At 12:56 PM 12/3/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:

And there are some who want "mislabelling" made a crime. Thus, if I claim that my site and my words are suitable for children, and someone (like Janet Reno) disagrees, I could be charged with "misrepresentation."

To pluck that string, I'm occasionally developing an essay which teaches kids about encryption.. building up to strong product-ciphers by exploring what you can do with iterating simple operations, and how they affect the data. At the end of the lesson they learn that giving this document to a foreign-born friend would make them ITAR criminals. Subversive online cypherpunk comic books? If I could draw. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig@otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu Information is a dense, colorless, odorless material readily transmitted across empty space and arbitrary boundaries by shaking charged particles.

At 12:56 -0700 12/3/97, Tim May wrote:

This is a wedge to demolish free speech, this "accuracy in labelling" business. Religions could be forced to "accurately label" their messages. Speech could be shut down while courts debate whether "misrepresentation" occurred. As the saying goes, "What is truth?"

[BTW, I recommend "Rationales and Rationalizations: Regulating the Electronic Media," which Bob edited. --Declan] =========== Subject: RE: FC: Mandatory vs. Voluntary Ratings, Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 7:24:07 -0500 From: "Robert L. Corn-Revere" <rcr@dc1.hhlaw.com> To: declan@well.com Excerpted from Robert Corn-Revere, Television Violence and the Limits of Voluntarism, 12 Yale Journal on Regulation 187 (Winter 1995): What if the government decided that the practice of religion was in some way contrary to the national interest? Suppose it concluded that religion is the opiate of the masses, that the "seventh day of rest" is a drag on the national economy, that TV evangelists bilk the uneducated of their meager earnings or that sectarian disputes contribute to social unrest and violence. An unlikely scenario, certainly, but what if it happened? Government officials could give speeches setting out these positions, to be sure, but could they do more? Would it be permissible, for example, for key lawmakers to threaten punitive legislation if the National Council of Churches did not announce plans to close up shop? Could top Administration officials stage back-room meetings with church leaders to jawbone for change that would be consistent with the new policy? And, at the end of all this, could the President appear in a Rose Garden ceremony with the heads of the major denominations and minor sects to announce that -- for the good of the nation -- the parties had voluntarily agreed to phase out religion in America? Of course this could never happen. Americans would never tolerate such a frontal assault on cherished First Amendment freedoms. But what of the third and fourth clauses of the First Amendment, which command that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press?"