--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: oldbear@pop.tiac.net Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 15:09:58 -0500 To: Digital Commerce Society of Boston <dcsb@ai.mit.edu> From: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com> Subject: Peter Huber on the Orwellian Falacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: bounce-dcsb@ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com> HIGH-TECH'S LIBERATING EFFECT As the Internet makes inroads into information-restrictive nations, such as China, efforts to limit access to only "desirable" ideas are doomed to failure, say experts. "The complaint one hears against the Internet isn't that there is too little speech," says Manhattan Institute analyst Peter Huber. "Instead, the argument is that there is too much hateful or pornographic speech. Stalin manipulated the past, altering photos and just wiping people and events out of the historical record. But today, documents and photos get downloaded and stored in files all over the world. You can make corrupt copies, false copies, but you can't erase real copies now." Huber, author of the book "Orwell's Revenge," applauds the move by industry to make encryption products widely available: "It means that we can now create a zone of privacy that the government can't penetrate. That's the exact opposite of what Orwell through would happen." source: Investor's Business Daily December 30, 1997 as summarized by Edupage For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>