Censorship: In the past, whenever a new medium came into play, the new medium was subjected to extraordinarily restrictive censorship, while censorship was radically relaxed, or abandoned altogether, on the old media. Thus when the talkies came in, censorship on books was relaxed. When TV came in censorship on movies was relaxed. I conjecture that this represents the power of vested interests, and the relative weakness of new interests. Now if this pattern is going to be repeated, we would expect the FTC to attempt to utterly strangle the internet in a straightjacket, on behalf of the television interests that have largely captured the FTC. Note that current proposed legislation, legislation containing Exxon's severe censorship rules, gives the FTC ownership of the internet. They may claim to own it. Let us see them try. Censorship on television is now much tighter than it used to be: Expect a radical relaxation when internet use starts to cut into television time. Remember the original Star Treck: Every episode would have a fistfight, a gunfight, a space battle between starships with really cheap cheesy special effects, Captain Kirk would dip his wick (off screen) in a new exotic alien female, and he would defy orders, or Starfleet regulations, and most regularly and spectacularly, he would violate the prime directive. In most episodes a redcoat or two would be killed in a completely senseless and unnecessary manner, illustrating the cold indifference of the universe, or the casual evil of sentient beings. Whenever they introduced a new character with a red coat, you knew that violent death was on tonight's menu. Now consider the bland successor show "Star Treck the Next Generation": In a bow to political correctness they changed the words from "To boldly go where no man has gone before" to "To boldly go where no one has gone before". The "Next Generation" universe is socialist, and socialism is boring. Worse still, on "Next Generation" socialism actually works, and if there is anything even more boring that actual real life socialism, it is socialism that works because everyone cares about each other and they are all such very nice people. Well it came to pass that our TV executives woke up to the fact that there was something missing from the boring "Next Generation" universe, so they shift their plots to less perfect places. In an upcoming science fiction series "Osiris" the story universe has social collapse and reversion to barbarism, the exact opposite of the sickeningly perfect "Next Generation" universe. A logical continuation of the gimmick they pulled in "Deep Space Nine" in order to get the story out from the deadly grip of socialism. So far so good. But guess what? Nobody in the "Osiris" story suffers violent death, and the bad guys reproduce asexually. Asexually!! What would Captain Kirk do? Probably sodomy. And now let us consider the cartoons. Remember Yosemite Sam with his fiery temper and his two six guns? Pow! Blam! Well guess what? In today's cartoons, Yosemite Sam has no guns! Poor Captain Kirk. Poor Yosemite Sam. Under these circumstances we should expect a certain amount of friction around such newsgroups as alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children, alt.conspiracy, alt.sex.bestiality.barney, alt.nationalism.white, and so forth. You will notice that political censorship goes hand in hand with censorship of sex and violence: Not only does Captain Whazisname of the "Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" refrain from spreading his semen indiscriminately across the galaxy and refrain from beating people up man on man, he also obeys orders and regulations and never says anything that would be controversial in his universe or ours. They had to make Captain Whazisname of "Deep Space Nine" black instead of the white Captain Whazisname in "Next Generation" and young instead of old, because otherwise nobody would have noticed that he was supposed to be different person, played by a different actor. Typical politically correct diversity: Different colors, but only one voice. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com