At 1:22 PM -0400 8/11/00, David Honig wrote:
>At 12:56 PM 8/11/00 -0400, Jim Burnes wrote:
>>
>>While I agree with Tom that AOL sucks rocks etc etc, you paper analogy
>>isn't quite correct -- or at least its incomplete. If I sell you paper
>>and find out your printing racist drivel with it, it's perfectly
>>within my rights to stop selling you paper.
>>
>>Of course you could always buy paper from someone else or make
>>your own.
>>
>>jim
>
>Quite right, AS LONG AS no papermaker has any government-granted
>monopoly. If only AOL paper delivery trucks are allowed on public roads,
>something is wrong.
>
>Note that the folks at the other ends of your wires --telcos, elec-cos,
>and cablecos, ALL have violence-backed monopolies UNLESS they permit
>others to connect. The telcos and recently the electrics (in Ca)
>now allow open access. The cable-modem situation still festers.
And don't let the anonymous rants of Anonymous let the discussion be
sidetracked by the straw man of saying some of us wish to intervene
to stop private ISPs from doing as they wish with their property.
There is the issue that many universities have elected to subcontract
out their student Internet access. Most of the University of
California did this several years ago by contracting with Netcom, now
owned by Earthlink. (I don't know if this is still the case, as I
don't follow this subindustry closely.) Earthlink is one of the ISPs
blathering about having zero tolerance for politically incorrect
speech. This raises First Amendment issues, due to the university
role (oft-discussed in connection with university speech codes).
In any case, I never suggested that MenWithGuns should force AOL to
modify its hate speech policy. Modulo the issues above, they can do
as they please. And we can point at them and laugh.
Aside from law, though, there is the issue of a broader
interepretation of what it means to be in a liberal society (liberal
in the classical, not modern, sense). Is it _wise_ for AOL to impose
speech constraints?
This echoes the issue we went through several years ago when the
owners of the Cypherpunks list host machine decided to begin
filtering messages based on content, including messages critical of
the filtering.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
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.
