Re: Child Porn (was: Re: [freenet-chat] Thoughts about Freenet)
On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 01:19:20AM -0400, Mark J. Roberts wrote: On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, Travis Bemann wrote: The Libertarians would abolish the income tax and the war on drugs. The government would be substantially weaker under Libertarian control. Under Libertarian control the government's sole purpose would be the protection of the capitalists and their property and fighting those people who wish to expropriate the bourgeoisie and breaking strikes and other stuff of that sort. A Libertarian world would be quite nightmarish. A world of corporate enforcers, right-wing vigilantes, lethal pollution, extreme poverty, corporate-run towns and cities, and just total unrestricted corporate power. You get the picture. It would be similar to fascism, in many respects. I was assuming that criminal things like strike breaking, corporate enforcers, right-wing vigilantes, and polluting others' property would not be permitted. The Libertarian platform does not include the legalization of those crimes. [snip description of capitalist evils] In short, capitalists will: * Pollute my property severely. * Kill me if I strike or dissent. * Create dangerous working conditions for me. The first two are not possible without the corruption of the government. Why is government corruption more likely under a Libertarian regime, as opposed to a Democratic or Republican regime? They can still happen under a Democratic or Republican regime, and have happened under Democratic and Republican regimes in the past. But this is more likely under a Libertarian regime because of the no-holds-barred stance towards business and industry. Also, all of this stuff is in retrospect. I didn't make up any of this stuff; it all really happened back in the days of unrestricted, unregulated business back in the late 1800s. One of the main lessons of history is that unrestricted, unregulated business is NOT a good idea. If given freedom, the capitalists will run with it and use the opportunity to screw anyone that gets in the way of profit in any way. I would propose simple, easy, legal ways to fix some of those problems, but they assume that the government is not corrupt. For example, dangerous working conditions can be fixed by striking. Extreme poverty can be fixed by starting new corporations and/or asking for charity. Corporate-run cities can be fixed by organizing new cities that are not corporate-run. But without a free market (freedom to strike, to choose a competitor's product, etc.) and sane laws (murder and destruction of others' property are illegal, etc.), there is no hope. The problem with corporations is that they are inherently motivated by profit and profit only. As for freedom to strike and such, I thought that striking is theft according to the views of at least some Libertarians and "anarcho"capitalists? It might not be your idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if the government viewed striking as such under a Libertarian regime. Starting new corporations: easier said than done. Where do you get the capital? Where do you get the starting resources? And even if it is originally run for everyone's benefit, how long do you think it will be before people concerned with profit and screwing anyone and everyone who gets in the way of profit gain control (unless it is a collective, which in an otherwise capitalist society is technically a corporation, but is rather different and usually behaves differently from normal corporations because it is worker-owned and worker-managed)? And do you really think that you can rely on charity?! It is not in the interests of the ruling class to provide charity for charity sake, for poor people are a good source of cheap labor; the only sort of corporate charity that I see today is stuff that is meant to result in tax reductions and stuff that is really in the interests of the corporation providing charity (such as giving schools a whole bunch of computers with Micro$oft Windows, so all the kiddies grow up using Micro$oft software). As for corporate-run cities, do you know what a company town is? It is a town that is run as a company, usually to supply workers for a particular factory; if you work at that factory you must live in that town. In many areas where there are a not many jobs, people often end up needing to work in a company town, because of necessity. Finally, back in the bad old days of the late 1800s, there were laws against murder and such, but that did not stop vigilantes and police and soldiers from killing strikers and such. Do Haymarket Square and the Pullman Strike mean anything to you. I would like to live in a world where I can freely buy and sell things. Maybe it's just a stupid fantasy. It is a stupid fantasy, for it is never going to happen without all the nasty baggage, as long as it is "anarcho"capitalism that you desire. On the other hand, you can shed all the nasty baggage by
[freenet-chat] Information Producers Initiative
I think you folks at the FreeNet project will find the following initiative very interesting: I am starting a project called the Information Producers Initiative. I have pasted a draft of a basic position paper below. I would like very much if I could obtain comments on it, perhaps through this list and/or other public fora. It is a very general foundation on which specific policy positions are meant to be based. I am presently considering developing commentaries on HIPAA (a federal law addressing medical records privacy) and the Tasini and Napster cases. I am specifically interested in obtaining any information regarding other initiatives that might be similar to this, and what's been tried and what happened to these initiatives. I have set up a list for people who are interested in these matters. Subscription is by sending an email saying "subscribe C-FIT_Community" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Forward this message freely as you wish. The text below is also available at: http://RealMeasures.dyndns.org/C-FIT Thanks for your help, Seth Johnson Committee for Independent Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Information Producers Initiative A Project of the Committee for Independent Technology The Committee for Independent Technology holds that a proper consideration of information-related public policy must focus on what the state of technology means for all citizens. We believe that a well-founded understanding of the condition in which citizens presently find themselves as a result of information technology, should focus on one fundamental principle. This principle is that information is used to produce new information. To put another cast on the same point, information that is accessible in whatever form has never merely served the purpose of consumption. This may seem to be an obvious point, but when it is considered in light of the new modes of public access that have developed, and the flexible means of using information that are now at hand, one sees that this principle is more important now than it may ever have seemed to be before. In the past, only specific groups of people, engaged in specific types of activities, had their interests assessed in terms of their capacity as information producers. The public at large has been treated as mere consumers of information in many areas, with public policy reflecting this tendency. Now, however, we all have the capacity to participate in the development of human knowledge, on a reasonably equal footing with all other citizens, because of the forms of access to the public sphere that are now available, and to the forms of information that may be found there, by means of public communications networks such as the Internet. This puts us all in an entirely new position with respect to our abilities to access, manipulate and produce information. We may now manipulate information in a profoundly flexible way. We may quickly access any work that is available electronically on public communications networks. We may, with great facility, decompose any digitized work into component parts. We may manipulate, analyze, synthesize, select and combine the conclusions, observations, discrete facts, ideas, images, musical passages, binary bits and other elements of any information in digital form. We may efficiently produce useful, meaningful and creative expressive works on the basis of this flexible access to information. But perhaps the most far-reaching way in which information technology affects our condition as citizens, is in the fact that we may all now distribute our information products to the public at large in a powerful and convenient manner that obviates the need to rely on publishers and other intermediaries who have traditionally provided public access to information producers. We must no longer allow our rights in the area of the access to and use of information and information technology, to be regarded merely as rights of consumption. All citizens must assure that policy makers no longer treat their interests in information merely with respect to their capacity as consumers. We must advocate for and guard our broader interests as information producers in equal standing in the public sphere, possessing essential powers and rights in the access, use and communication of information. The Committee for Independent Technology seeks to assure that the rights and capabilities of all citizens are not undermined through public policies that restrict the ordinary exercise of their rights to access and produce information by flexible means. ___ Chat mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
Re: [freenet-chat] This just showed up today...
On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 08:28:36PM +0200, nomad creaktop wrote: If this is what I think it is... I'm making no assumptions for legal reasons ;-) anyone successfully download it yet? tell us. No, I just get the redirect to freenet:CHK@VEQV2u2Ko4EFEwbC0guHRt3dqnsXAwE,hzMuKQ1OQsMhqL~7KovnxA and it times out even with HTL 100. If it's what I think you think it is, chances are it's either dropped off Freenet due to being too big or the person inserted it has saturated his bandwidth or used HTL 1 to insert and we can't retrieve it. -- Leo Howell M5AKW freenet:MSK@SSK@2vz8xnhEJyJOlBVNfBEOWaohQFEQAgE/freesite// PGP signature
