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• I can no longer easily count the friends I have seen do serious damage to their "real" lives by playing these games. [...] there WILL be some sort of legislation to wean geeks away from these games.

Given our track record in this area, what's more likely is that there will be doomed attempts - driven by ratings grabbing media hysterics - to ban "these" games. Note that "these" games will always mean whatever people with addictive personalites become addicted to.

First they came for EverQuest, but that didn't worry me because I didn't play EverQuest... and so on.

What we will never do is to actually address the problem of people with addictive personalities. We'll carry on doing what we do now, which is to provide patchy and erratic treatment programs for a few select substances. We have programs for heroin uses, programs for alcohol users, programs for nicotene users. But how many people kick heroin (some through methodone), get chalked up as a success, then go on kill themselves with alcohol or the tar and toxic additives in cigarettes?

Newsflash: people with addictive personalities will become addicted to addicting substances or activities. What we need are clinics where you can walk in and say "I'm an addict", and you get helped to find a new addiction that's less prone to binge abuse of tainted substances, and that's less socially destructive.

The reason why we'll never have that (I believe) is that then billionaire scions of the US Royal Families might end up in the same program as the lowest scum from the streets that they exploit to pay for their cocaine habits. Think that one through. Substance based treatments ensure that you generally mix with Your Sort of Person. That sounds pretty cynical, but if you look at our track record of banning substances specifically to ostracise and criminalise certain ethnic and social groups, it really makes sense.

• Jay Parker, a chemical dependency counselor and co-founder of Internet/Computer Addiction Services [says] "The manufacturer of EverQuest purposely made it in such a way that it is more intriguing to the addict," Parker said. "It could be created in a less addictive way, but (that) would be the difference between powdered cocaine and crack cocaine." One client - a 21-year-old college student - stopped going to class within eight weeks after he started playing EverQuest his senior year. After playing the game for 36 hours straight, he had a psychotic break because of sleep deprivation, Parker said. "He thought the characters had come out of the game and were chasing him," Parker said. "He was running through his neighborhood having hallucinations. I can't think of a drug he could have taken where he would have disintegrated in 15 weeks."

Then Jay is a pretty ignorant chemical dependency councellor, because you can fuck yourself up in a lot fewer than 15 weeks by binge abuse of anything. The Government actually says that cocaine isn't actually that big a deal. The problem - as with any addiction - is binge abuse and the associated screwing up of your life and that of those around you. Yes kids, doing anything for 36 hours straight can fuck you up. Cocaine, alcohol, EverQuest, hacking, screwing, car mechanics, drinking water, praying.

At some point we have got to stop making arbitrary decisions to slap "good" and "bad" labels on various substances and activities. Because - with a few noticable exceptions - the problem is generally the abusive behaviour and not the substance or activity being abused.

OK, let's look at the cocaine analogy, because it keeps getting raked up. Cocaine (a non physiologically addicting substance, as used by the President of the United States) was used widely and legally for fifty years by perfectly ordinary average people, until a series of frenzied newspaper stories in the 1910's stirred up an irrational campaign to have it banned because of all the "Negro Cocaine Fiends" running around raping white women (the police also increased the standard caliber of their guns from .32 to .38 because "The cocaine nigger sure is hard to kill," if you want to know where that scene in Alien Nation came from). This, of course, does not form part of standard drug education in schools, because drugs are bad, and we can't give any context that might dilute that message, like "Drugs are bad (when abused by people with abusive personalities)".

Similarly, there is a very real danger of games going the same way. It only takes a few genuine and tragic reports of binge abuse to trigger a frenzy of supposition and speculation that leads to knee jerk legislation that will never, ever be taken off the books, because black markets and Wars on Whatever are great for incumbent governments looking for a long term unwinnable but popular crusade. Remember, circa 1900, the vast majority of the population enjoyed cocaine, in small, dilute quantities, just as now, the vast majority of the population enjoys playing games, computer or otherwise, with no ill effects. If we don't learn the lessons of the past, then in eighty years, we might be in a world where Disney games are the only legal ones and people gather in dirty back rooms to share virus ridden copies of Quake 13 in huge debilitating weekend binges. It's unthinkable? Ask anyone from 1900 about the possibility of cocaine being viewed as more dangerous than a rabid pit bull with a flick-knife, and they'd laugh in your face.

Let's have some consistency. If EverQuest really is dangerous when abused in binges by sad, desperate people with no life or hope, then let's ban it outright, because god knows that's worked in the War on Drugs, right? If not, legalise cocaine and put a warning on it to only buy approved, over the counter non-cut (virussed) versions, and not to binge abuse it, especially if you have a medical condition that makes you very succeptible (like epilepsy or schizophrenia with games).

And while we're at it, if I go on a 36 hour prayer binge and start having hallucinations, do we put a warning label on rosary beads? If not, why not? Because paranoid solipsistic visions are "good" when they feature commands from Baby Jesus, whereas the same messages coming from EverQuest Eric are "bad"? Hmmm.

This was an awesome victory for those of us in the reform movement. Quite simply, the drug reform movement is about as grassroots as you can get, and most of our journalism is online: DRCnet, MAP, Cannabis News, and of course Narconews, as mentioned in the article.

The print media has begun to acknowledge the worldwide shift in attitude towards drugs (and especailly, the war on them) - but still mass media outlets including large American newspapers and especially TV still spew ridiculous retoric straight out of 1980's Just Say No propoganda.

What this article also didn't mention is that the EFF had a hand in helping Narconews with their court victory. Bravo to these brave individuals!

This is a question I think everyone asks when they first get politically active. The answer is, "Mostly...kinda." There are ways that are effective for lobbying; but to a certain degree, if what you're asking for veers to far away from either 1) public perception or 2) their own personal beliefs, they will end up ignoring you. This is a major failure of our legal system, IMO, but there's a solution: vote people into office who more closely represent the views of American citizens.

There's a longish section on our site about this subject, here.

In a nutshell, though, email just isn't very effective. Fax and snail mail is good; phone calls are especially effective if you are articulate. Stating your opinion clearly and concisely is important; if you ramble on about civil liberties, they won't quite "get" it. If you say, "Vote no on this particular bill, and here's why" that is more likely to have an effect.

The final point is this: right now everyone's in a hubbub, and 10x as many people as usual are contacting their representatives. They are just going to be less responsive right now. On top of that, everyone is so concerned with _feeling_ that they don't have time for _thinking_. This is unfortunate, but I think that it will pass as time goes on.

...can be found here:

http://www.neoteric.nu

The site itself is about the War on Drugs, but all of the points on effective lobying (and other methods of influencing the direction of our government and society) are applicable to protecting privacy or any other civil issue.

I love the United States, I really do. I think a lot of the reason why it's such a great place to live has to do with the government. But more and more I'm starting to think that it's getting seriously out of sync with modern life that I wonder if we're not headed for catastrophe.

I'm part of a citizen's reform group that is working for change on an unrelated issue (website). But the things I see in the Skylov case are strangely similar to my group's fight: politicians that don't understand the trappings of modern life (in Skylov's case, technology), blindly make laws without consulting with what the people want, and then they afraid that they will look stupid if they back down on something they were obvious wrong about.

What they don't seem to realize is that they look even dumber for not acknowledging that a mistake was made, that they misunderstood the situation, and that there are situations that they failed to forsee which were not fairly covered under the legislation they created.

To a certain degree I hold the American people at fault for not being more proactively involved with their government, keeping a close eye on the things their representatives are doing. Hell, pretty much the whole purpose of the Neoteric website is to try to get people to contact their representatives. But I still think there's a failing to the entire system, something that is getting worse, and not better.

I think we need to find a new way of doing things, and fast. Technology, and society as a whole, are changing too fast for our current government (good as it has been for the last 200 years) to keep up. And a government out of sync with its people is a dangerous thing indeed.

More ranting and raving on this subject: http://www.neoteric.nu