[12033] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Fwd: Short substantive EFF policy question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Mon May 2 23:26:02 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: bruce@phantom.com (Bruce Fancher), mech@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish)
Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 19:34:43 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: bruce@phantom.com, karl@mcs.com, frezza@radiomail.net,
farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com,
stahlman@radiomail.net, dbuck@world.std.com, ggilder@mcimail.com,
gbolles@radiomail.net, rre-maintainers@weber.ucsd.edu,
Sam_Boyle@mcimail.com, brodsky@radiomail.net, of@phantom.com
In-Reply-To: <9405022307.AA28132@mindvox.phantom.com> from "Bruce Fancher" at May 2, 94 07:07:31 pm
> The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet is well-written and informative.
> But so are the 20 or so how-to-use-the-Internet books which are available
> from the local bookstore.
That doesn't invalidate the point, nor does it invalidate any of the other
examples. And these are just examples, drops in the bucket.
> Actually, I rarely read the "flying rhetoric"
> on the net, the only reason I followed this thread is because Bill Frezza
> started it.
That's what I meant by flying rhetoric, actually. As Bill knows, I do not
find his arguments persuasive, and do not see that they have a factual
basis, but rather an opinion basis. Opinons are fine, but they cannot
invalidate facts, or even other opinions. At best they can tie.
> I didn't have any reason to feel burned by the EFF until I hosted Godwin
> and Figallo in my home so they could encourage a bunch of people who had
> gathered to start the "New York EFF" about three weeks before the EFF board
> said forget it, get lost.
The EFF board's decision to not go along with the idea of local chapters
sure seems to be a sore point. Seems to me it is utterly irrelevant. I
get flamed periodically from a few people on this matter, and all I can
really say is "get over it." EFF-Austin, EF-Houston, SEA, and all these
other local groups are doing just fine without any handholding from us.
Personally I think everyone involved is better off. The local groups are
not tied to our mission and policy and can develop their own to reflect
local needs, while we don't have the organizational overhead require to
keep it all running smoothly.
This looks like a personal beef to me, and it has nothing to do with NII
issues, or whether EFF is "malicious"
> | [...]
> | > As much as I appreciate that, it didn't stop me from cutting my
> | > membership card in half and mailing it to Mitch when he moved the shop
> | > down to DC. We've got enough "smart guys" lobbying the Government to
> | > tell us what's good for us. The EFF should have stuck to their
> | > (publicly stated) original purpose of ensuring that civil liberties
> | > extend into Cyberspace.
> |
> | 1) Would you rather have "dumb guys" do the the lobbying? Lobbying WILL
> | BE DONE. This is a fact of life. You can have the law-n-order types and the
> | social-program wheedlers and so forth do all the lobbying if you like. See
> | how you like the world then.
>
> I'd rather that no one did any lobbying, PAC donations were made illegal,
> congress was subject to the same laws and regulations they impose on the
> rest of us and government spending was cut by about half.
THAT IS FANTASY. It may happen some day, but that is not real life, right
here, right now. EFF doesn't deal with fantasy. Sorry. I don't mean to
be overly forceful on this matter, but half the anti-EFF flaming I have to
deal with (which fortunately is infrequent and far between) is based on
someone's idea of what "should" be the way things are. The "should be" a
free market, with no regualtion ever amen. There "should be" no threats
to privacy. There "should be" no lobbyists. Forget all that for a while.
What do we *really* have right now? What are the limits in which we are
all constrained to try to do something worthwhile? That's where we are,
because that's where we have to be.
> I'd rather that the telecommunications industry were deregulated and the
> market allowed to sort things out. I'd rather that no congressman ever
> utter the words "Information Superhighway" and I'd rather that Al Gore mind
> his own fucking business.
I agree, but it's not going to happen. If we assume it is, and just walk
away, what good does that do? What that does is present no opposition to
what we don't like, and lets Gore and the Superhypers get whatever they
want without question.
> | 2) on what grounds do you base the assumption that EFF can only protect
> | civil liberties when residing in a city in Massachusetts? ACLU and CPSR
> | have offices in DC too. Does that suddenly mean they no longer support
> | civil rights? If you were a civil liberties organization in the UK, would
[...]
> For all I care the EFF could move to Pigs Knuckle, Idaho. What's
> relevent is what you do once you get there.
Precisely. Have we suddenly become an anti-civil-liberties organization?
I don't think so.
> In the Neidorf and Jackson cases, the EFF got involved to make sure that
> the Bill of Rights applied to individuals who had been denied protection.
> Educating a judge on issues of where electronic speech should fall under
> the protection of the 1st and 4th ammendments is very different from
> policy work.
And it's still work we do. We just do *more* than that now. It's like
you'd yell your head off at McDonalds for daring to make a chicken
sandwich, because they "are" a burger joint. ??
> | 3) on what grounds do you base the assumption that all EFF does is lobbying?
> | As a matter of fact, very little of what we do is lobbying; that's the law.
> | If we exceed that quota, we lose 501(c)(3) status.
>
> Uh huh.
I won't argue with you about this. Look it up.
> | 4) on what grounds do you base the assumption that getting involved in the
> | political processes that actually MAKE the laws we have to live with is
> | somehow antithetical to the goal of protecting civil liberties?
> >From Open Platform 2.0:
> "We must act now to ensure that the information highway is more than just
> 10,000 more channels of what we have today--what Newton Minow might have
> called 'a vaster wasteland.'"
>
> The Open Platform Initivate refers to itself as "Jeffersonian" in the
> same paragraph it proposes meddling with new and potentially burdensome
> regulations. Are we talking about the same Jefferson?
EFF is not inventing regulation. Again, *regulation is coming* like it or
not. Why should we not meddle with it? Better to meddle with the
regulations and minimize and tune what they do, than just let
congresspersonages, most of whom wouldn't know an email address if it bit
their butt, make whatever willy-nilly regualtions they, and their generous
corporate sponsors, like.
Let's try to make this more clear. There are 2 choices:
1) do nothing, and let the govt. and the corporate world with it's highly
effective lobbying aparattus do whatever it likes, while we hide under the
sheets and pretend it will go away, wishing for a "should be" world of
free markets, honest officials, and functional laws; or
2) recognize the ugly reality of the situation, which is a
borderline-unconstitutional judicial and legislative system, a morass of
regulatory regimes, crippled markets, and corrupt government, and do what we
can about it.
> The Open Platform Initiative is just plain wrong and misguided and I'm
> still waiting to hear you respond Bill's points.
It'll come when it comes. I'm not really sure why you are even
interested. You say OP "is just plain wrong". This tells me your mind is
totally closed on the matter. If this is the case, then seeing a response
can be nothing but entertainment for you. EFF isn't here to entertain
you. We have work to do.
--
Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist
"In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich
Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of
phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps.
When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it."
- Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994
