[12641] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Personal attacks are no substitute for logical consistency (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Fancher)
Wed May 25 02:12:28 1994
From: bruce@phantom.com (Bruce Fancher)
To: com-priv@psi.com, eff-board@eff.org
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 20:06:45 -0400 (EDT)
John,
Bill may not have your command of the English language (few of us do)
but he is not a liar or a crank. He's what's known as a "Libertarian."
If you're sitting in front of your NeXT, you can look it up in Webster's
where the listed definition is "an advocate of the doctrine of free
will." Now, either the EFF believes in the "doctrine of free will" or
it doesn't. And it happens to be the opinion of many of us that current
EFF policy recommendations give lip service to the principles of Freedom
and Liberty while in fact violating these principles.
The EFF's original stated goal of ensuring that our Constitutional
Rights extend into "Cyberspace" was an excellent one. However, please
understand that we feel that it is NOT your place to decide how the NII
will be shaped unless you want to put your money where your mouth is and
go into into business. Otherwise, the only mission we will ever support
the EFF in achieving is to prevent the Government from interfering with
the net through taxation, mandates, regulations, etc. And you guys
don't seem too likely to take that position.
You're certainly entitled to take an opposing position, even one
that's opposed to Freedom and Liberty. Just admit that that's what you
believe.
What I really want to see is someone from the EFF have the balls to
satisfactorily answer the eight questions Bill has put to you. If as
you say, you've already answered them, then I'd appreciate it if you
could forward a copy of the answers to the list(s).
Once again, here are the questions:
> 1) What is "the market". Which communications media, products,
> and services are included? Which are not included? What is the criteria
> for inclusion? Who is responsible for defining and enforcing such criteria?
>
> 2) How do you measure "market presence". Who will do the measuring?
>
> 3) Describe specific criteria by which one qualifies as an information
> "have-not" and thereby qualifies for the subsidy. Who will define this
> criteria? How will this be monitored?
>
> 4) How will the subsidy be collected and distributed? Who will monitor
> compliance? How does this differ from a tax?
>
> 5) What happens to a company that refuses to go along? Describe specific
> enforcement penalties that might be used to ensure compliance.
>
> 6) What are the geographic limits of the mandate to provide universal
> service? Who will set these? Who will grant exemptions in cases of
> financial infeasiblity?
>
> 7) Universal service guarantees have historically been linked to guaranteed
> rate-of-return regulation and/or protection from competition via
> the granting of a government monopoly (eg,. POTS or a municipal cable TV
> franchise). How will this be accomplished in a mutli-vendor
> environment in which numerous wired, cabled, wireless, and satellite link
> yone-way and two-way local and long distance providers will all by busy
> trying to bypass each other? If done by blanket rate regulation (eg.,
> mandated "lifeline" service rates) how would one determine the basis for
> "equivalence"amongst the various modalities? Data rate? Throughput?
> Latency? Number of "channels" (what's a channel?) Total traffic volume?
> All of the above?
>
> 8) Describe how this scheme can be accomplish without a massive government
> regulatory intrusion into this business.
[Bill Frezza] has written:
|
| Folks,
|
| As you know, over the past few months I have been endeavoring to get the EFF
| to clarify the principles behind their sweeping call for massive government
| intervention in the burgeoning Information Business. I have in
| particular tried to get them to spell out the mechanisms by which Guaranteed
| Universal Service is to be financed.
|
| After meeting with Danny Weitzner of the EFF I finally got him to admit
| that their policy recommendations can and will inexorably lead to the
| imposition of an info-tax. Danny, to his credit, felt that such a tax to
| be used to supply services to the "information have-nots", was
| justified based on the social outcome he desired. While disagreeing with
| him vehemently I applauded his honesty and the logical consistency of his
| position.
|
| I carefully posted the results of this conversation on com-priv asking Danny
| and the EFF to comment and clarify.
|
| What was the result?
|
| Silence from Dan, more fluff from Stanton, and a vituperative personal
| attack from one of EFF's founders. I thought I would share the latter
| with you (below).
|
| Your comments and participation in this dialogue is welcomed. Whether you
| agree with me or not, this is an absolutely fundamental issue to
| the future of this business. The EFF cannot eat it's cake and have it to.
| Either it supports liberty or it doesn't. I ask those of you I have
| corresponded with on this to turn up the headlights on these guys.
|
| Bill Frezza
|
| ---------------------------------------
|
| Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 12:38:59 -0800
| >From: John Perry Barlow <barlow@eff.org>
| Subject: Re: Bill Frezza's questions to EFF
| To: don.wills@swc.com (Don Wills), djw@eff.org
| Cc: eff-board@eff.org, frezza@radiomail.net
|
| At 9:22 AM 5/23/94 -0600, Don Wills wrote:
| >I concur with Bill Frezza's assessment of EFF.
| >
| >I won't be renewing my company's membership in EFF not only because the
| >positions you have taken with regard to government control of the
| >Internet/NII are flawed, but also because you haven't even responded to
| >Frezza's questions.
|
| We have all responded to Frezza's questions on far too many occasions, and
| if he tells you otherwise he is a liar in addition to being a pernicious
| ankle-biter.
|
| He also alleges, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, that we have a
| kill file on the mail he generates. He knows better.
|
| The problem is not that we don't listen to his questions. The problem is
| that he doesn't listen to our answers. He continues to characterize our
| positions in ways which do them grave injustice and refuses to incorporate
| our corrections to his interpretations.
|
| However, you can do what you like. You can listen to a man who has a
| pathologial fixation EFF, or you can listen to us directly. If you listen
| to us directly and you still don't like what we're doing, I think you
| should not continue to support us. We're not in this to please everybody
| and we don't expect to. That's politics.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| John Perry Barlow
|
| ---------------------------------------
| Date: 05-22-94 16:05:38
| Subject: EFF ENDORSES BROAD BASED INFO-TAX TO FUND UNIVERSAL SERVICE
| To: com-priv@psi.com
| Cc: interesting-people@eff.org, rre-maintainers@weber.ucsd.edu, alt-politics-datahighway@cs.utexas.edu
|
| WHY WON'T THEY COME FORWARD AND SPEAK?
|
| For an organization that prides itself on the need for democratic discourse,
| why is the EFF hiding? Why do they reflexively kill-file anyone who
| disagrees with them? Why don't they have the courage of their convictions?
|
| The message below recording Danny Weitzner's call for an info-tax was
| posted on May 6th in an attempt to clarify how the EFF expects
| Guaranteed Universal Sevice to be funded. Attempts to contact the EFF
| privately have been rebuffed. A Nixonian stonewall has descended.
| This sad organization, originally dedicated to defending civil
| liberties, has become a lapdog of those entrenched Washington interests
| that seek to gain a stranglehold on this new industry.
|
| Are you proud, Mitch Kapor, of the chain reaction you have set off?
| According to the latest postings, 93 organizations representing the full
| panoply of subsidized artists, public broadcasters, and professional
| victims groups have demanded that congress set aside a free public
| "right-of-way" on the info highway. Whose hands do you think this will
| play into? Don't you realize that John Malone would gladly trade away 10%
| of his channel capacity in return for protection from competition?
| That's exactly how he built his empire in the first place.
|
| How can you fail to see that everything you are doing to create a new set
| of info-entitlements will only attract more and more groups looking for
| a handout, ultimately creating a political constituency that congress
| won't be able to resist pandering to?
|
| Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I was on the front lines
| during the heyday of big city Cable TV franchise wars in the early eighties
| and I can tell you it was not a pretty sight. The anti-competitive,
| anti-consumer abuses that were perpetrated in the name of "the
| public good" while private fortunes were amassed and politicians
| pockets were lined was appalling. In but one example I personally
| helped Wade Communications, the black front organization that Mayor Wilson
| Goode promised a chunk of the Philly franchise to, fill out their
| phony application - just to watch
| them turn around and sell it to TCI.
| Is this the kind of "managed" market you want?
|
| The EFF leadership will no doubt not see this message as their software
| will screen it out. I would like to call on each of the many people I
| have corresponded with in the past few months to demand an answer from them.
|
| Who is going to pay for Universal Service and how?
|
| Please send your mail to:
|
| Mitch Kapor <kapor@eff.org>,
| John Perry Barlow <Barlow@eff.org>,
| Danny Weitzner <djw@eff.org>
|
| and ask them stand up and reveal their principles.
|
| Bill Frezza
| frezza@radiomail.net
|
