At 2:18 PM -0400 5/16/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 12:41:26PM -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
>> > That European governments which collaborated with the Nazis, and are
>> > even now collaborating with the Nazis in Bonn and Paris, are hardly
>> > good candidates for being an "escrow service" for sensitive data?
>>
>> Godwin's Law.
>
>Perhaps I'm just being difficult today, but it strikes me as this is
>in invalid invocation of GL. The law says:
> "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
> involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
>
>First, this isn't a Usenet discussion. Second, this isn't a comparison
>involving the Nazis -- this is citing history. Godwin's Law, even
>if we agree with it, is not meant to make all historical references
>invalid, but to avoid cheapening the Holocaust, etc.
There's May's Third Corrollary to Godwin's Law: "As the number of
newbies to the Net increases, the number of references to Godwin's
Law rises linearly and the number of careless _invocations_ of
Godwin's Law to squelch debate rises exponentially."
(Godwin's Law is merely an observation. However, many understand it,
wrongly, as some kind of invocation to stop debate. Hence messages
like "I hearby invoke Godwin's Law and declare this thread dead.")
My point was a real one, hence the citing of Bonn and Paris,
representing the two countries fighting Yahoo and EBay over
thoughtcrimes present in their systems. As with the Hague Convention
issue, imagine what happens when the countries which don't let their
citizen-units read Hitler's words for themselves have these tools.
Aimee needs a visit from the Clue Fairy.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
