On Sun, 14 Jan 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:
At 04:14 PM 1/14/96 +0000, attila wrote:
an excellent statement, sameer. many of our population around the world will voice these sentiments, but how many will care to implement in the face of an onslaught by pressure groups, government, self- serving news services, etc?
Of the 7000+ ISPs on Earth, more than 1000. More than enough.
To play Devil's Advocate here, I don't think this is as big a deal as either side is making it out to be. At least according to dgillmor's column in today's San Jose Mercury News, SW meant (or has "clarified" his statements to mean) that he favors only limited remedial (not prior) restraints on "hate speech" (whatever the hell that means) on Web pages that approach "publishing" quality and distribution. SW does not favor and in fact opposes censoring newsgroups and email. Throw that straw man away, and deal with these issues, as "clarified." Of course some ISPs with no backbone will, and already do, censor newsgroups, but this is not what SW is asking for (at least, not now). I don't think any media outlet should be forced to carry something it finds objectionable. Libertarian notions like freedom of association and the fact that freedom of the press belongs to the guy who owns the damn press come into play here. I very much applaud Sameer for his principles and hard work, but SW and the like have their own principles. They're not incompatible in a free society. I'd love it if the Christian Coalition would start an ISP (they already have a Web site and private local dialups for special staff), and control access however they wanted. I certainly wouldn't subscribe, but maybe my Dad would. Maybe then they'd start to understand the technical issues, and start leaving everyone else alone. To some extent, this has happened with CBN and Liberty University (Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell), which have marginalized themselves. -rich owner-win95netbugs@lists.stanford.edu ftp://ftp.stanford.edu/pub/mailing-lists/win95netbugs/ gopher://quixote.stanford.edu/1m/win95netbugs http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/win95netbugs/faq.html