At 10:36 AM -0700 8/11/00, T. Bankson Roach wrote:
>Am I missing something? A paper company sells paper. It, unlike
>"Assholes on Line" management, doesn't review what individual people
>write on it. Of course if you are a stupid paper manufacturer with a
>"conscience" you could stop selling paper all together. Or, you could
>write something like a software licensing requirement and only lease the
>paper, and then only if it is used for pleasant and uncontroversial
>thoughts. Deny all legal responsibility for what your customers write on
>your paper. Maybe that will stop those nasty people from expressing
>their noxious thoughts. Still, if like a gun manufacturer, some dimbulb
>uses your product to do something nasty, the government may sue you.
>Thomas Jefferson is probably puking in his grave if the psychics have
>contacted him with what our beloved country has descended to.
I've always found these issues are clarified by asking what P.J.
O'Rourke asks: "Would you send you mother to prison over this?"
If your mother decided she didn't want to sell paper to someone,
would you send men with guns to go get her, put her on trial, and
send her to prison?
In other words, it's not a matter of whether what your mother--or the
paper company, or AOL--did is wise, polite, reprehensible, or stupid.
It's whether what she did was a crime.
While it may be foolish for a paper company to decide it doesn't wish
to sell writing paper to someone, it is their right.
(And this probably happens. I imagine some newsprint suppliers have
refused to sell newsprint to the Worker's Daily, or even to the
National Rifleman.)
>
>Meanwhile, following your logic, I guess it is best for all us "freedom
>of speech" types to start our own ISP. Of course, since some claim it's
>"legal" to censor electronic communications, companies like AOL will
>automatically deny you access to their members in order to save them
>from bad thoughts.
Careful here. There are two broad classes of meaning for "censor."
(Consult online dictionaries as desired.)
There's the broad definition in which any speech which is blocked in
any way is a form of censorship.
And then there's the meaning the First Amendment applies to,
censorship by government.
If AOL doesn't wish to allow "hate speech" on its property, this is
the first kind of censorship but is certainly not the second kind.
(Modulo the issues we've touched on of AOL or Earthlink having a
government-granted franchise of some sort, e.g., in public schools.)
Should we arrest AOL officers and throw them in jail for establishing
speech policies for their own property?
>Now do you think we need it to be an absolute right
>to express whatever rotten, nasty, clean, or loving thought we might
>have made part of a new Constitution in case the idiots can't see this
>is a already a right, or should be, provided us under our current
>Constitution?
Sorry, you misunderstand what the Constitution says.
--Tim May
--
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Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
