At 2:28 AM 2/3/96, Mike Duvos wrote:
On 2 Feb 1996 19:02:29 -0500, you wrote:
I think the whole endeavor was a resounding success, and I wish I had been on the ball enough to participate in it.
[deletia]
The important thing is that Rich, Declan, Futplex, and anyone else participating showed the world that censorship on the internet, if not impossible, is at least a good deal more dificult then people thought.
Before poo-pooing Tim, declaring victory, and returning home, it should be noted that German prosecutors today added AOL to the list of entities they wish to charge with "inciting hatred."
UMASS will of course test the political waters before taking any action, but we may yet see the gonads of Futplex hanging from one of the upper floors of the Graduate Research Center. :)
Time will tell whether we have won this war, or have simply encountered a lull after the first onslought by the enemy.
Meaning no disrespect to any of my colleagues here, but is there now some sense that "we won"? I don't see it this way. And the Germans don't seem to think they lost. Let's look at where this issue is. The UMass admins yanked the Zundelsite info, Declan has voluntarily withdrawn his ZS info, Germany is accelerating its threats against CS, AOL, etc., and of course the Communications Decency Act is about to be signed into law. Maybe I'm not seeing the Boston-area papers, and their spin on things, but it doesn't seem to me that an anti-censorship interpretation is getting a lot of press. What I am sensing is just the opposite, that a bunch of babykilling Nazis bent on taking over the Internet just had their main Propaganda Center at UMass shut down by the forces of light. This is the spin on the story I'm sensing. (Hate to say it, but the nuances of free speech are lost on most people. To most of them, putting Holocaust denial information on a site is ipso facto proof of genocidal racism. I wouldn't be surprised to see the various groups at UMass foaming at the mouth next week in the campus newspaper to get the "notorious racist" Lewis McCarthy sanctioned or thrown out. University administrators will try to cool things off, but will keep feeling the pressures from various "aggreived" groups until something just has to be done. I've seen this many times at Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and elsewhere.) Here's to hoping Rich's site remains up. --Tim Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."