CENSORSHIP AND THE NET

      Ah well, I may have changed my mind in many ways since ACT90 was
written.

      I believe the context was the Church or its thugs were trying to
cancel unauthorized postings of their copyrighted and trade secreted
material.

      Relative to the poster of a copyright violation that ends up on my
usenet disk space, the copy belongs to me, so I can do what I will with
it, just not copy it further.  But usenet news copies things by
definition so that's kind of moot.

      The point is the copy on my disks do NOT belong to the poster,
so I am free to dispose of it or keep it or change it as I will.

      But relative to the owner of the copyright, the posting may
'belong' to me, but is none the less an illegal copyright copy, so I had
better deal with it as the law demands.

      The issue of cancels by original posters or by forgers remains
problematic.  As there is no authentication on usenet news, anyone can
cancel anyone's postings if they know how and have the access, thus
allowing ANY cancels becomes a problem.

      It became such a problem at one time that the Church tried to
cancel the entire newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

      You see here is a religion about communication that doesn't
want anyone communicating about it.

      To protect against this vandalism I chose to turn off accepting
cancels and group removals entirely.

      So have most other ISP's.

      Thus, even though I get requests now again to cancel secret tech
from alt.religion.scientology by Chuch lawyers, even after I hand cancel
them, they remain on every other news server in the world.

      So I ask the lawyers if they are picking only on me, or contacting
all the other news servers in the world to get them to cancel the
postings also.

      Present policy is, a.r.s is retained for one day, and thus is self
canceling as EVERYTHING posted to it is gone within 24 hours which is
more than reasonable response time to deleting a copyright violation.
Same with the sex binaries.

      And yes the bell weather is still in good shape.

      Homer

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith     The Paths of Lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF        Cross            Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com    In the Line of Duty    http://www.lightlink.com

On Tue, 9 Nov 2010, homer@lightlink.com wrote:

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>          ((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
>
> ================ http://www.clearing.org ====================
> Tue Nov  9 03:06:02 EST 2010
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