Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com> writes:
Adam writes:
The problem with censorship or moderation is that it waters down the absolutism of free speech. Free speech in electronic media, with cypherpunks type I, and type II remailers, is the closest thing to truly free speech yet.
I agree and disagree. Moderation often *increases* the value of speech. The Wall Street Journal, or Time Magazine, or the JAMA have strict policies regarding what information they print; these policies increase the publication's value.
Their policies impose the editors and owners biases on the publication. If people value their publication they buy it. The average quality of the articles is higher than a discussion group -- the authors spend longer writing the articles, and the best articles are selected by the editors. Unsuprising. The articles are probably biased towards the editors or owners politics.
Moderation is not necessarily censorship. Would you criticize the National Coalition Against Censorship for not including in their newsletter (to which I subscribe) off-topic rants by Jesse Helms?
A newsletter is not a discussion forum. Editorial control of a newsletter is not moderation of a discussion group. The cypherpunks list is a discussion forum. It's the electronic equivalent of people talking amongst themselves about crypto issues in free time at CFP, or a crypto conference.
What Vulis and the rest (whom I killfiled long ago) have done is polluted a common resource, making it unusable for the rest. It's the tragedy of the commons. When all can speak without limit in a public forum, the drunken boor can shout everyone else down.
Dimitri's opinions aren't threatening anything. If you aren't interested in what he says don't read his articles. If you disagree with what he says, argue against it. Subscribe to or start filtering services (rating services) reflecting your views. Personally I think something useful could be done with a content digested form of cypherpunks with ratings, and pointers to the actual posts. Things like: + a thread on the experiment moderation, discussion from John Gilmore, Tim May, and others (hypertext ref) + series of latest ascii art and insults + new crypto developments in article forwarded by JYA +-+ discussion of new crypto developments, and Lucky offers a bet Would take a fair amount of effort from someone to produce a running commentry of cypherpunks discussions to provide a higher level index in to cypherpunks. The price of unconditional free speech is that people will say things which you personally don't agree with, however libertarian you are. The only thing to do is to ignore stuff you don't like, or argue against it, if you say, no this is too crap, or too worthless, then you've started on the slippery slope. It is the same principle that protects your own freedom of expression. It is worth bearing in mind that cypherpunks themselves are part of a minority (the population of people who understand what encryption is and implies, and know what governments are proposing enough to form an opinion on whether crypto should be regulated or not). Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`