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Ian Clarke, Ernie Miller On Free Speech, Privacy
mpawlo writes "I am still pursuing my new pastime, interviewing interesting Internet policy individuals for Greplaw. Fresh catches include Freenet creator Ian Clarke on his decision to leave the USA, free speech and Freenet and former Lawmeme editor-in-chief Ernest Miller on DRM and privacy, copyright and the First Amendment... and, of course, why blogs matter. Maybe this will provide some food for thought."
See, I'm an amerikan (a conservative, not a neocon bush-head asshole...there's a BIG difference) and I'm trying to grasp the concept of this whole "rights" thing. What rights we have left are being stripped away for the appearance of security, and the mindless sheep of amerika (bleat) are too stupid to realize it.
Moving to Canada won't fix the problem, as anything amerika gets involved in, canada will likely get screwed up in just via proximity.
The more I see the more I realize the end time is coming. Don't bother planning for the future folks, you don't have one.
Because you have a government like this
Actually it said "blawgs" in my original submission and referred to law blogs, that is online journals dedicated to law and policy, rather than the daily life of your favorite pet. This is also the issue that Ernie Miller addresses in the interview.
Pawlo.com
You are confusing Mr Ian Clarke with Mr John Gilmore. I guess you need to read Greplaw more frequently .-)
The Gilmore flight stunt has been extensively debated. Mr John Gilmore and Professor Lawrence Lessig have issued replies to the debate on Mr John Gilmore's flight-stunt. Mr John Gilmore was rejected from a flight because Mr Gilmore wore a badge saying "Suspected Terrorist". Should the flight captain have ejected Mr Gilmore because of the button or not? The discussion has been heated, not least since Mr Seth Finkelstein suggested that Mr Gilmore's behaviour was 'a millionaire's version of trolling.' Mr Gilmore counter-trolled Mr Finkelstein and got an endorsement from Professor Lessig.
Read Mr John Gilmore's reply.
Read Professor Lessig's comment.
Read Mr Seth Finkelstein's comment on the comments above.
Best regards,
Mikael
Pawlo.com
What do you think of the way your administration is handling things the last 10 years? Don't you just hate the fact that big companies seem to have alot more influence on politics than the average Joe has?
Shouldn't this be changed as soon as possible to protect the rights you as a citizen should have?
Or put in another way: what is the reason the US has taken this 'corporate control' road? How did this happen? Why did you all allow this to happen?
- Explain why you believe that just because you didnt vote for the president he is illegitimate.
- List all these precious rights you have lost.
Then come back and continue the trendy leftist whining.Not even 1/2 of America voted for *shrub* the smirking chip.
Why the need to use childish insults and name calling? Is this the level of your intelligence and sophistication or are you just following the 'alternative' crowd in their derision?
That'd be The Rock, surely? After all, with Jesse Ventura managing to get into politics, it can't be long before more wrestlers take that path, and I for one welcome our new smackdown-laying senators.
but I've got to ask:
Does it bother you that the main use of Freenet at the moment seems to be pr0n of a less-than-mature nature?
I can understand the argument that child porn is something we'll just need to accept if we want to allow true freedom of speech, but last time I checked freenet, just about the only content I could find was child porn, so it seems either pedophiles are more tech-savvy than average, or the need for anonymity for other "forbidden" content is not so great yet.
Of course, The RIAA's actions might change that quickly.
All errors in this comment are mine. Corrections are considered a derivative work, and punishable under copyright law.
(I live in Philadelphia; The bank's locations are nowhere near. This is fine, since I never visit my bank's branches anyway.)
If I had anything to do with E*Trade Bank, I would be worried.
1. find a troll
2. label them "lefty"
3. ask them for more info
4. assume they won't give it
5. declare victory for the "right"
6. ??? (probably some form of persecution)
7. profit
..."we need to accept [bad thing] to have [good thing]" strikes me as being very small minded.
it may be more difficult, expensive, take longer etc., but a better solution will usually exist.
and when it comes to things such as free speech and child porn, I for one hope politicians do not opt for the "quick'n'easy" option.
The major thing that I don't get about the states is your voting system..it should be one man one vote, and the person with the most votes wins...
There you go, full proof system for an election..none of these recount a state and use those results crap.
And I think security and privacy have to be questioned.. When does security and Privacy turn a democracy into a police state?
It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. -B.Hicks-
http://www.ipjustice.org/081103codepress.shtml
"If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use 'intellectual property' regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms", said Andy Muller-Maguhn.
http://www.ipjustice.org/ipenforcewhitepaper.shtml
---
:-) Please also look at the evidence of anti-conspiracy conspiracy theory:
discussion: sept 11 (WTC 2001)
issued by EUC at January 30 2003(Hitler's takeover of power 1933)
ian's comment strikes me as a huge breach of godwin's law
yes, the patriot act sucks, but we're not putting jews in ovens or rolling panzer tanks into canada or holding mass book burnings
hyperbole and hysteria are interesting phenomena, look into the issue if you find yourself with a feeling of vertigo
relax people, there is a LOT wrong with the current state of US politics and government (i personally view the influence of corporate money as a larger issue) but our adherence and commitment to the basic principles this country was founded upon is strong and well in the hearts of the majority of americans
there is no illuminati folks, there is no man behind the curtain, no one is going to wave their hands and *poof* 250 years of american fundamentals are going to disappear overnight because we got scared on september 11th
and if you don't believe me, blink, and in 2004 or 2008 gw bush will be gone
some 1000 year reich that is
and the last time i checked, the eu isn't exactly a hot bed of personal freedom, capice?
hyperbole
hysteria
please by all means, do not stop fighting the patriot act, but PLEASE don't believe the hype, i am getting kind of sick of the everyone crying wolf- know what i mean?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As to why, the truth - and I say this is as an American - is because we're fat (statistically speaking we are becoming grossly obese), greedy (statistically the hardest workers the world while in a nation with one of the highest incomes - yes I know about Luxembourg) swine (check out our popular media sometime) so drunk on our own stupid swill (see that popular media again, or how about Britney's absolutely perfect perfect quote below her picture) that we no longer care (elections typically drawing in 30-40% of voters).
It isn't as if any other humans would do any better though, so foreigners shouldn't think themselves superior - we're all born with pleasure centers, and predictable outcomes to them, and this results in addictions, etc. It isn't our fault as Americans because humans are penultimately mere deterministic ongoing molecular processes, or parsed down to English - we're all just ongoing (complicated) chemical reactions. Chemical reactions don't have faults - they just execute like computer programs. Yes Mr. Smarty-pants in the front row, I just denied the existence of free will.
So 'how could we allow this to happen'? I'll describe the process, if you wish. The corporations, macro-human entities that exist only to acquire resource regardless of all other matters, catered to us in exchange for resource. They catered so well we stopped caring. Now that we've stopped caring the corporations have learned that they can modify the rules of the environment they exist in - that is, change the government in their favor - and they have so that the environment now allows them to gather yet MORE resource free of traditional limitations.
As for rights being stripped away (the Patriot Act - and yes, they actively are being stripped away, ask a certain former employee of Intel or webmaster of raisethefist.org) the framers of the Constitution, being good legal engineers, built a defense in depth to prevent the system from completely running out of control. Over a long enough timeline, the probability of just about anything approaches one, including multiple simultaneous failures. 9/11 was but one breach. Another was an attorney general (who lost his senatorial race to a corpse, technically) with little understanding (or at least concern if he did understand) of the Constitution. Another element was a conservative administration headed by the members of the thinktank Project for a New American Century, who back in the Clinton administration openly advocated the US taking down Iraq to use as a base from which to topple many various Middle Eastern nations in succession like so many dominos. That there would be collusion between their oil-centric corporate interests here, as well, is simply gravy on top for them. You might have heard of some of the members of PNAC - they include Dick Cheney our Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld our Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz his righthand man, formerly Richard Perle, his much nastier lefthand man, Steve Forbes, Jeb Bush - the list goes on. I encourage you to at least read that last link so as to ascertain that I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist of any kind.
There's your why and how. Shouldn't this be changed? Yes if you choose to believe in the sanctity of individuals, which as a strict Cartesian I do. Will it? I doubt it. I encourage you to vote for Howard Dean, as he's a step in the not-wrong direction regardless of your view of things like gun-control/abortion/gay marriage/healthcare.
Any other questions? It's 3AM here in the west coast of the US and I'd like to go to bed.
No, not for a second. I have a deep conviction that the freedom to communicate is absolutely essential to human progress. This conviction was forged during my youth growing up during quite turbulent times in Ireland, during which I learned that terrorism is not a product of freedom, it is a symptom of the absence of freedom and understanding. Censorship is the enemy of freedom and understanding, and therefore the friend of terrorism.
Exactly right, man. And it is that absence of freedom that will cause *further* terrorism in the U.S.
Anyone think this is the *real* reason Ian Clarke is leaving? He's worried about possible terrorist actions taken against the U.S. government by its own citizens?
My journal has hot
This is wrong. The Bush administration is not comprised of conservatives.
They are statist reactionaries. They want a very powerful state, a huge state in fact, a violent state and one that enforces obedience on the population. There is a kind of quasi-fascist spirit there, in the background, and they have been attempting to undermine civil rights in many ways. That's one of their long term objectives, and they have to do it quickly because in the US there is a strong tradition of protection of civil rights. But the kind of surveillance you are talking about of libraries and so on is a step towards it. They have also claimed the right to place a person - even an American citizen - in detention without charge, without access to lawyers and family, and to hold them there indefinitely, and that in fact has been upheld by the Courts, which is pretty shocking. But they have a new proposal, sometimes called Patriot II, a 80-page document inside the Justice department. Someone leaked it and it reached the press. There have been some outraged articles by law professors about it. This is only planned so far, but they would like to implement as secretly as they can. These plans would permit the Attorney General to remove citizenship from any individual whom the attorney general believes is acting in a way harmful to the US interests. I mean, this is going beyond anything contemplated in any democratic society. One law professor at New York University has written that this administration evidently will attempt to take away any civil rights that it can from citizens and I think its basically correct. That fits in with their reactionary statist policies which have a domestic aspect in the economy and social life but also in political life.
By leaving the USA, couldn't he eventually be branded a terrorist (for attacking US economic interests) and jailed without due process?
I haven't used freenet in a couple years and at the time there wasn't much content but it certainly wasn't just kiddie porn. Can anybody cite legitimate uses of freenet they are engaged in?
The US is a republic, as are most European nations.
I'm pretty sure that the election process in your country is similar to the USA's. Living in a true democracy as you describe, is only good if you're in the majority.
Maybe you should ask someone how it was to live in the German Democratic Republic, which was often touted as a true democracy. They had security and privacy until September of 1989.
Well, what's the use of all those fetuses going to waste. Thanks to Dubya we can't use already dead biological matter for something useful like curing illnesses, so there's nothing left to do but make chili. But it's mighty tasty... want some?
Are you really absolutely positivily 100% without-a-doubt sure you did?
It's not that I don't believe you, but that would imply that the Slashdot editors did some rudimentary spell checking :o)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
>Freenet is a pretty effective and scalable
>way to distribute large files and it is
> immune to "denial of service" attacks,
> so it is certainly useful beyond its
> primary goal of permitting anonymous
> information distribution.
Odd, all I heard are contrary to this comment by Ian. What a spammer.
Freedom of speech is absolutely good thing, if all those spam and flamebait and troll are gone.
And on the same note, who is going to host their stuff on-shore? Sure it's cheaper, but with the DMCA and Patriot Act and all this crap, aren't we better off getting offshore web hosting, and leaving NO intellectual property in the US anymore?
I can see this applying to not just people who are doing "grey area" things but even companies, individuals, and so forth that just don't want "BIG BROTHER" watching over them all the time, patent idiocy, copyright stupidity...... ugh, don't get me started...
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
Look up some info on granddaddy Prescott Bush. He thought Adolf Hitler was the greatest thing since the time when it was legal to own slaves.
What Photon Ghoul hasn't mentioned, folks, is that he is an NSA operative. ;)
My journal has hot
Not even 1/2 of America voted for *shrub* the smirking chip.
That is an interesting, but irrelevant point. We do know directly elect the President, and never have. Look up something called the Electoral College, and then come back to discuss.
BTW, how come you people don't scream that 1/2 of the voters didn't vote for Clinton either? He didn't get a majority of the votes.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
It's 4:43AM but my insomnia is raging - pardon my hideous grammar/spelling errors.
My entire philosophy/ethics system - and it is possible to build one in the following manner - grows forth logically from 'I think, therefore I am' (basically the first three chapters of Meditations) and attempts to move to useful conclusions from there while making as few assumptions as possible. I'm not certain you'd call me a Dualist, though.
Assuming nothing and simply stating 'cogito, ergo sum' gets us a few facts:
1. Self exists
2. Self is capable of cognition
3. From this, and the fact that cognition of any kind other than self-recognition exists, we can logically derive that not-self in some form - be it a giant universe of floating green balls translating silently in space - exists.
Taking the next step forward and avoiding the Cartesian circle - my concept of God may come about because of false data I am receiving afterall (I honestly think all of Meditations post-chapter 3 is essentially one giant 'don't burn me at the stake for inventing a concept bigger than God' note written for the Jesuits' benefit) we are left with the task of determining what the nature of the universe is in order that we might truly interact with it. Any explanation - literally an infinite number of explanations - might be correct. Therefore until a better explanation than the ones our senses present us with is provided, we must accept the explanation from our senses because evidence of any sort is better than no evidence.
However, while one knows the three facts above, one is only tolerating - grudgingly at that - the explanation of the universe as 'more or less how we perceive' until a better explanation comes along.
Thus, everything from here on out is going to be a belief, not a fact. There are only three facts (actually, fully, there's seven I know of but I'm not going to go that indepth here), but there are a lot of beliefs and most of them are false because only one of many possible explanations of the state of the universe is true.
So. We have our facts, our beliefs, and for now we're treating the world filtering in through our eyes - including Slashdot - as real. The truth is, we assume, more or less what we observe. One of the first things readily observable is that there appear to be other, also sentient, beings out there and rather a lot of them. What to make of this information? Well, it's obvious that since everything outside of those three facts - including the entire world one perceives - is just belief, the only thing one can be truly said to possess is one's own sentient mind. Losing it, then, is to lose everything - and when they
Here's the rest:
and when they (assuming they are in fact sentient like us as seems to be the case presented by our senses) lose their sentient minds they also lose everything they have.
Death, in other words, is so complete a negation that the dead may as well have never existed so utter is their loss.
From this it follows that death is to be avoided at all costs where possible. The primary goal of existence then, would (assuming what we perceieve is true) seem to be to do everything we can to not die.
It also follows that the next worst thing that can happen is for another of these sentient minds to cessate.
Thus I hold individuals somewhat sacro sanct, though my own self moreso. The next obvious question someone reading this is going to ask is something silly about Extropy, and I'll reply preemptively that I have similar goals for different reasons.
Does that answer your question fully?
it should be one man one vote, and the person with the most votes wins...
Here's the deal:
The US is a big place. Ya got areas where we all live on top of each other, stacked hundreds of floors deep, like New York, and ya got places where you can travel for hours and see nothing but sheep, like Montana. All part of what makes America great, etc. etc.
Now, if it were "one man, one vote," there's very little statistical percentage behind a politician travelling beyond the country's major urban centers (NorthEast, West Coast, North Central, and mebbe Texas). He focuses his eforts there, he minimizes his travels and he maximizes his exposure. Why spend an hour doing a morning talk show in Boise, Idaho when he can sextuple or better his audience by spending an hour on local L.A. radio?
Of course, in this scenario, the politico need only address the issues meaningful to the people living in these high-density urban areas. The issues of the farmers, conservationists, and rural Americans in general become third tier concerns.
As it is now, in this republic, even though states like Idaho and South Dakota don't have as many Electoral College votes as New York and California, the 'points' for 'winning' these smaller population states rack up quickly. Consequently, no politician can elect to ignore them -- and that, of course, is a good thing.
Incidently, the same "republic-esque" principals carry over into our Federal Legislature. The Senate consists of two politicians per state, regardless of a state's population. And the Senate is inarguably more powerful and prestigious than our free-for-all House of Represntatives whose membership is a function of various district's population (e.g., NY has more Reps than Mississippi).
Appreciate that the views and perspectives you get by and large here on slashdot DO NOT reflect "average" US opinion at all, for good or for ill. I would hazard a guess that the great majority of the readership here is from those "urban population centers," cuz that's where the tech industry is. (I also think this board's become mostly high school and college kids, but that's more of an intuitive hunch...)
He also speaks about what he feels about Godwin's Law in his /. journal.
I understand Freenet was a school project and that you got a B. Who got the A that year?
Some Finn who had the crazy idea of writing a Unix-like kernel for the x86 platform. Never heard of that guy again...
Hitler was TIme Magazines Man of the Year too. What is your point?
Freenet is dog slow. Downloads there will be orders of magnitude slower than what my line is capable of. So unless you *have* to get it from Freenet, you'd rather get it from somewhere else. In addition, it is very difficult to use Freenet for anything but file transfers, as the latency (and lack of containers to group stuff) makes surfing it almost hopeless.
Those two put together, along with the CPU and memory use of Java makes it feel very much "under construction". Regarding the pedos, Freenet mostly just brought them "into the open". I'm pretty sure there's a lot of shit going on other places on the net too, only there they hide on pedo boards, pedo chats etc. and not "in your face" as they do on Freenet.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Cool. I'll meet you somewhere and we'll steal a car and jump it off a cliff with a really great song playing while holding hands. Do you want to be Thelma or Louise?
The precious rights that I have lost are the fact that the federal government can legally view what books I borrow and movies I rent, without my knowledge. They can do "sneak and peak" searches without my knowledge. Wiretaps and search warrants with much much less legal approval.
Don't forget that I can now be labeled "enemy combatant" and locked up without a lawyer or a trial.
According to the new Patriot II act proposed, the US government can declare me a non-US citizen based on any actions I do. That means if the government wanted to, they could revoke my US-born citizenship and take away my habeus corpus rights and ship me off to Guantanamo Bay.
"Hitler was TIme Magazines Man of the Year too. What is your point? "
His main point is that Prescott Bush was financing the Nazi war effort, in full knowledge of that fact, a full 10 months after the war had been entered by the USA. At that point in 1942 the "Trading With The Enemy Act" was invoked, and the Union Banking Corporation had its assets seized. Ol' boy Prescott was a senior director; executives included two Nazi officials. I would say "study your history" but this historical fact has been obscured and suppressed.
I guess his more important point is that there is evidence of a dynastic ideological continuity from grandfather to the current president, and so people should be prepared to experience a more subtle and complex rerun of Germany ca. 1932.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Here's a better list, accusations that I would like him to answer.
[3] does not get you not-self, unfortunately. At best, the cogito buys you solipsism. Any "facts" observed, even about the self, fall under the aegis of the Deceiver.
:) I don't mind at all.
In short, all the cogito buys you is "I am" and nothing more. Any factual observations you make are based on faith in empiricism, not rational deduction. The main claim of empiricism is that the things you observe are what they appear to be unless given reason to believe otherwise. I.e., the Deceiver is a straw man until you find him.
Or do you mind a little empiricism in your rationalism?
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
gobbo said it right.
But as for Time Magazine, what's *your* point?
a snippet from
Since 1927, TIME Magazine has chosen a man, woman, or idea that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year." Though TIME's list is not an academic or objective study of the past, the list gives a contemporary viewpoint of what was important during each year. There are many interesting facts about the list:
You can not choose "anonymous free speech" and "not anonymous kiddie porn". Your choices are "anonymous flow of information" or "not anonymous flow of information".
Let me try giving you a real world analogy. If you gave me your mailing address, I could anonymously send you kiddie porn (if I had had any, trolls). Why? Because there's no requirement of ID, no need for a valid return address. Why would the rules be any different on the Internet? Juat because I have an IP, people expect there to be a tracable return path. But it's something we normally haven't had in the real world.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And we think Gore would be better? I agree that these ideas are far-reaching. With any luck, they will be weighed in and a compromise be reached. That's politics, though. There is no conspiracy here. It's not designed to yank Bo and Luke Duke out of their trailer and strip search them. Granted, left unbridled it could lead to that. That's what debates like this are for though and that's good. Given the choices, though, Bush has done far more than Gore would have done. We'd still be waiting on the UN to get it's finger out of it's ass (or more likely, out of the honey pot that was the sanctions against Iraq) and do something. We should not relinquish control to the UN period.
I'd say non-interference with interstate commerce has this covered pretty well.
The constitution doesn't grant citizens rights. It grants a small, very short list of rights to the government. They are not allowed anything else.
Oh shit...
god save us all from your teenage-level simplistic moralizing and righteous indignation
understand this:
you fight wars to promote peace
you abort fetuses to save children
you let gays marry to promote family values
if you don't understand the deeper meaning behind these surface level contradictions, then there is no use talking to you, as you demonstrate either a profound naivete, a stunted intellect, or a teenager-level morality which can only understand the world in simple one-dimensional ways
in short, grow the up, you are a moral child, easily manipulated by propaganda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I call bullshit. Also, how that translates to George Bush having Nazi like tendencies is beyond me. Are grandchildren exact copies of their grandfathers?
Blimey. I thought Stanley Unwin was dead.
quasi?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes. ...
Yes.
Bush and Gore are/were (Gore got his mind back after he quit running, we'll see how that works for Bush) both empty shells 90% of the time. Gore was backed up by Clinton. Bush was backed up by Karl fucking Rove, phsychopath extraordinare. Even if Gore found the same mindset as Rove, he wouldn't have the numbers around to come up with the sheer volume of insanity Bush's hangers-on spend all day coming up with.
A lot of common processes we take for granted really need to be tightened...
That is reactionary bullshit!
I challange you to come up with one terrorist that would be stopped by this.
The tightening of this kind of process hurts nobody but the honest people of the country, the dishonest will have no trouble circumventing this kind of increased security.
Not to mention that all of the 9/11 hijackers had spotless records, and would have continued flying under our radar regardless of what additional checks you propose.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Bush has done a whole lot more than Gore would have. Bush has waged a war based on a personal vendetta and justified it with lies. He has destroyed not only civil liberties, but civil libertarian sentiment. It's dangerous in this country any more to be concerned for your rights or question the government. You may be seen as "unpatriotic" One fellow was even arrested for not wanting stamps with the US flag on it.
Course it would be better with gore, I'd rather have a sniveling pussy in the whitehouse than a facist lunatic.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They aren't reactionaries, they are authoritarians. In an earlier day they might legitimately have been callec reactionary monarchists. And earlier Tories. But the monarchy has been too long gone for it to qualify even as "reactionary". Unfortunately, the same personality type has continued to scheme for it's return (with themselves at the head).
Actually, from the Bush quotes, he doesn't aim so much for a monarchy as a dictatorship. Not too much difference, I suppose, except that there are precedents for constitutional monarchies.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Much appreciated. I am trying to brush up my writing a bit. I probably should've caught that myself, but 3AM, etc.
you are a moral child
;-P
that is not name calling
name calling is "you poopy head!" lol
i called you a moral child
that is not name calling, that is a characterization of the way you think based on the words you have written
there is some thought and rationalization in my response to you, not a simple childish throw away stupid insult
i repeat, you are a moral child, based on the words you have said
not name calling at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps you can enlighten us on the proper scale of response to recent events, perhaps a matrix of proper comparisons.
Let's start with these:
- Indefinite detention of citizens without due process
This is like:
a) Nazi Germany
b) Today's China
c) The worst abuses of the British state during the worst of the IRA attacks
d) Mommy grounding me for something I didn't do
e) Perfectly OK and right and proper
- Invading a nation and seizing its assests for a personal vandetta
This is like:
a) Nazi Germany
b) China's behavior towards the other China
c) The worst abuses of [pick a European nation state] during the imperialist phase of history
d) Mommy rooting through my crap and taking my porno
e) perfectly OK and right and proper
- Suppressing speech for corporate interests
This is like:
a) Nazi book burning
b) China censoring the internet
c) England handing out monopolies on book publishing
d) Mommy telling me not to swear
e) perfectly OK and right and proper
Please, tell all us ignrnt fools the proper way to use metaphor. We're pining for your wisdom
I forget what 8 was for.
"Indefinite detention of citizens without due process"
;-)
;-)
they're not citizens
they're mostly terrorist assholes captured in a war
you do understand that, don't you?
"Invading a nation and seizing its assests for a personal vandetta"
it was not done for a personal vendetta. so you watch a lot of hollywood movies, huh?
"Suppressing speech for corporate interests"
there is no suppressing speech for corporate interests, there is suppressing piracy for corporate interests. granted, i agree with you, the dmca is shark chum stupid, i'm not going to defend it. but i AM going to say it is about as evil as nazi germany as a chihuahua is as threatening as a tyranosaurus rex
there's your wisdom, you ignorant fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
However, there are all sorts of "groups" just within frost. If "all you could find" is child porn, then I would posit "all you visited" were CHILD PORN GROUPS. Granted you aren't likely to find that stuff on usenet or the web (unless you know where to look), but then again so what? That's likely why it's on freenet.
I keep seeing articles on places like WIRED and MSNBC that quote "facts" from government agencies like "there are 500 new child pornography websites opened each month" and yet, I must say, despite being on the web about a decade now and doing all sorts of research for arguments like this one, I've never seen one of these "child porn" websites myself. Oh, I do know about the multitude of sites like Webe web operates, or even the nudie ones like the russian mob set up. But these people are apparently talking about hard core sites (they often mention sexual activity, which means these ain't pinup pictures) and I honestly have to wonder how they are finding these things, or even if they truly are.
Anyway... I have a freenet node. I've been mucking about with it for some time now. I set it up for NG routing and, despite being on dialup, I find it almost usable. I've found some cool stuff on there, like the banned linux girls website. And there is, in the listing of "The Freedom Engine," a couple of clearly labeled child porn sites. But this is a long, long way from being "most" or even "a lot" of the links listed in that search engine. If you are finding a preponderance of child porn, an experienced freenet user can only conclude that you are following a multitude of child porn links from the search engine and visiting chld porn newsgroups in Frost.
And yeah, if you look for it, you will find it; that's the entire point of freenet.
I was going to criticize you for an ad hominem attack, but you're probably too stupid to get it.
in terminus illic est tantum opes
IMHO, the problem is that economic and political growing pains happen anytime society advances - and since the USA is ahead of the curve, it usually experiences these problems first. I don't think moving away will help much (unless you leave the fray so as to return later when things settle down) because eventually the same growing pains will reach elsewhere too.
Other cultures will be less able to protect their liberties when the onslaught of growing pains starts to knock on their front door. I wish we had a new political frontier to go to. (the ocean?)
I'm no fan of Bush but don't judge someone by their parents! That's nothing more than stereotyping!!!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
One fellow was even arrested for not wanting stamps with the US flag on it.
Link?
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I understand that more than one US citizen has been detained without due process, and that the current US regime refuses to divulge the identities of numerous other people who are still being detained without due process. Without knowing who they are, we don't know what nationality they are. I'm not going to start in with how the semantic absurdity "enemy combatant" is being used to circumvent international law, because that's slightly a different topic...
it was not done for a personal vendetta. so you watch a lot of hollywood movies, huh? ;-)
Intelligent minds can disagree here. Perhaps the Bush family hatred of Hussein wasn't the issue, perhaps it was merely the desire to loot the country. Would you care to defend that next?
there is no suppressing speech for corporate interests, there is suppressing piracy for corporate interests
Arresting people who talk about security measures and legally forbidding people to post links to certain kinds of software is not suppression of speech? Care to explain how that works? I suppose if I hit you every time you say something, I'm not attempting to stop you from speaking, right?
So, to get back to my questions, would you like to demonstrate where exactly in your pantheon of statist evil the various actions fall?
I forget what 8 was for.
Here is why I consider them to be all three:
- Reactionary: These guys are the complete opposite of progressives. They sit around doing nothing and then all of a sudden start doing something which often has nothing to do with anything long-term.
- Conservative: Bush and his buddies are clearly conservative due to their policies on abortion, religion, attempts to enrich the wealthy class, etc.
- Authoratarian: Most people consider this trait to be the most noticeable but I disagree. Only a few of the administration seem to be authoratarian (Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfeld, plus neo-cons (like Paul Wolfowitz, etc))
I think the Bush administration really can't create a dictatorship (because Bush himself is incapable of running it). Instead, someone else (Cheney perhaps) will likely attempt to do that in a few elections down the road...Lastly, USA will end up a fascist state more than a dictatorship (don't forget that fascism doesn't require dictatorship. For instance, most people don't know that Nazism had massive support. People consider Hitler to be a dictator but if there were DEMOCRATIC elections, he would have kept winning them EASILY). Same thing will happen in USA I suspect...
I think the turning point will be the next terrorist attack in USA (I think it will happen). USA will unroll their patriot act II and start implementing new policies...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
b) people install it then give up an hour after it looks like it doesn't
I have downloaded files from freenet that ate up 100% of my very limited bandwidth. It may take an hour for it to find some good routes, but once it does it can be very, very fast. I know people with dsl who have said it runs faster than their (paid) usenet servers.
It may take a week for your frenet client to get things sorted out. And if you never use it, it may NEVR get routes sorted out. It has to "learn where things are" and it cannot do that in an instant, and it cannot do that if you do not have it looking for things. Those first search pages are here for a reason; tell it to "find stuff" and let it run. So what if it takes all day? you don;t have to babysit it.
The problem with freenet is also its strength: it is distributed and, in a primitive sense, "cognitive." You do not expect a baby to walk its first day out of its mother - nor should you expect freent to "walk" the first day it runs on your machine.
thanks for the condescending input, you asshole
lol
xoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Child porn or no, it really doesn't matter to me. Better the people who want that shit can get it for free instead of making it themselves - or paying others to do it for them.
Laws that ban personal behavior have no place in a free society; information should never be the exclusive domain of the rich and/or well connected. The problem with laws that make shit illegal is that they really just make shit more expensive.
i would like you to examine to do a simple exercise for me
i want you to take the levels of rights and lack thereof experienced by citizens in the united states and compare them with citizens of other countries
i can think of a few countries that score higher than the us
but you live in some sort of paranoid schizophrenic alternate reality if you don't rank the us amongst the very few highest countries whose citizens enjoy full expression of their basic human rights
does the us have lots of problems? of course it does. but they are but molehills compared to the problems of other places.
now what i would like you to do is get some perspective
while you focus on all of the "horrible atrocities" the us commits, much more horrible evils are being committed in the world you live, to which you give no attention at all, apparently
it must be nice to live in your small, narrowly focused world, completely out of touch with what real evil is really like, and without any knowledge of how it goes on every day around you, in corners of the world where your rich spoiled pampered ass would never dare shudder to go, and how you have built a wall in your mind so that your mind won't even dwell on those places.
but you go right on attacking the "vast evils" of the united states
surely you are doing much good in the world, right?
again, it's nice to be simpleton in this world
i will not be able to pierce the veil of your simplistic mind, you have walled it off in denial and paranoid hyperbole, and in your mind, your righteous indignation allows you to scream high holy terror at everything the us does, and not give a single thought to the giant mountains of evil going around you as well, of which the us has no part of whasoever, and in fact, is actively fighting, in your name
but you go on with your bad self, you obviously know so much more than me, as proven by the simplistic way your world works: "us bad, us evil"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Many euro nations have more liberal laws than we do, yet they manage to survive just fine. One of the most influencial software projects ever came from Finland, for god's sake.
the problems of the US are, largely, problems of its own making. And I see no signs at all of the US slowing down this behavior anytime soon. I don't see any potential presidential candidates that give me any faith the next administration will be "better" than the one we have now, either in terms of worldwide aggression or in terms of protecting our own freedom.
If you want to see alarmist reactionism, I suggest you look to the Hill. I'm 41, and there is no way I would have kids in this country today. And you don't have to look far to see there are many Americans today who feel the same way as Ian, and are looking to vote with their feet.
So, have fun bashing strawmen and knowing you're such a worldly deep thinker that there's no reason to draw attention to problems at home because it is so much worse in Zimbabwe.
I forget what 8 was for.
hmm... so are you saying the govt doesn't get new "rights" by passing laws it made up?
I thought governments worked like this:
1. govt does A because of X (typically X is the govt itself)
2. court says A is illegal
3. govt passes law legitimizing A in some manner
4. govt carries out A
5. court says A is legal
6. govt happy >:>
If running plutorcracy (nearly all countries), replace X with elites/corporation; if running dictatorship replace X with dictator; if running fascism, replace X with religion/"race"/ethnicity/language/skin colour/hair colour/shape of nose/etc.
Are you telling me I was wrong all this time?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
You are going to be a great leader one day... of the fascist kind...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Why are you posting anonymous? Can't stand up for your beliefs? Anyway...
What's your definition of CONCEPTION? Would you have the same view of conception without science? Are you against birth control too? If I can artificially fertilize human eggs with human sperm (outside the human body), would you consider that conception?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
i will spend my days and my mental powers doing real good
you will spend your days and mental powers beating a dead horse
have fun with that, i'm glad you think your agenda is somehow important
rich simple folk from spoiled pampered backgrounds often develop quaint pointless hobbies and obsessions
you go on with your bad self
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
your post is nothing but so much hysteria
;-)
lol
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yea wonderful Ireland where up until the 1970's they put children in unpaid labor camps if they thought their familes couldn't care for them, where they were then sexually abused by catholic priests.
/. you get to ignore all the infringements the left has made or wants to make on personal freedom they get a free pass.
Europe is NOT a free place. Those trying to pass it off as being so are self deluded. You have no rights in Europe if you think you do get arrested. The Germans need to STFU up since the crimes they commited 55 years ago are not yet attoned for. The 55 years of democracy forced on them by the victors of WW2 is pretty thin. You never see the screaming German extremist on TV.
Anyone who thinks the US is less free hasn't been paying attention. All the shit that is suppposedly going on now has always gone on. Oh it's different when Democrats do it than when Republicans do. I forgot this is
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
I think your problem is that you live where they don't have any Middle Eastern people. That's probably why it seems like everybody except them is getting stripped.
OMG really!11!??
I though I was liberal, but I'm not!!>!!@@! HOly shit IM so shoCKEd!!11 I'm LEFTIST! OMG WHAT does leftist mean?! OMG it means I belong to the political left!! OMG what's left!? OMG it's the past participle of leave! OMG I'm not liberal, I just believe in the tennants of the past participle of leave! OMG IM SO FUCKING CONFUSED!!!!
Seriously, does anybody know where leftist came from, or what the hell the difference is between it and liberal? It doesn't help that you never can find a dictionary with an actual definition for either left-wing or right-wing. This is why I only ever use liberal and conservative. Those at least tie in to the real world on some level. And what the hell new ideas have conservatives come up with recently? "Let's keep doing this shit some more."? Nobody's come up with anything new in politics since the 1400s, for fuck's sake. All liberals have done since then is invent the Muppets and all conservatives have done is move all their angsty manifestos from paper to radio. And they both invented an assload of new words with recursive definitions.
Whoever does manage to come up with and idea they didn't steal from an 100 year old dead dictator gets my vote, but it doesn't look like it's happening anytime soon.
is that of a teenager
;-)
very loud, very angry, and very clueless
you'll grow up and become an adult someday, i have faith in you child
lol
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
smooches asswipe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
would you mind telling that to kuwait and iran?
brush up on your recent history there, friend
so when the us does hand over power, what will you say then about it's intetions? you don't have to trust the us to do so, i do though. and when they do hand over power to iraqis, maybe you learn to trust their word as well.
i don't see how you can see imperialism in a nation that spent 10 years developing a case for war with iraq after a united nations sanctioned invasion, and promises to foster democracy there and then leave... and not see imperialism in a nation that fought a bloody expansionistic war with iran and made a surprise takeover of kuwait
the us has no friends in the middle east. iraq is but the first domino in the move of the middle east towards democracy. the monarchy to it's left and the theocracy to it's right are next to fall to democracy, not by military means, but by internal upheavel after they see how good the iraqis will have it under democracy. iran is already teetering under student unrest.
democracy will bring peace to this region, and therefore peace of mind to the rest of us as well. there is no other way. the people of the middle east deserve peace and prosperity, and they will thank the us in time for giving it to them.
it is entirely natural not to trust at first the intentions of others. but after the strength of one's word is revealed by being backed up by promised actions, only peace can blossom.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Good point. At least have the sense to recognize the gravity of the situation and go for broke.
"No one in America voted for that cocksucking motherfucker shoving his hairy monkey-cock through our destinies, Karl 'Motherfucker' Rove."
or
"No one in America voted for Paul 'Fucking fuck fucker fucking fucks all fucking day' Wolfowitz, the man that's going to get us all fucking killed any fucking minute now, the cockfucking fuckfucker."
or
"The less than 1/2 of America that voted for that poor man George W. Bush probably were not aware that he was not going to actually perform any presidential duties during his term as president."
democrats and republicans alike
the influence of corporate $ in US politics is a bigger travesty than a thousand dmcas
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it should be one man one vote, and the person with the most votes wins...
Well, there goes the parliamentary system too!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I call bullshit.
Jesus Christ, just do a search on Google for "prescott bush" + hitler. The facts are well documented by reputable sources: The Bush family fortune was *built* by supporting the Nazis.
Also, how that translates to George Bush having Nazi like tendencies is beyond me.
It doesn't, nor is it implied that Prescott Bush had an interest in killing Jews. Rather, it's the notion that many of the people currently in power attained their positions through a history of blatant disregard for ethical considerations, through a desire for power at any cost, no matter who gets hurt in the process.
Look around you, man. It's not Nazi Germany, and Bush isn't Hitler, but there's the same lack of ethics amongst the people in power today. And if it isn't put in check, *something* is going to happen.
The US ban on child pornography fosters this behavior. It makes child pornography profitable to the point of attracting organized crime. But, because it's banned the only people who would dare talk about it must be "part of it" themselves and, therefore, no one dares speak of it in public lest tehy "incriminate" themselves. So Moldavian, Ukrainian, Russian kids go on being traded and shipped off to Israeli and Turkish brothels and sold on websites, but it's alright because we don't have to see it.
Fuck you and your narrow, egotistical view. US money is prized everywhere, and laws like these drive profit and exploitation the world over.
and the complex and nuanced understanding of the world
;-)
of a teenager
so angry, so loud, so clueless
but don't worry child, i have faith in you, you will grow up someday, and know true wisdom
enjoy your cynical teenage replacement in the meantime
lol
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
smooches asswipe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You think you can actually ban anything? Banning behavior drives profit. Banning non political speech drives profit in the name of self rightcheousness. Whether it's alcohol, pot, or child porn - the second you ban personal use of something, you increase the profit motive substantially, and you expose a substantial number of otherwise innocent people to both prosecution and persecution.
You hang the lynchers. You hang the rapists. You do not hang the people who view these things, no matter what their motive. Prosecuting people purely for motive amounts to thought crimes, and thought crimes are not the domain of a free society.
first, i am not right wing, i am a liberal hawk. i am one with people like salman rushdie, who wholeheartedly embrace the forceful spread of democracy to dangeorus despotic regimes.
;-)
it is only a sly joke that millions of people can be birthed into relatively liberal democracy to what they had before... all under the watchful eye of our idiot right wing moron-in-chief gw bush
second, i agree with you about friends and the us. the us needs to center it's foreign policy on one and only one doctirne: the spread of democracy, no more, no less. any other commitment based on more cynical goals only makes us out to be hypocrits. sadly, us foreign policy falls short on this.
however, i assert to you that the actions the us is making, for whatever cynical reason you see in them, is worth tons more than zero efforts the do-nothing other western democracies do not make.
it is always better to forcefully act against a perceived evil than to sit around and fret about it and eventually do nothing. in such a case, the cancer only grows. saddam hussein was a cancer that needed removing, i don't see how you could debate me on this. there is a large plurality of opinion on this all over the world.
fact: the world is better off without saddam hussein. if our opinions depart on this point we really don't have much to talk about.
fact that remains to be seen: the us will democratize iraq. since this hasn't happened yet, we can only assert our feelings and beliefs about this. it is clear i believe the us will democratize iraq. it is clear you believe they will not.
i'll tell you what, in a year or two, when you see the us leave iraq for good and leave iraq a democratic country, i hope you will revisit this little chat in your mind we have had, and be intellectually honest with me and note that faith in the us actually capable of doing good in the world is worth something.
i will make the promise to you that if the outcome is not as i see it, i will revisit this little chat in my mind as well, and grant you your win, which, if unfortunately true, would be a win for the cynics.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but who will you vote for in 2004? As a Republican, would really vote for Kerry or Dean over Bush?
cpeterso
or is it AmeriKKKa?
cpeterso
What is "compelling?" Is it "compelling" evidence you will rob a bank if you can get a ski mask? Is the logical response to this to ban all sales of ski masks? Is it logical to conclude people will not be able to mask their appearance if they cannot buy ski masks? Or to require "registration" of anyone purchasing a ski mask? Reminds me of a third rock episode where their plans to rob a bank were thwarted by the pens being chained to the tables.
Child porn is always a violation of rights of the child. No consent. The only way to make kiddie porn with real people is criminal.
So what? You hunt down the pornographers and prosecute them. Have you done any research on this? When you do, you will see figures turned up (by the police organizations themselves) that children pictured in child pornography are rarely found. I don't mean like one in ten - I mean like one in a thousand. That's one of the reasons it's such a big deal when they do actually track down someone who is creating the stuff.
This, despite them saying there are tens of thousands of images.
So, let's say there's 50 images of any given child - 50 pictures of a child being raped. That doesn't happen in a vacuum; there will be another person there (the rapist), and it will likely be filmed in a room, in a house, in a state or province or territory.
Banning the sharing of these photos means you are mandating secrecy. You are grossly limiting the number of people who will see these photos, which means the state is protecting child rapists.
How the fuck is that logical? Child pornography should be printed on goddamn milk cartons. It should be a HUGE FUCKING DEAL. There should be websites with HAVE YOU SEEN ME? printed in giant red letters followed by every recent image of molestation to be found. It should be the number one hit on google, because the more people who see these pictures the greater the chances of anyone - neighbor, spouse, or relative - recognizing a child, or a face, a hand, a tatoo, a dick, a couch or wallpaper or a chair.
THAT is how you protect the children. By subverting the message and keeping the only available evidence of a very serious crime a secret, all you protect are the people doing the most damage: the people committing the acts in the first place.
Here's the Straight Dope on the issue.
You obvious-lee haaave neevah huud oof calee-fon-ee-yah!
Well, congrats on your proud ignorance!
i have made my points consistently and clearly in myraid ways throughout this thread
;-)
;-P
i do not need to spoonfeed them to you again and again
but if you insist on viewing my refusal to bow to your dogmatic argumentative needs as a concession that you are right, well then congratulations: you have completely won the entire argument, there is no merit to any of my views at all lol
i don't think i will be the one to change you, child, a teenager needs to go to his room and skulk until the anger passes and clarity returns
you'll get ii someday, i have faith in you growing up
lol
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
stop take a deep breath hyperbole propaganda you are drowning in it ....
god save us all from your teenage-level simplistic moralizing and righteous indignation
in short, grow the up, you are a moral child, easily manipulated by propaganda ....
How the fuck have you spewed more than twenty four of these utterly useless ad hominem attacks in this thread and escaped being modded a troll?
Apparently you were not a reader of /., nor a reader of the EFF website, when Clinton was in office...
I'm sorry. I'm not from around here. I've been reading this instead. Which one should I be reading?
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
I have been a registered libertarian for ages. I will now be labled a total troll.
I just have to point out the knee jerk "It's the republicans" fault when I the democrats are just as anti freedom as they proport the republicans to be.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
I'll be the first to admit it, Freenet rocks. But Ian Clarke, when he's not busy letting us swap mp3's without worry of RIAA persecution, is not jesus. He's a flawed, perhaps very flawed, human being, and the way this whole thread has been spent lauding him has left me a bit nauseated.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his business ventures like Uprizer are in the black, and that he's not just run out of money.
That doesn't make him any less of an abusive, manipulative jerk. (Sorry for the Geocities URL, if anyone reads this instead of modding it troll maybe I can find a decent mirror somewhere)
So thanks for Freenet, Ian, it's a great tool. It's just a pity that you're one, too.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
One that we know of. There were around 2,000 detentions of Muslims in the US immediately after 9/11. "Around" because the US government refused to say how many and WHO they were. Federal judges denied releasing names to the public. The names I heard about were because the familes screamed to the press. Ashcroft isn't going to make press releases saying he's breaking laws, so we don't know how many enemy combatants there are.
I'm against all terrorists and I want the book thrown at them. However, it worries me that the US government can arrest anybody in the US and secretly lock them up as an enemy combatant. It would be ok if you could call a laywer and prove your innocence and go free afterwards, but the US is prepared to use "Secret evidence" in certian cases. Moussaui or Sami Al-Arian come to mind, but there could be dozens of others that we just dont know about. You can't prove your innocence if you cant debate the evidence you cant see.
I don't like "secret" because it means there is no oversight. The folder of secret evidence that you can't look inside could be just blank pages for all you know. I know Bush wouldn't do this, but lets say he wanted his future opponent Howard Dean arrested. The arrest could be classified under "national security" as long as the President deems it "a clear and present danger." As long as nobody saw the FBI snatch him off the street, Dean would "disappear" indefinately and people would assume he became another Jimmy Hoffa.
I don't buy your "The government doesnt declare innocent people as enemy combatants" idea, because a few dozen people in Guantanamo have been set free about a year later, turns out they were nothing but civillians.
I just did a Google search on "Nazi" + aliens and got a bunch of web sites too. Therefore the Nazis must have been in collusion with the aliens! The web said so.
So you think this "power at all costs" thing is pretty new huh?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!