

And you don't have a right to tell them what to do with their computers or
their citizens.

> URL as many times as I want and try to make it as difficult as possible to
> filter it.  These countries have no say in whether or not I can do this.  If

And you should have no say in what they do with their resources.

> they want to censor their Internet feed, that's their problem and I'm under no
> obligation to make it easy for them.

And their under no obligation to let you run around and force your views on
them anymore than you would accept that sort of behaviour from them.

Wake up, what goes around, comes around.

> If it's forced upon the people, it's not a choice.

Which people? Who is doing the forcing? If Singapore citizens are content to
let Singapore officials filter their newsfeeds or whatever that is
Singapores business, not yours. It acts as a concrete real-world object
model on how NOT to do it here, nothing else. Whether you like it or not
both people and governments have a fundamental right to make mistakes. It
comes with the territory. Loose this fantasy you have that there is one way
to run the world, there isn't. People are entirely too diverse for any
single view to rule for any length of appreciable time irrespective of how
much force might be used to promulgate it.

>  Ultimately, the people can
> abolish the government if it becomes tyrannical, but not without a lot of lives
> being lost.  I'd much rather try to make sure that people in these countries
> have free access to information than watch people getting crushed by tanks.

Who made you responsible for them? If you are responsible for them then you
are responsible for me? Not in your wildest wet dream junior. You simply
aren't that important in the scheme of things.

You can't have one without the other. The tree of liberty has to be watered
with blood. Your position is that as long as it isn't your blood then it is
ok. Other people have the same right. Personaly, I don't like the idea of
other people deciding that it is time to spill my blood to water their tree.
The point of the exercise, left up to the student to resolve, is to avoid
this entire scenario, not shift the blame to some other entity.

> > You don't like it, don't live there and don't try to
> > call there. You or I have no more right to be on a Chinese or Singapore
> > Internet than they have in coming into yours or my home without an
> > invitation.
> 
> These countries want the benefits of being connected to the Internet without
> the burdens of the citizens having free access to information.  It just doesn't
> work that way. 

It works whatever way the people doing it want it to run.

Let me say it again,

GOVERNMENTS ARE PEOPLE MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT PEOPLE, INCLUDING THEMSELVES,
WHICH THEY BELIEVE ARE IN THEIR BEST INTEREST. IF IT DOESN'T FIT WITH YOUR
PARTICULAR IMAGE OF WHAT 'BEST INTEREST' IS, TOUGH SHIT.

> They can pull the plug if they want.  If they don't, then they
> have no right to complain about how people are smuggling subversive information
> into their respective countries.

Then we have no right to complain about Columbian drug cartels, Russian
contraband nuclear weapons, sarin nerve gas promulaged by Japanese religious
zealots, etc.

Let me say this again,

A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF ALL LIVING BEINGS IS TO PROTECT THEMSELVES THE BEST
WAY THEY SEE FIT AGAINST A PERCEIVED THREAT TO THEIR CONTINUED EXISTANCE. IT
MAKES NO DIFFERENCE IN THE SHORT TERM IF THAT THREAT IS REAL OR NOT.

>  If the information was "uninvited", then
> nobody would be downloading it or accessing it anyway.

This is silly and completely misleading.

> Countries that want to censor their internet connections have the choice of
> either facing extreme economic difficulties as a result of not being connected
> to the Internet, or giving their people access to information that the
> government doesn't want these people to access.  Either way, it will force
> these countries to change in some way.  I think most of them will eventually
> settle for the latter choice.  Allowing these countries to censor their
> connections will result in violence that could otherwise be avoided.

Really? Where is your object model? Seems like we get in a situation where
we are using violence against people with the reason being we are protecting
them against violence.

Now THAT sounds like some sort of neo-Nazi bullshit. You should apply for
work at the DEA, you would pass their psych screens with flying colors.

I have three quotes you might do well to ponder while you plan your next
over-throw...


                       "Study nature, not books"

                                  Louis Agassiz


           "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full
            of passionate intensity."

                                                 Yeats

                              "You are
                               What you do
                               When it counts"

                                      The Masao



                                                    Jim Choate
                                                    CyberTects
                                                    ravage@ssz.com