"Deterrence"

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

In the 1960's movie, "Dr. Strangelove," the title character defined
"deterrence" as being "the art of making your enemies FEAR to attack you."  

As has been well-publicized recently, pressure from a German prosecutor had
induced Compuserve to cease access to a number of sex-related Internet
groups.  Clearly, neither Compuserve nor its users nor the Internet
community in general has demonstrated adequate DETERRENCE to him or people
in his position.

In my essay, "Assassination Politics," I pointed out that it would be
relatively easy to deter such official-type actions if enough of us simply
said, "NO!" and denominated it in terms of dollars and cents.  After all,
with four million Compuserve users, if they each were willing to donate a
penny to see this latter-day Fuhrer dead, that would be $40,000.  (Pardon me
if I don't translate this into marks and other currencies.)  

In practice, of course, if such a system were in place, it is  highly
unlikely that he would have even dared try to put pressure on Compuserve,
and Compuserve wouldn't have dared respond cooperatively to such outrageous
influence.

It is worth noting that if six million Jews had been willing to donate a
dime each in 1932 to see Hitler and his cronies dead, much of the late
thirties and forties would have ended up quite differently.  Some may argue
that today's situation isn't nearly as serious now as it was then, but then
again, the situation probably didn't really look very serious in 1932, did it?!?

WHEN, exactly, would it be appropriate to act?