On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:

At 09:07 PM 1/1/96 -0500, David Mandl wrote:

...

I agree. It's not a good idea to assume that there's going to be some kind of widespread opposition movement when the big Net Crackdown comes. Most people will either obey the law, be unaffected by it, or violate it in very insignificant ways ("net jaywalking"). There's strength in numbers, but I just don't think the numbers will be there.

--Dave.

During Prohibition, consumption of illegal booze increased steadily during the whole period. Hard liquor consumption was actually higher at the end of Prohibition than it had been before Prohibition.

DCF

The number of people who drank booze when Prohibition began dwarfs the number of people who want access to "controlled" information on the net today. Most people still don't even understand what the net is. They're two completely different situations. Also, the powers that be have much better reasons for killing the net than they had for banning booze. Also, access to the net for Joe Average is still largely limited to authoritarian giants like AOL (which forwards people's mail to the FBI) and CompuServe (which bans hundreds of newsgroups). Maybe these companies will eventually be knocked out by small libertarian-minded ISPs, maybe not. --D. -- David Mandl Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. Phone: (212) 272-3888 Email: dmandl@bear.com -- ******************************************************************************* Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or agreement or any information about any transaction, customer account or account activity contained in this communication. *******************************************************************************