From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 17:37:51 +0800
To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: This judge needs killing
In-Reply-To: <v0310280bb092291ceb73@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.971114182550.229A@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> >Another judge who has richly earned the death penalty.
> 
> This stifling of free speech, by both state and corporate interests, is a
> trend spreadingl like wildfire in the Western world.

Indeed, it is more and more the case that I see opinions in officials and 
members of the public that would be comically stupid, if they did not 
infringe so far on the rights of others. There are many reasons for this, 
mostly rooted in the controlled media, education as well, to choose any 
old example, the use in schools of the word "wrong" to mean "illegal" 
restricts the vocabulary of children in such a way as to encourage the 
synonymity of the two words, eg. If the govt. says it`s wrong it is wrong, 
regardless of the ethical arguments. Even seemingly intelligent adults 
fail to make the distinction between legality/illegality and right/wrong.
I may be ranting here, but whenever I get into discussion about this I am 
reminded of the stubborn behaviour of many acquaintances of mine, even some 
fairly intelligent family members who, given the chance, would restrict 
the speech of others to what was deemed "appropriate", this in turn leaves 
me ranting and frustrated because I cannot get away with putting these 
people up against a wall and taking the appropriate action with a .45,
which, I can assure you, would relieve a great deal of stress.

> Libel, slander, defamation, damage, incitement, sedition, and obscenity
> cases are squelching free speech. Publishers are held liable for the words
> of others, and even distributors are held liable.

Indeed, Libel is merely an official way of recovering losses incurred due 
to the stupidity of the general public, if I publish a defamatory and 
unpleasant story about Tim in a newsgroup, he can sue me because of the 
damage done to his reputation, of course, only stupid members of the 
public believe unfounded and referenceless (is that a real word???? ;-)) 
defamatory stories about others, and the more people that believe a 
story, the higher the compensation required, hence, it can be shown that 
the relative size of libel case settlements is inversely proportional to 
the average IQ of the general public ;-)....

> (Hey, if the Paladin case withstands Supreme Court scrutiny and his upheld,
> look for the Cypherpunks list node distributors to face criminal charges.)

Looks like it`s about time I set up majordomo on my other acct and 
started running a node, lets see what UK law has to say.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"