the supply of kiddie prawns, culture, and american pinhead arrogance
You're both correct, but you don't mention one point which you both surely know: the net spans all kinds of cultures. Including those where erotic pictures of post-pubescent (but under the US's age of consent) people are legal. And those (admittedly exotic and 'primitive', but existant) cultures that totally fuck with US norms, e.g., the grandfather teaches his granddaughter about sex by doing it, and women get married at 15. So even if you have a police camera in every room in America (BTW, a reasonable definition of 'police state') you can't do much about the rest of the world. (Cruise missiles are so much more expensive than digital cameras) The major issue is that bits (even bits recording a true crime) should not be considered actionable ---whether kiddie porn, nazi songs, recipes for fun, stories of veillless women voting & driving cars by themselves, whatever. In my lil' noggin (not speaking for the Movement (tm)), one cypherpunk (tm) ethic is that sticks and stones (and the occasional govt informer) will break your bones, but bits will never hurt you. A post-internet corollary is that somewhere someone will offend you, and you need to get used to it. (Those of us who have allowed ourselves to review popular media are already used to the chronic offense.) Sorry to state the obvious, its for our federal observers. At 12:17 AM 4/12/01 +0300, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:
If anyone thinks the dissemination and viewing of zero-cost child porn
made possible by digital photography and the Internet involves only "pedophiles", each of whom is slowing working their way up to victim number 300, they need to unplug the Sex Abuse Agenda from their sphincter, and grab a clue.
Especially so since, in the absence of law enforcement interference, a limited online supply can serve a huge body of viewers. This makes the problem impossible to solve on the demand side. The rational response would be to go back to plain old police work for those few producers that actually harm kids, treat the cases without explicit regard for the sexual nature of the deeds (if there is physical violence, that's punishable quite without specialized KP statutes), and let the images stay online to satisfy what demand there is. In fact it might not be a bad idea to saturate the market by putting the stuff in the public domain and allocating some of the considerable law enforcement anti-KP budgets to run the servers. At least th
At 7:46 PM -0700 4/11/01, Publius Q. Citizen wrote:
You're both correct, but you don't mention one point which you both surely know: the net spans all kinds of cultures. Including those where
........[examples of thoughtcrime elided]
In my lil' noggin (not speaking for the Movement (tm)), one cypherpunk (tm) ethic is that sticks and stones (and the occasional govt informer) will break your bones, but bits will never hurt you. A post-internet corollary is that somewhere someone will offend you, and you need to get used to it. (Those of us who have allowed ourselves to review popular media are already used to the chronic offense.)
Sorry to state the obvious, its for our federal observers.
Yep, all obvious stuff. I hope, though, that our list does not degenerate to the point of attempting to convince the Feds who are monitoring us of our views. That's a hopeless task. For one thing, they're not even participating in the debate--they are merely looking for juicy one-off remarks they can introduce in court. For another, if they didn't absorb the message when they were young, by reading Orwell or Rand or Heinlein or whatever, and they chose to be come public persecutors of thoughtcrime, then a few essays here and there will not make any conceivable difference. As Declan said, the list has now become a training ground for local prosecutors trying to get fools to tell them "how to make bombz" and for Feds looking to puff up their resumes by finding evidence of thoughtcrime. And probably some of the Feds are busily notifying their chain of command that they have accomplished their Prime Objective: "We have squelched debate on a terrorist list. We have frightened people into not talking to the subversive so-called journalists like Declan McCullagh, Adam Chiralsky, and others. And we have infiltrated unacceptable political parties like the Libertarian Party. Long live the State, long live the Two Party System!" In the form the list has been in for the past decade, they have won. Time for Plan C. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tim wrote:
I hope, though, that our list does not degenerate to the point of attempting to convince the Feds who are monitoring us of our views.
I'm reminded of something from the bad old days of the Soviet Union. Refuseniks and other protestors in Red Square used to earnestly plead their case to the KGB agents as they were being arrested. It was as though the logic, morality, humanity or whatever of their arguments would somehow penetrate the conscience of the thugs who were hauling them in. It didn't. It won't be any more effective on the Cypherpunks list either. Any Federales who might still have some shred of decency, respect for the Bill of Rights, or even just a sense of fairness, are way outnumbered by immoral careerist who have no compunctions about cheating, lying and destroying innocent lives on their way to retirement and a fat government pension. The three most important things good people can do are: * "Write code"--for real and metaphorically. * Refuse to take the bait when the Federales troll. * Realize and embrace your moral superiority to the thugs of the world. S a n d y
Tim May Wrote:
Yep, all obvious stuff.
...
Time for Plan C.
Obvious too that if Jim Bell were a nym, there would be no one to send to prison. Now that the standard for sending someone away for five years is nothing more than a statement by some jackbooted thug that they feel "harrassed," and today's exercise of ones Constitutional Rights is tomorrow's evidence for the prosecution, anonymity just became a whole lot more important. Amerika has finally reached the favorite plateau of police states mascarading as democracies, that of having enough vague and ambiguous laws to make everyone guilty of something, with jury Sheeple being viscerally incapable of taking a citizen's side against the government. I am reminded of the old law school demonstration of having a black student, and a white student holding a banana, run into a classroom, briefly struggle, and run out. When asked what they saw, students will swear the banana was a gun, that the black guy was the one holding it, that the black guy attacked the white guy, and make numerous other attempts to forcefit the brief flashes of what they saw into the world view fed them by the media and the public school system. When shown a drawing of a uniformed cop subduing an ordinary-appearing citizen, even a six year old will describe it as "the policeman fighting with the 'bad guy.'" When the state holds up four fingers, and asks the Sheeple what they see, the Sheeple truly see five fingers. The Sheeple realize how fruitless it is to resist. The Sheeple look forward to the bullet. The Sheeple not only obey Big Brother, they LOVE Big Brother too. "Proles and animals are free." -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
"Sandy Sandfort" <sandfort@mindspring.com> wrote:
* Realize and embrace your moral superiority to the thugs of the world.
S a n d y
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire Regards, Matt- ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, 2175 Bayfield Drive, Columbus, OH 43229 (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************
participants (5)
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Eric Cordian -
Matthew Gaylor -
Publius Q. Citizen -
Sandy Sandfort -
Tim May