From: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 18:04:20 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
Message-ID: <199701290204.UAA06554@einstein>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 22:12:36 -0500
> From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
> 
> Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com> wrote in article <5cg99p$7a@life.ai.mit.edu>...
> 
> The network is largely an intellectual creation. The hardware is
> relatively unimportant, it can always be replaced.

Try doing it without the hardware and software. There is a distinction, you
apparently don't make, between the content and the methodology of
distribution. Without the methodology there is no content. Ideas are cheap,
distributing and trying them out (ie great social experiments) is
expensive. This is why it is absolutely critical in a democratic society
that those who own the means of distribution be left to their own means with
minimal regulation based on the ideal 'if their actions do not harm another
or their property without their prior consent' it isn't anyones business
what they are doing with their distribution mechanisms.

Whether you like it or not, each and every one of us have a responsibility
to every other person on the planet. That responsibility is to ensure that
our goals and desires don't infringe their goals and desires without their
prior consent, this is a fundamenal responsibility of government. As hard
as it is for many social scientist to accept privacy is a fundamental
requirement for a equitable government. I express this simply by,
"Democracy works not because of compromise but rather the refusal to
 compromise."

> If you start from such a state and property centered ideology perhaps.
> I'm a philosophical anarchist and I don't consider the state to have
> "rights" over its "subjects", nor do I believe in the pure ideology of
> property you do.

The 'state' is its subjects and the rules that are enacted to regulate their
behaviour. In case it hasn't occured to you, even the regulators are
subjects, and in the case of clearly oppressive societies victims as much as
those they subjugate. It isn't some etherial entity. Only you, and those that
proscribe to your views, are claiming that states are some homogenous (or
should be) set of rules and actions.

The way you speak of 'state' and 'citizen' implies some clearly observable
demarcation, it don't exist.

This is the problem with EVERY form of government except a democracy, it
assumes that people are cogs in a machine. If it satisfies one it will
satisfy all. A democracy recognizes this difference in what people value
and the goals they desire as a fundamental distinction (ie. life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness) worth protecting. I would suggest you read the
9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution of the US and consider long and
hard the ramifications of the (currently unenforced) limitations of
government authority. Even European governments might learn something.

> Its worth noting that the origin of property is theft. In the case of the
> controllers of China literally so since they stole most of their "property"
> from the previous rulers.

Malarky. The origin of property is at least 300,000 years old, potentialy
over a Million, and much older than China could ever hope to claim and most
definitely NOT based on any concept of government. Property comes from small
family clans of people who chose to move from a hunter-gather society to one
of agriculture. To do that means that you have to lay out fields or other
areas for cultivation. Initialy these groups moved around because the fields
would go fallow. At some point some bright folks, either by accident or
intentional experimentation (probably both), found that rotating crops would
allow them to stay in one place. This allowed families to grow. In very
fertile areas this caused population explosions as individual clans grew and
began to interact with other local clans. At some critical size, undetermined
as best as I can determine, this allows specialization of effort. This
specialization of effort is what leads to governments as we recognize them.

When property was 'invented' there were no rulers because there was no
larger human organization than a familial tribe. I personaly believe that
the concept of 'property' is a fundamental aspect of human psychology and
not any structures they might impliment to express that need. I am as
certain as it is possible to be that a Cro-magnon cave man felt that his
throwing stick was 'his'. If not why did they bury their dead with flowers
and other objects that apparently belonged to the person in life? It sounds
like, by extrapolation, that your assertion is that they had government in
the modern sense because of this. An assertion I find laughable at best.

> I believe that the relationship between a state and individual is
> a much more complex one than the slavish subjection model
> you propose. In this I am in agreement with practically every
> philosopher since Locke.

But I don't propose a slavish subject model, you keep trying to make it seem
like that is what I am proposing. Let me make it clear, I utterly reject ANY
model that makes distinctions between those who rule and those who are
ruled.

> It is true that there is the convenience of the state as agency but
> the question is on whose behalf that agency is exercised. 

Nobodies. The state is a means to regulate resources and commerce, anything
else is a misunderstanding of what a state is.

> I see no reason why I should not meddle in the affairs of states
> I'm not a 'subject" of. 

Then don't bitch when they meddle in your affairs. I am shure Saddam Hussein
(who I personaly believe is a piece of shit) will find it reassuring that
you won't raise a complaint next time he decides some place in Europe would
be a nice place to hang out with his armies.

> They are allowed

Allowed, hell. They pay for the privilege just like everyone else. Despite
what you might believe the Internet is not a right or something anyone has a
right to.

> to connect their machinery to the Internet so long 
> as they are prepared to accept the Internet's ethic.

There is no Internet ethic just as there is no community standard. It is a
convenient concept for intellectuals to pass off utterly senseless theories
and explanations, and in many cases justify subjugation and regulation for
no other reason than their own emotional and economic comfort.

> As a citizen of Europe I disagree. I believe that the narrow and
> parochial attitude of the French province breaches undertakings in the
> Treaty of Rome and under the European declaration of human rights.

Absolutely. The difference in our approaches is that you feel that you have
found a solution that satisfies you and therefore it should satisfy
everyone. With this I disagree completely. People are simply too diverse to
lump into the categories that you would like. If the French have a model
that won't work, let them figure it out on their own.

> France is not a sovereign state and does not have the right to
> pass laws that infringe on the rights granted to European citizens
> as a whole.

I suspect most French people would have something contrary to say about
that.

                                                   Jim Choate
                                                   CyberTects
                                                   ravage@ssz.com