At 6:03 PM 2/17/96, Michael Peponis wrote:
If I remember correctly, are not American Indian reservations considered qusi-sovergin states under the law?
If this is true, what would stop me from negotiating with some tribe to establish an ISP on the reservation and then placing whatever material I wanted on that site without fear of reprisals from the US goverment.
After all, if they are a soveign state, decency is covered by whatever laws they have, if any, not the CDA.
If this is true, the Indians get the benift of having state-of-the-art telecommunications in thier communities, plus residual job creation, and everyone else gets freedom of speech.
"Bingo." Actually, not. Despite the Indian bingo parlors, look at what is lacking in this model: brothels, money-laundering banks, hash parlors, etc. (Not that there aren't whorehouses operating semi-openly on Indian lands, as elsewhere, just that the fiction that Indian reservations are quasi-sovereign is just that, a fiction. Recall the case of Native American uses of peyote.) Of course, this fiction of sovereignty has been useful for the intelligence community when they wanted it: Wackenhut and related CIA companies used the Cabazon Band of Indians lands near Indio, California to develop products that are illegal to develop in the nominal United States...despite being less than a mile from the main freeway linking LA and Palm Springs. And I was told that certain microwave (Long Lines?) lines were deliberately routed through Indian reservations, allowing NSA-GCHQ monitoring without violating the "no domestic interception" fiction. So, it might be possible to eventually push through an exemption to the CDA that is somewhat analogous to the way some Indian reservations can have gambling facilities that are otherwise forbidden, but I expect the court battle would be a long one, and would need big money to pursue. (Gambling got pushed through for obvious financial reasons, and perhaps because of some judicious payoffs to local officials, courts, etc. Yet another convenient fiction.) --Tim May 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."