[9035] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: sleaze
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Douglas Barnes)
Tue Dec 14 23:50:11 1993
From: cman@caffeine.io.com (Douglas Barnes)
To: tully@cscns.com (Ed Tully)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1993 22:35:18 -0600 (CST)
Cc: postman@lists.psi.com, rmholt@u.washington.edu, bzs@world.std.com,
In-Reply-To: <9312150254.AA12507@cns.cscns.com> from "Ed Tully" at Dec 14, 93 07:54:40 pm
>
> The point that is being missed -- or avoided -- is that NO ONE IS EVEN
> ATTEMPTING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. We spend all our time worrying about
> advertising and the CIX and... and... We all have solutions tothese
> problems. We threaten those who dare to send us advertising with
> extinction; the sleaze of the net we just let them go on.
There's no question that we're worried. It's just that it really is
an intractable problem.
At the root of the matter, Ed, is that my notion of propriety, your notion,
a random school board's notion, and, say, Saudi Arabia and Finland's
notion of what we should be restricting are not going to be reconcilable.
Suppose Rushdie comes to me and says, "Doug, I'd like you to put up
Satanic Verses for free ftp." Would a hypothetical sysadmin in Iran
have the right to forbid this and make it stick? (Setting aside
the issue of the reward they offer for my head.) What about GIFs
that show a woman in a bathing suit, or with her head uncovered,
dressed for success?
Should the bigots in Williamson County (adjacent to ours) be able to
dictate the morality of the whole net? These are the fine folks who
almost rejected 1,500 jobs and a huge economic influx to their county
because Apple pays benefits to partners of gay employees. Should they
have the right to ghettoize discussion of homosexuality for everyone?
I think we just need to face up to the fact that just as technology
has made it harder and harder to repress citizens, it's making it harder
and harder to keep information from _anyone_, including children, once
on the net. Almost nobody, myself included, is thrilled at the prospect
of kids having to deal with some of this before they're ready, but it
really does boil down to one of the following choices or a combination
of them:
o A highly secure shadow net that is professionally bowlderized.
o Cutting kids off from net resources altogether.
o Face the fact that kids will be exposed to some pretty unsavory
stuff on the net and educate them to deal with it.
--
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Douglas Barnes cman@illuminati.io.com / \
Chief Wizard (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v) / () \
Illuminati Online metaverse.io.com 7777 /______\
