[8309] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: * EDGAR and A-130
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sat Nov 13 12:17:19 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: mem@mv.mv.com (Mark E. Mallett)
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1993 10:13:04 -0700 (MST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
In-Reply-To: <199311131539.KAA26494@mv.mv.com> from "Mark E. Mallett" at Nov 13, 93 10:39:52 am
>Mallet sez:
> Your tirade reminded me, before I even got to this paragraph,
> of Watergate: of the efforts to shut up the people digging into
> a scandal. And of the currently-ubiquitous "blame the people who
> make the complaint" philosophy of current life.
B
>
> It seems perfectly reasonable for me for anyone to wonder about --
> and to make inquiries about -- why a faculty account is used as
> a pulpit for a political organization. This without making any
> judgement about which side is in the right or in the wrong.
>
> Sure would be nice if you had lowercase letters on your keyboard, too.
>
> -mm-
>
>
I not only have lower case on my keyboard, I can pour my anger in
here in Cyrillc, Arabic, Spanish, French characters with my NAPLPS
program as readily as ASCII. I was, and remain, angry as hell at
Haynes ne Westlaw's '...perfectly reasonable' - your words, not mine,
dirt digging 'inquiry.' So I put it deliberatley, called shouting,
in here, in upper case. Whaddya mean '...without making any judgements?'
I have never seen such a pre-judged matter in my life.
Do want me to start naming all the 501c3 Tax Exempt accounts in compriv
where the users of those accounts lobby Congress and the Whitehouse?
Or the number of company accounts on here that use the NSF (i.e. government
subsidized) backbone for business? Cmon, since when does Westlaw get
off being holier-than-thou?
I disagree frequently with TAP, Nader, Civic Networking, the ACLU,
the EFF over their posititions vis-a-vis corporate-government
sweeheart and power relationships. And I was doing electronic
democracy lobbying via local Rogers Bar BBSs' before 90% of anyone
in compriv was using it for *their* political pulpit, circa 1980.
(And damned effectively - overturning idiotic local ordnances,
bring down County Commissioners who had not gone to bid for their
computer services for 14 years - all Republicans, elected people
to City Council by the edge BBSs gave to the underdog, humiliated
nationally the City Attorneys who didn't even know the Electronic
Privacy Act of 1986 - even though they spend tons on Westlaw -
when the Mayor got caught reading the private mail on the CITY
political BBS - and now today, watchdog City government from the
Council Telecommunications Policy Advisory Committee AND on their
own BBS, put up in defense from those of us on the 125 other BBSs
in town who hold them accountable loud, clear, and on any network
available). BECAUSE this medium is the only one which hold any
promise of citizen control of government AND the corporations which
cozy up to it.
So when Westlaw starts doing the inquiries you refer to, in the
way they did (and I still want to know whether they asked Love
directly, upper or lower case), to the *extent* they did, and
with the obvious potential harm to the innocent they risked,
with the laughable rationale they used 'don't want University
resources used improperly', and from a position of themselves
being governmnet contract funded, they hit my hot button hard.
And I do this as an individual citizen, from any account I happen
to be near - from my own online business, from any system I
happen to telnet into, commercial, non-profit, government,
academic, anytime and anyplace. And woe be unto anyone who
starts investigating *me* before having the guts to confront
me first, directly.
I said it ten years ago, and I'll say it again. Benjamin Franklin
would have been the first owner of a microcomputer andit would have
been an Apple. Thomas Jefferson would have written the Declaration
of Independence on an IBM PC in Word Perfect and Windows. But
Thomas Paine would have published Common Sense on a pirate
Bulletin Board. And the Committees of Correspondence would have
used any network they could find, including the Internet from
academic accounts to exchange the dialogue of the American
Revolution - which ain't over yet.
And I don't want ANY Corporate or Government Kings George treading
on my Cursor. I want absolute freedom of electronic speech. Anywhere
anyplace, any net, any time. And ESPECIALLY speech about anything
to do with government and its dealings.
Do I mke my 'tirade' perfectly clear?
