[12734] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: EFF and the big bad T (tax) word
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Fri May 27 12:03:42 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 20:07:44 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: karl@mcs.com, don.wills@swc.com, djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <m0q6nrk-000oCxC@venus.mcs.com> from "Karl Denninger" at May 26, 94 05:25:28 pm
[eliding the books & T1 silliness, since you just don't seem to get it,
and I'm not in the mood to explain it again.]
> Ok, Stanton, four <yes> or <no> questions I would like answers to. No more
> dodging the questions:
I don't do yes or no questions, and I'm not obligated to reply to
everything that passes thru my mbox.
> Does the EFF, now or in the future, support, lobby, act towards legislation
Why do you phrase your questions so they cannot be logically answered? Do
I look like Nostradamus? "Does the EFF...in the future" doesn't even have
any grammatical or logical cohesion.
> or advise legislators in any fashion that the following should occur:
>
> 1) Internet providers should, in any way, shape or form, perform
> cost-shifting under government mandate to provide a subsidy
> to libraries.
What do internet providers have to do with any of this? We aren't talking
about the internet here, and we aren't talking about internet providers,
but regulated monopolies, namely telephone and cable corporations, which need
to be kicked down the slope toward increased competition where they belong.
This answer applies to the rest of your questions as well.
> Will the EFF make their stance on the four points above public, and make a
> statement to the same, under penalty of fraudulent misrepresentation
> charges brought by their membership should they be shown to have lied
> in the future?
Don't try to talk like a lawyer. It looks silly. EFF does not have a
position on Internet providers and subsidy, because it's not part of the
debate. We don't make any official statements about things we don't have
a stance on (thus you won't see EFF talking about gun laws, etc., either.)
If someone were to propose some sort of regulation of NetCom-like Internet
providers that tried to force them to follow the regulated monopoly
pattern of the telcos and cablecos, you can bet we'd oppose it. As stated
before time and again, we are for competition, not monopolization.
> Basically, I am asking you if the EFF stands for the destruction of the
> current Internet Service Provider marketplace -- or not.
If you'd actually read what we've been saying, both in this thread and in
our releases & documents, you would not need to ask these questions. In this
case, I can give you a yes or no answer: NO. This, however, is already
obvious.
--
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
