Recently there have been articles & letters in the local gay press complaining about Canadian Customs engaging in censorship by preventing gay publications from entering Canada. Seems to me this is an ideal case for setting up a special-purpose private encrypted net, and gaining a vocal constituency in our favor.
Queer people are used to codes and semiotic communication, we are pretty good at steganographic social posturing too. On ething I've found though is a definite trend not to volunteer as guinea pigs for social agendas beyond attaining the basic rights now denied us. Oh, and I'm not so sure that a vocal queer constituency is all that helpfull these days :-)
What I have in mind would be to consult with various publishers in the gay community, toward the end of setting up offices in Vancouver and Toronto which would receive encrypted files from the US which could then be reassembled into printed form for regular press production and distribution within Canada: thereby entirely bypassing Customs and its censorship.
As I understand it the few Gay-Lesbian bookstores who are commited to the cause just drive over the border to pick up their shipments, and then smuggle them back. besides introducing a doubling effect on the physical production process would probably not be worth the expense for that market when simpler methods suffice.
I'm guessing that they'll probably want to use an authorised/licensed system such as ViaCrypt, and wonder whether that can handle magazine and book production type files, which may be text and/or graphics, full color, layout details, and so on.
This could be like waving a red flag in the face of a psychotic bull. Giving the Gummint an excuse to claim probable cause due to contraband sexually explicit material just doesn't sound like a good idea to me?
If anyone out there is interested in helping with this; preferably if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, email gg@well.sf.ca.us.
There are plenty of issues regarding abuse of this network by psychopathic e-terrorist, most of 'em directly analogous to this lists current controversial bad-boy. I for one, would much rather see some attention to methods of dealing with that! LUX ./. owen