[12860] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: EFF Platform
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Thu Jun 2 00:05:35 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: brodsky@radiomail.net (Ira Brodsky), mech@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish)
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 1994 18:40:51 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199406012128.AA24426@radiomail.net> from "Ira Brodsky" at Jun 1, 94 02:28:07 pm
> Rather than repeating everything,
> I'd like to make just three points:
That pretty much repeat everything, but oh well.
> 1. The EFF's concerns about
> information 'have nots' are baseless
> and misplaced.
That's an opinion, not a fact. In the opinion of 90 or so non-profits
they are quite "baseful" and and well placed (though EFF's specific
concerns and conclusions differ from those of the 90+ groups calling for
some percentage or other of "all" networking bandwidth. If you need
someone to really complain about, try them for a while.)
> Freedom of the printed
> press has always meant freedom from
> licensing and--with the exception of
> laws dealing with libel and
> pornography--regulation. No
Methinks you are b.s.'ing here. I am not convinced you believe that
anti-porn regs are not onerous. If am am correct in this guess, then you
have no point, since the press is indeed "bad"ly regulated, yet we call it
free. If I'm wrong, then please describe, in a logical, objective manner,
how you arrive at the conclusion that one sort of regulation is A-ok, and
another is bogus? If you can do this without admitting that there is a
lot of grey area and compromise I'll be amazed. Come off it with the Mr.
Extremist Libertarian stuff. The world is not black and white, and this
is not a binary issue.
> friend of the free press would demand
> that the government force certain
> newspapers to publish 'diverse' views
> or emphasize specific topics, or
> make suburban readers subsidize rural
> readers. Doing those things wouldn't
> ensure democracy, they would end it.
Not sure what you are talking about here. We've already all been thru
this on the library thread. Books are not infrastructure. They are
content. EFF is not calling for subsidization or regulation of content,
other than in one manner: those corporations that right now, today, have
regulated monopoly common carrier status, while on the way (we all hope)
to a real competitive market, have an obligation to help foot the bill for
deployment of infrastructure, and (more to the content point), and must not
monopolize content (or "must publish diverse views", if you will). EFF
has *never* supported any notion that truly private endeavors should not
be allowed to publish/distribute whatever material they want to. If this
is your presumtion, it is dead wrong. As for future regulated monopolies,
we don't want to see them, period. This is why we support the
Markey-Fields bill, etc. We want more competition in this market as badly
as anyone else.
You are also failing to recognize the fundamental difference between
something like publishing and something like networking. Networks will
and do serve many, many more purposes that books, including emergency
"lifeline" services, and the providers have been (in the telecom/cable
world) frequently obtaining govt. funding, and are already getting
govt. funding for NII "experiments" and "test beds" (keep an eye out for
NTIA press releases and RFPs). Your book market : NII market analogy
falls flat on several counts.
Please, understand this: the NII/networking/infotainment/telecom/cable/etc.
metamarket is not a free market and never has been one. This may or may
not be good. It's moot. Regulation is not new here, but was set in
motion 60 years ago. Just coming along and saying "stop regulating
dammit!" is met with derision. You can do this if you like, and get
nothing done, or you can get your say in on how it's to be regulated, and
slowly work for deregulation over time. Please tell me you are not so
naive as to think politics is not a compromise process, that you don't
believe 60 years of politics is wiped away in one swell foop just because
someone thinks it would make more sense to have an unregulated market?
Sorry, but the real world of politics doesn't work like that. No one has
to like it. That's just the way it is.
> The EFF's efforts to deliver electronic
> information to rural and urban poor,
> I suspect, looks to most observers
> like a hobby more than a meaningful
> endeavor.
I don't see our members jumping ship. For every one (and they are few) that
dramatically tears up a membership card because they listen to net
pontificators trying to explain our policy rather than actually examining
it for themselves, we get dozens, hundreds of new members who stick with us.
> Most information is still
> delivered in printed form and is
> (thanks to unregulated free markets)
> both cheap and widely available. If
> you really want to promote access to
> information, why point the 'have nots'
> in the direction of expensive
> computers?
Do you really believe networking to be that irrelvant? Sorry, but we
don't agree. Why do you think everyone has to personally own a computer to
participate in NII benefits? How many of the people on the net right now
own their own Sun or DEC workstations? Ever heard of schools?
And please keep in mind, much of this is not even about the poor. If it
were, the effort could be better spent getting them food or something.
Most of the universal access concerns have much more to do with
geographical location.
> 2. Regulation isn't inevitable--it
> is created by people.
No need to interpret so literally. I think you know that I meant
"regulation is effectively inevitable in this specific instance because
all of the parties with any power whatsoever are expecting it and have
been pushing for it, in one form or another, since before day one." I
don't believe that simply saying "regulation is bad, don't do it" will
change anything. I think the logic behind the sentiment is fundamentally
flawed, because it pretends the market is a free market and perfect when
it is not. I think the proposition itself is naive. If you think it's
not, then ask yourself why regulation has not gone away if everyone thinks
it's bad, and if saying so will actually get any attention and get
anything done. Fact is it won't. It gets ignored, and the regulators
make whatever regulations they like, without any guidance or blocking.
Politics is a process of compromise. Absolutes are laughed off the table
and ignored.
> A more
> appropriate 'mugger' analogy would
> be this:
>
> EFF: we don't like crime, but it's
> inevitable. Therefore, we want to
> promote 'good' crimes (e.g., Robin
> Hood).
I disagree, and prefer the original. I don't think it was cc'd to the
list, so here it is again: you are walking down an alley and are mugged.
The mugger points his gun at you and says "I am going to shoot you. Where
do you want the bullet? Forehead or arm? If you try to dissuade me, it'll
be the forehead by default. You have 3 seconds. 1, 2..." Think fast.
This is the kind of inevitability I refer to (by your logic, this isn't
inevitable, it's just some guy doing something. Following this logic, you'd
have a bullet in the head, i.e. you get the worst possible regulation
because you try to deny the reality of the situation, instead of trying to
minimize what's going to happen.) Actually the analogy isn't really that
great, because it misses the fact that in the NII example you can actually
get positive results. A better analogy might be an insane mugger, who
says "I'm going to shoot you or give you my CD collection, your choice".
You seem to be objecting, on a (theoretically wonderful; practically of
questionalble relevance) libertarian or objectivistic philosophical basis,
to being forced to make the choice in the first place. Life is tough.
I'll take the CD's thank you very much.
> My view: Crime is wrong. The fact
> that we haven't managed to completely
> eliminate crime is not an argument
> for ceasing to oppose it.
I could ask you to define crime, but that would probably start a
libertarian v. others flamewar, completely off the topic at hand.
At any rate, you take "all regulation is wrong" as a given. I do not
accept this as a given. "Regulation" is just a euphemism for "law, but
originating in the Executive branch instead of the Legislature". We can
now generalize your apparent stance to be "all laws are wrong". Please
note that is directly contradicts "Crime is wrong". I can arrive at no
other conclusion. If this is not what you mean, then again please clarify
what is a good law/regulation and what is not, and how one is to logically
and consistently decide which is which. It looks to me like you are
trying to hold several conflicting viewpoints at once: laws/regulations
are ALL bad, by definition. Laws/regulations are mostly bad, except for
certain ones. Laws/regulations are all good and to be obeyed, and crime
is just plain wrong. Which will it be? Doesn't the reasonable choice
seem to be "Some regulations/laws are good, some aren't. One has to
examine them and their effects, like everything else in the real world, on
a case by case basis"?
> 3. Why spend time attacking the EFF?
Let's be honest here. The question was "why spend time attacking EFF,
when we are not the root cause of the problem." The root cause is
corruption in government, bad decisions in the legislature and agencies,
lack of understanding on the part of regulators and law makers, obsolete
law, greedy and lazy monopolists hiding from competition behind the skirts
of Mama Govt., and many others. These are the real problems. You offer
no solutions, you do no work to fix them or even work around them. I'm
not certain I need to point out the hypocrisy inherent in such a position.
No matter how much you may think we are wrong, we are the least of your
worries. And if you look at the *facts* of what we do, EFF has probably
done more to prevent, disarm, remove or hinder more lousy regulatory moves
than anyone else involved in the debate by an order of magnitude or 2.
This is all, of course, conveniently forgotten or ignored by our detractors
(strangely concentrated in one small mailing list for some reason...)
> Because the EFF is well-financed,
> is not honest about its true
> intentions, and the EFF's program
I must laugh here. We are brutally honest about our intentions. This is
why you, Frezza, etc. are so up in arms. We come out and say precisely
what we are doing and what our goals are. If you can't accept them, fine,
we can just agree to disagree, but please don't accuse us of deception.
> is dangerous. As someone said,
Most people afraid of giving any kind of education to the poor say things
like that. It smacks of elitism, whether you intend it or not. I'm
sorry, but there's more to life than a monopolist's profit margin. Far
more is at stake here. Why are you so hot to defend regulated monopoly
carriers? Can you not see the basic contradiction in what you've embarked
upon? You say you are for free markets, yet you attack one of the few
organizations actually making any progress in supporting the creation of
one, and instead cry for the poor-baby monopoly carriers who <sob sob sob>
might actually have to compete and might actually have to cough up some
of the money they've leeched from the public from behind the shield of
regulatory protection for the last 6 decades. Sorry, but I'm unsympathic
for their cause, and yours.
> "the road to Hell is paved with
> good intentions".
That sword cuts both ways. Your free-market conservatism is nice on paper.
Let's see you implement it in a non-elitist manner.
> Your Open Platform
> is a recipe for limited access and
> free speech.
Sorry, but you've not read it with understanding if you believe that.
> Government control of
> the media (i.e., regulation) is the
> problem, not the solution.
*THEN FIX THE PROBLEM* instead of attacking people who are doing a
lot more to fix it that you are. Maybe you don't think the way we
are going about it is perfect, but don't complain, go work to fix it your way.
I apologize if any of this strikes raw nerves. Nothing in this is meant
personally - I attack ideas, not people (and incidentally, I feel like
90% of the time on com-priv, I'm attacking the same ideas rehashed over
and over by different people. You can consider this addressed to all of
them.)
--
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
