www.spectacle.org/0401/sethf.html
Let me explain the some of the reasons for my work, for why I valued the freedom of the Internet. Being at MIT, I was able to use the early precursors of the Internet, back in the days when it was almost all a network of scientists and programmers. I loved this system where someone could communicate so easily with people across the country, even in other countries. Sometimes it barely made a difference if someone was across the street or across the world. For many years, the prevailing view was that this tremendous free flow of information could not be stopped. Contrary to popular myth, McCarthyism was an extensive system, involving both public and private realms, with government and business in cooperation. I had read extensively about the Comics Code, where major publishers had reacted to the prospect of government action with a system of widespread industry self-suppression. It seemed to me that a similar system could very well stifle free speech on the Internet. In the mid-1990s, a strange sort of doublethink seemed to grip civil-libertarians in discussion about censorship and the Internet. On one hand, per above, there was the mantra of governments-cant-censor-the-Net. Yet at the same time, there was the idea that for parents, such control was cheap and easy, a censorware program costing a few tens of dollars would be sufficient. I was not surprised when much censorware was exposed to be blacklisting everything from feminist newsgroups to sex-education to gay liberation to free-speech sites. Imagine, if you take a collection of censor-minded people, give them free reign to blacklist anything and everything they desire, let them do it in secret, and with absolutely no accountability - what in the world do you think you will get? In the United States, the issues about censorware are most frequently framed in terms of parents - children - SEX . But censorware is not intrinsically about parents using it on children. Censorware is about an authority preventing a subject from reading material considered harmful by the authority. The software has no concept of what types of control are philosophically acceptable and which are not. The technology is neutral only in that the program doesnt care if its used by a parent, a corporation, or a government. Some governments feel that they are acting as parent-leaders with regard to their child-masses. Well, Ive always thought it would be very difficult to completely shut-out sex, a topic of interest to perhaps 99 of the population. But there arent very many people interested in exchanging information about, for example, Tibetan independence from China. But laws imposing censorware on schools and libraries were inevitable. It makes no rational sense to argue to a parent that censorware will protect their child from being harmed from reading injurious, mind-rotting material - yet a school or library will not take similar steps against the putative danger. If you put someone in a blinder-box, they cant ever be allowed to escape. Note, despite the way the current debate is framed, the law applies censorware to adults too. The same control imperatives lead censorware to ban privacy services, anonymizers, and even language-translation sites. Because those are security-holes, escape-routers from the necessity of complete control. Anonymous, private, unmonitored reading simply cant be permitted, as then the person might be able to see forbidden material.
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