Re: Child Porn (was: Re: [freenet-chat] Thoughts about Freenet)

[David McNab]

From: "Sam Joseph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ... I still won't want to run a Freenet node for fear of being party to > distributing child porn, and I think there are a lot of people like me, > maybe not on this mailing list, but they are out there, and busily > not using Freenet nodes for just this reason. We see here the power of 'spin'. Such rhetoric could earn a nice fee from a news publisher as the basis of a sensational story. Most average people consuming such spin, especially if they haven't yet heard of Freenet, will immediately form the prejudice that Freenet and its supporters are dedicated to protecting child pornographers. Such could carve deep inroads towards global bans on all encrypted non-standard internet protocols, and lead to proliferation of police powers such as now exist in "Airstrip One" (UK, to those who haven't read 1984). This spin is powerfully effective because it triggers such strong emotional reaction as to completely eliminate the sense that there may be another side to the story. For the record, child abuse in any form pisses me off, to say the least. I work my ass off in dealing with its victims, and patiently and lovingly working to help them untangle their painful tormented realities and regain and revitalise their humanity. So what's the other side? Is there another side? Of course there is! Consider the tens and hundreds of thousands of people who were and are butchered each year under totalitarian dictators such as Saddam, Milosevec, Tito, Suharto et al. Think of the countless masses in Tibet who are routinely tortured and executed by the Chinese. Think of how much suffering could have been avoided if Freenet had been functional, say, since the first explosion of the Internet circa 1995. Especially Freenet with an optional 'stealth' mode - steganography via 'legitimate' traffic. For instance, a Milosevec aide could have worked with NATO to bring down that butcher faster. That someone can even suggest that a human being lacks the right to communicate and express freely, and choose his/her level of identity disclosure, troubles me. Such attitude is a vital prerequisite to such totalitarianism mentioned above. A greater danger in such an attitude is the premiss that human beings are inherently flawed and need outside regulation. Children who are repeatedly fed such a line act it out as a self-fulfilling prophecy. *That* is also child abuse. The vicious cycle of crime and punishment ensues. To me, the crime is not that Freenet is advancing towards mass usage, the crime is that the mainstream community have been so slow to come in and support the project - whether financially, technically, or as advocates in other ways - and that Freenet's development has been delayed as a result. Sincerely David _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat