At 17:55 29/08/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:

Personally, if this crackdown in Singapore happens, I intend to post various anti-Singapore and anti-Lee Kwan Yew & Sons screeds to various newsgroups that Singaporans might like to read. Then, if the Yew Dynasty decides to pull the plug, it'll be to more and more groups.

There are two sides to this: after all, it is the Singaporeans who finally have to sort out this problem with their government, and denying them the Usenet platform for discussion would only hinder that process. Then again, inappropriate postings are the bane of the Internet: the consensus on which the Net functions relies heavily on people not posting inappropriately. Of course, posting anti LKY stuff on a Singapore newsgroup might be perfectly appropriate -- it is the "more and more groups" part I am worried about. I quite frankly disapprove of the mail-bomb suggestions made on the list. Accessing the Internet is hard enough without these additional roadblocks. Mail-bombing one person on a server punishes everybody else on that server too. We need to work with the people in Singapore on this, not make enemies of them. I'm glad that the situation in Singapore is attracting much attention on this list, and that people want to do something about it. China is seriously interested in the experiment, and India will be too: the law here holds the ISPs responsible for ensuring that nothing objectionable and obscene is carried by them, and what simpler way to comply than to simply use the Singapore proxy. Right now, the law isn't being enforced, but soon some headline-seeking politician will point out this out, and the problem will be with us. So, it is important to nip the Singapore experiment in the bud. However, I think that the constructive approach, one which furthers the Net, "routes around", would work better. For instance, I'd love to see some smart venture capitalist fund a project that makes use of surplus, off-peak bandwidth on a transponder on any of the myriad satellites floating over Asia to download Web pages on request. Ideally, I should be able to send via pgp and anonymous remailer a request for a page, which would soon come beamed down unencrypted via satellite. No more waiting hours for the latest version of Netscape to download, and then restarting from scratch every time the line drops. Also, goodbye censorship. Even if the government decided to cut off Internet access completely, I'd still be able to receive what others such as Tim think might be of interest to me. How would this generate revenue? Well, there could be advertising appended to select pages, for instance. In any case, with so much uncertainity about how commerce on the net will work, and in good Internet tradition a la Netscape, it would probably be smarter to start with a free service, and figure out later how to make money from it, once it becomes popular. In a few years, satellite-based Internet access will become widespread and affordable. However, the next few years are really crucial. Governments are still trying to figure out how to deal with the Net, frame legislation, etc. This would be a good time to present them with a fait accompli. Hong Kong will revert to China next year. What better gift to the nervous freedom fighters there, than to help them with their Internet access? Maybe Hong Kong will take over China, instead of the other way around... I remember in Sculley's book "Odyssey: from Pepsi to Apple" he mentions how Steve Jobs finally convinced him to join Apple by asking if he wanted to sell sugared water for the rest of his life, or would he rather change the world. The Internet presents opportunities like that to far more people, and this, IMHO, is one of them: any would-be Sculleys out there? Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta@cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta@cerfnet.com for public key