Vox Populi & Governments

[Greg Broiles]

At 09:09 AM 3/13/2001 -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>Julf was forced to roll over to the scientologists.
>
>Countless ISP's who've allowed "anonymous" customers to put up web sites
>have been forced to roll over when some LEA put kid porn up on their
>servers.

These examples illustrate that perfection eludes us - but they don't mean 
that it's not possible for more people to have more freedom more often, 
especially if they're motivated to seek it. Julf did a lot of good for a 
lot of people before he shut down, so I think penet.fi belongs in the 
history books as a net victory for the forces of freedom.

There are still places where you can buy the medicines and chemicals you 
believe you need to maintain optimum health without getting permission from 
a nanny-doctor-HMO. There are still places where you can buy violence tools 
to protect yourself from people who intend harm to you or your family or 
your property. There are still places where you can buy and sell books and 
talk with others without fear of punishment. There are still places where 
you can worship (or not) as you choose without interference. There are 
still places you can live where your neighbors aren't in a hurry to 
supervise or surveil you or decide where you can hang up your laundry.

No, you can't stand naked in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge high on 
PCP proselytizing for a child-porn church while waving a full-auto firearm. 
Well, not without interference by others. And most of us don't really want 
that anyway (except when we're told we can't have it). You can still get a 
lot done and have a pretty good life despite the unavailability of perfect 
freedom (or anything else perfect, for that matter.)

And people are building things (like GNU/Linux and the *BSD's and PGP/GPG, 
Freenet, and Mojo Nation -- and remailers, almost 10 years ago now) that do 
incrementally increase the effective available freedom in the world - 
again, they all fall short of perfection, but that's not so bad. We're 
moving closer.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at netbox.com
"Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler