[9202] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Bigots? It's bigoted to oppose committing Felonies?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Douglas H. Barnes)
Tue Dec 21 11:29:16 1993
From: cman@caffeine.io.com (Douglas H. Barnes)
To: PAUL@tdr.com
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 10:09:38 -0600 (CST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, postman@lists.psi.com
In-Reply-To: <01.1993Dec21.07h51m58s.PAUL-c100000@TDR.COM> from "Paul Robinson" at Dec 21, 93 07:52:09 am
> In fact, for Apple to be doing this may in fact allow the directors of the
> corporation to be charged with - and I may have the term wrong - "misprison
> of felony" since their corporate standard in affect provides approval of a
> relationship which is proscribed as a serious crime under State law in the
> same manner, as, say, providing a place for people to shoot heroin. Or it
> could be grounds to invoke conspiracy charges.
Note that they'd have to start with the City Council of the City of Austin,
because they give benefits to domestic partners (of either sex) as well.
Also note that neither Apple's policy or the City of Austin's require
or specify sexual relations of any kind.
But this completely dodges my point, which is that there are loads of
people on the net, in Williamson County, Iran, or your typical PC-obsessed
university, who would love to be able to dictate what can and cannot be on
the net. Freedoms aside, there's the simple fact that there just won't be
much of _anything_ if any group who's offended by something can have it
banned from being on the net at all, or can enact penalties through int'l
treaty.
Another writer pointed out some interesting jurisdictional issues just
recently, which makes this point beautifully: Community Standards on
the net are dead, dead, dead. Your only hope is filtering at your end,
but even then, if you're going to let someone on the _net_, in its full
interactive and exploratory glory (as opposed to these clipping-service
type things that are being proposed), then you have to face the fact that
they will be able to get into just about anything that's out there.
--
---------------- /\
Douglas Barnes cman@illuminati.io.com / \
Chief Wizard (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v) / () \
Illuminati Online metaverse.io.com 7777 /______\
