On Thu, 9 Feb 1995, Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl wrote:
prosecutins will stick. Arrests and prosecutions will take a financial toll on those targetted, and will create a chillinf effect in the online community, meaning sysops and BBS operators will start policing themselves too severely in an effort to avoid politcial or legal scrutiny.
Exactly. It's already happening. I've noticed on local BBS's they are afraid of conversation about controversial subjects or files having to do with things like do-it-yourself-birth control methods, drug legalization, or crypto... some of the networks like RIME are also jittery about certain topics like crypto or how telephones work.
Which might the time is ripe for a sort of user-to-user and sysop-to-sysop outreach effort, an attempt to create a sort of solidarity amongst users of the various extant networks to stand together in supporting the free exchange of information.
broadcast paradigm, while the online world operates within the network paradigm. There are no hours in which it is safe to broadcast because there is no "broadcast" in the tradition sense.
Yes, I was discussing broadcasting. Scary thought is that because networks are different they will try to outright ban everything.
I wonder though sometimes if it's even occurred to lawmakers that they can't apply the safe harbor notion for indency to computer networks. - dog