[12680] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Private thoughts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel J. Weitzner)
Thu May 26 04:24:23 1994
Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 16:50:51 -0600
To: don.wills@swc.com (Don Wills), mech@eff.org
From: djw@eff.org (Daniel J. Weitzner)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
At 3:11 PM 5/25/94 -0600, Don Wills wrote:
>I've gotten responses from both Daniel Weitzner and Stanton McCandlish in
>response to on my last two posts. Unless I am mistaken, Daniel did not
>disavow his transfer of money to schools and libraries plan, but Stanton
>seemed to. What gives?
First, Don, thanks for toning down the rhetoric a few notches. I'm much
happier talking at this level of civility and will do my part to keep the
discussion at this level.
I'm not sure which posts seemed to be contradictory, so let me re-state our
view on this.
An important part of EFF's mission is to promote the democratic potential
of new communications technologies. Democracy means access. We're not
out to create a gigantic subsidy structure for its own sake, but do believe
that ensuring access to the net is important if the net is to be a forum
for political, cultural and economic activity. At the end of the day,
access depends on people have money for access. We'd like to see an
environment where access is so cheap, that little subsidy is required, but
we are simply not willing to rely on market mechanisms alone to determine
who has access to information and who is without it.
We believe that democratic access to information is as much a First
Amendment issue as many other issues that we have worked on.
EFF is not an organization devotes to education policy, so I don't have a
detailed answer about what an appropriate level of federal support for
schools it. But, to the extent that net access is an important part of the
educational process, which I believe it to be, I believe that federal
support should go to support school access, unless someone can show me that
this problem is fully addressed by state/local funding. If it is, great.
But that's still a "transfer of wealth."
>BTW, I care about EFF's position because I am very concerned about Clipper,
>etc. and I feel EFF is losing its focus on these issues. EFF shouldn't try
>to take on too many issues or they won't deal with _any_ effectively.
Indeed at times we feel ourselves to be stretched thin, but we also believe
that privacy and infrastructure issues are important to work on. We are
still doing a credible, effective job on the privacy issues, in my
estimation.
I hope that even if you think that we're crazy pinkos on this issue, that
you'll stay with us on Clipper, and Digital Telephony, etc.
**************************************************************************
"Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy."
--Orson Welles
......................................................................
Daniel J. Weitzner, Deputy Policy Director <djw@eff.org>
Electronic Frontier Foundation 202-347-5400 (v)
1001 G St, NW Suite 950 East 202-393-5509 (f)
Washington, DC 20001
*** Join EFF!!! Send mail to membership@eff.org for information ***
