[12672] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: EFF and federal taxes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Wed May 25 23:52:40 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: don.wills@swc.com (Don Wills)
Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 15:18:13 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199405251850.OAA17165@eff.org> from "Don Wills" at May 25, 94 01:50:19 pm
>
> In Daniel Weitzner's following post, he makes perfectly clear what EFF's
> agenda is:
Evidently not, since you misinterpret it again.
> > Yes, we believe that federal funding for schools and libraries is important
> > and it seems perfectly appropriate for some of that funding to go to net
> > access.
>
> In my state (Illinois), all (or almost all) funding for primary and
> secondary schools comes from state and local government. All funding for
> libraries comes from local government. EFF is advocating a brand new
> federal program for redistributing money taken in (via a net tax I assume)
Do not assume, for when you do you make an ASS out of U and ME
(paraphrased from R. A. Wilson).
> by the Feds to give it back to local schools and libraries. Unbelievable.
What on earth are you talking about? Please find me any reference in Open
Platform or any of our other documents, EFF calling for federal level "net
taxes" for schools and libraries. Do you really think all of our work is
done on the Federal level? I assure you it is not.
What I see here is man, or rather a pack of people, including Mssrs.
Frezza, Stahlman, Sternlight, et al., who, in ignorance of what EFF is
doing, thought they had found an ideal scapegoat at which to point fingers.
Rather than acknowledge error when corrected in their misinterpretation of
our policies, and certainly rather than actually put their money where
their mouths are, and try to fix some of the real problems they decry, by
taking on govt.-propped monopolism, desperately cling to the tattered rags
of their fantasy that EFF Is The Enemy, by ignoring whatever corrections
are made, and repeating like a mantra their misinterpretations over and
over again, day after day, week after week (though often waiting a few
days or even a week or longer until they think enough people have forgotten
the previous discussions, and might be tricked into thinking a new debate
has begun). Psychologists call this "the denial phase".
> I stand by using my word "ludicrous" to describe how far astray EFF has
> gone from its original objectives.
I stand by using the word "ludicrous" to describe what the unknown may
look like to those that don't bother to know, but assume instead.
--
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
