Re: Compuserve is Not "Censoring": Look to Governments for the Cause

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 5:17 AM 12/29/95, Bill Humphries wrote:

[much good stuff, with which I agree, elided]

>Support your local ISP.

This simple line is very, very important!

Consider two extremes:

* Extreme 1--Internet access via Compuserve, AOL, or other organizations
striving for a "global presence." Every country these organizations does
business in puts pressure on them to control content, supply names of
contacts, etc. Singapore bans 200 newsgroups, Iraq executes the local
sysops, the U.S. jails the corporate executives for allowing
"alt.barney.die.die.die" to corrupt the morals of young people.

* Extreme 2--"Individuals on the Net directly." Joe User has a box on the
Net. Albania is powerless to hassle him. France cannot seize his computer.
(If he's in Country A, that country may harass him, but if he connects to
accomodation addresses in other countries, even this is lessened or avoided
completely.)

Small ISPs are closer to Extreme 2, as they have no presence in Albania,
Iran, France, Chad, or other states desiring to control content. For small
U.S. ISPs, their main worry is what the U.S. government will say they must
do.

Small, local ISPs may of course be more prone to other kinds of pressure.
But it is my experience that small services are less likely to adopt speech
codes and other draconian behavioral laws than are larger and "more
responsible" (:-}) services.

Jay Campbell, one of the sysops at my ISP, "got.net," may want to give his
perspective, if he sees this.

I see a positive longterm trend toward people connecting through smaller,
more local services. Hard to enforce Albania's laws on 20,000 small
Internet connection services. Even longer term, the anarchy of the Net will
reach its true flowering when millions of users are directly connected.

How ya gonna keep em down when they're directly on the Net?

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1  | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."