On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Tim May wrote:
Did I "invite the public in" when an announcement was made for a meeting at my house last September? There were many people I had never met personally, nor even heard of.
Nearly all were well-behaved, but what if someone had not been? Were my
property rights somehow lost by the fact that I had many to attend that
I did not know personally? Could somehow who disrupted the meeting,
perhaps even by wearing a "Support the War Against Crypto" or "Buy
Alcohol Detectors for Your Car" tee-shirts, have claimed that they had
some "right" to remain in my house even after I asked them to leave?
Does my right to control my own property vanish when I become a shop or
restaurant? How about when I get larger?
Renowned cypherpunk Dave Del Torto thinks it does. This is the argument
that he was using to try to gain admittance to CodeCon this year, after
being blacklisted by the producers due to disturbances at the previous
year's CodeCon. Do you mean to say DDT could be wrong about his rights as
a member of the public wishing to attend an event "open to the public" on
private property?
I wouldn't know anything about this, but, yes, the organizers of CodeCon are able to control the property they have made arrangements for (e.g., contracting with DNA Lounge or wherever it was held this year...I couldn't justify going, so I didn't, so I don't know the details). This is the means by which restaurants and bars can kick out unruly guests, by which casinos can exclude those they think are cheaters, and by which stores can tell some people "Don't come back."
Dave DT was, by the way, at the September meeting/party at my house. He behaved just fine. Note that in my meeting/party announcement I had specifically said this was *NOT* some kind of "open meeting on U.S. soil, open to all," as the recent cant has had it. (The idea that if one is nonselective about who attends then one is immune from legal action is silly, and untested.)
Had anyone misbehaved at my meeting/party, or had any obvious narcs sent to monitor the meeting been spotted, I would have no qualms about kicking them out.
By the way, I limited all speakers to 10 minutes, tops. Many finished in 5, which is about right for introducing a theme. Some topics take more than 10 minutes to explain, which is why classroom lectures are typically 50 minutes. And why some technical talks are 30 minutes or longer. But most talks don't have enough material, or are not as detailed (as a classroom lecture might be). Limiting talks to a reasonable amount of time stops the droning.
(Speaking for myself, nothing puts me to sleep faster at a Cypherpunks meeting than having an invited outside speaker, some spokesbimbo for some alphabet soup digital rights group, for example, drone on about stuff that is all obvious and that could be summarized in a 2-page posting the length of the one you are reading now. I don't like driving 120 miles round-trip to listen to pro forma drones.)
--Tim May
"That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau
