At 5:47 PM -0700 5/16/01, Eric Cordian wrote:
>Ray Dillinger writes:
>
>>> If backbone providers start screening content, it's going to cause
>>> problems.
>
>> Eh. Cause problems or solve them. If backbone providers start
>> screening content, it may just finally motivate people to be
>> multi-homed. Which they've been pretty lax about until now.
>
>That's also an option. When oppression happens, it is often a tossup
>whether to fight the oppressors in the hopes of pushing them back, or to
>assist the oppressors in becoming maximally oppressive in the hopes that
>they'll finally push the people to revolt.
>
>Speaking of backbone providers censoring content, has anyone heard that
>Bank of America apparently plans to deny merchant accounts to any business
>that sells guns?
The term "censoring" is highly misleading here (and in many contexts).
Bank of America is perfectly free to choose its customers as it
wishes, just as an ISP is perfectly free not to have as its customers
those who run websites catering to homosexual pedophiles.
The solution for the homosexual pedophiles, by the way, was a
technological one: to run their "Boychat" operation in cypherspace,
unattached to any particular meatspace account.
--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
