((Editor's comments in double parenthesis - Homer))
 
                        THE CHANNELS OF FREEDOM
 
                                ACT - 90
                            3 September 1995
 
                 Copyright (C) 1995 Homer Wilson Smith
       Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes.
 
     I believe that people have a right to self defense, even to kill
others in self defense, they even have a moral mandate to do so should
the need arise.
 
     I believe that people have a right to do generally illegal things
in order to prevent illegal things from being done to them, such as
killing another who is about to kill you.
 
     I believe that an author who has had his work posted to the
internet in violation of his copyright has the right to defend himself
by canceling those postings.
 
     Just as someone has the right to kill another in order to prevent
the ruin of their own lives, people have the right to cancel postings to
prevent their own financial ruin.
 
     In this case you are killing a posting, rather than a person.
 
     Again I will point out that the PHYSICAL COPY of a posting made by
another that resides on my hard drive as an ISP, LEGALLY BELONGS TO ME.
I may do with that posting whatever I see fit as long as I do not
violate the copyrights of the author.
 
     The copyright laws tell me I may not make MORE copies of the
posting than I am permitted to, they do not tell me I may not make LESS
of the posting.
 
     I am not a public service, I am not supported by tax payers
dollars.
 
     As an ISP I am under no obligation to carry any material, posting
or communication of any kind from any person.  I am under no obligation
to allow anyone to have access to my system, I am under no obligation to
carry any particular news group or any newsgroups at all, and I am under
no obligation to carry any particular person's postings on my system,
even if they should happen to be in a newsgroup that I am otherwise
carrying.
 
     I am free to not accept postings from any one person or group of
people that I chose before they are placed on my hard drive, and I am
free to erase them afterwards.  THEY ARE MY COPIES, I MAY DO WITH THEM
AS I PLEASE.
 
     If someone writes a book and I buy a copy of it, the copy is MINE.
I may not copy the book, but I may sell it to another, I may give it
away, I may also burn it or throw it away.  I can choose to not have my
copy of any book that I own, in fact I can choose to not have any copy
of any book period.
 
     I am also free to invite others to come and burn my copy of that
book, and I am free to invite others to buy their own copies and burn
them too.
 
     The original author of the book can LEGALLY do nothing to stop me.
 
     As an ISP I am selling access to my system.  THAT IS ALL I AM
SELLING.  I am selling a password that works, nothing more.  The
guarantee that I give and the warranty that I make is:
 
     "If your payment is on time before the beginning of the month, you
will either have access at 12 midnight on the first of the month or you
will certainly receive your money back in full."
 
     THAT I PROMISE.
 
     The SERVICES that they find on the system once they have been sold
ACCESS, are whatever services they find there or none at all.  The
services are provided on an AS-IS basis, with no guarantee of
availability nor warranty of merchantability for any particular purpose.
 
     As part of their purchase price, each customer must sign a waiver
of all rights to sue me or hold me liable for any damage, whether real
or imagined that they may suffer 'because' of the service that they do
or not find on the system.
 
     It is my service, I have a right to sell it as I see fit.
 
     If someone is dissatisfied with the ACCESS that I have sold them,
they may return it for a full refund *IF* they return it before the
month begins.  That means once the month has begun, the access price is
non refundable.  They are free to not buy another month if they wish.
If they have bought more than one month in advance, they will be
refunded unused months, but not unused parts of months.  Most of the
internet industry works this way.
 
     What I offer on my system is an enormous amount of freedom of
speech, there is something on my system that crosses almost everyone's
lines of propriety.  Whether or not I approve of child pornography,
snuff pictures, or warez is totally irrelevant, I use the presence of
these items coming into my system as a bell weather sign that the
channels of free and anonymous speech are still open.
 
     Some might think that by allowing such material onto a public
system, that I am helping to create a market for such material, and yes
in fact some people will probably be moved to create and provide more of
such things because of the market.  But the market in dead and abused
kids exists mainly because people refuse to talk about such things with
their children, for fear that by talking about it, they will lead their
children INTO it.
 
     Out of sight and out of mind.
 
     "If one does not talk about sin, no one will sin".
 
     Thus parents bring their children up in a well of silence, rather
than teaching them at an early age, in gory detail, about the dangers of
enforced and inhibited sex where the children could report abuse when it
happened rather than keeping it to themselves and drowning it out.
 
     Therefore although I do not believe that snuff pictures are a good
thing, nor do I believe that children should be sex slaves, I do believe
that every picture on the planet of this stuff should be placed on the
internet as fast as possible so that people will wake up to what life on
Earth has become, even if it does create a momentary upsurge in the
profits of and the market for this kind of material.
 
     I also find a terrible hypocrisy of people bitterly complaining
about the sexual abuse of children, but never one word about the FOOD
abuse of children.  Most children suffer more abuse over the subject of
food than they ever will over the subject of sex.
 
     Anyone who can't remember the taste of their mothers tits, is
basically a child food abuse case of magnitude.  But food abuse is a
institutionalized insanity, EVERYBODY DOES IT, so its ok.
 
     I also find a terrible hypocrisy in the loud clamor about a few
forged cancels, but not one word of complaint about the copyright
violations that are being committed, including the violations in the
porn groups, or the 200 megs of warez that come into my system every
day.
 
     That's 200 megs of stolen software EVERY DAY.
 
     I guess people are too busy complaining about 4 or 5 cancels a day
coming into a.r.s.  to complain about 200 megs of warez a day coming
into alt.binaries.ibm/mac.warez.
 
     You see posting a copyright violation of porn, or some dead girl
with a dick up her, or the latest version of Microsoft Word is FREE
SPEECH, but posting a defense against this stuff called a forged cancel,
well there are no words for something as low as that.
 
     We certainly wouldn't want to deify it by calling it free speech
too.
 
     The truth is people defend with great righteousness whatever their
present addiction happens to be.  If they need porn or warez or pictures
of naked little girls they will be dead silent about those copyright
violations; if they need church tech, they will scream bloody murder
about how they have been too abused for words by forged cancels, even
though they are merely the authors, or their assigns or friends
defending themselves from financial ruin.
 
     Pointing out there are 'proper channels for making a complaint' is
so vapid its not worth discussing.
 
     The screaming and yelling about forged cancels is called a DEDEX.
It stands for DED EXPOSED.  A DED is a prior act of unprovoked cruelty.
 
     It means you have done wrong, and now you are fabricating and
exaggerating like hell in order to build up a wrong done to you AFTER
THE FACT big enough to justify the wrong you did to others BEFORE THE
FACT.
 
     Alas black holes can never be filled.
 
     The Churchies may be assholes, but they are right assholes on that
point.
 
     Anyhow, in my opinion, right or wrong, legal tracking of forged
cancellers will do more damage in the long run to freedom of speech than
all the forged cancels in the whole world.  As long as I believe that, I
will authorize all cancels on my system, just as I authorize the porn,
and the snuff, and the warez.
 
     They are all a bell weather sign that the channels of freedom are
still open.
 
     Homer