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

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

At 11:17 AM 12/30/95, Ulf Moeller wrote:

> From the comment by Niklaus Haubl�tzel:
>
>"Reality cannot be outlawed, only improved, and many still hope that
>complete freedom of information and opinion in computer networks can
>contribute to that. But the company of CompuServe does not seem to
>be interested in that. They only want their customers' money, but
>not their freedom. [...] Like any censorhip, this one comes with
>hipocrisy. Towards their paying customers, CompuServe claims to have
>been forced by German prosecutors. Thus one lie creates another.
>That they were forced it out of the question. It is only in
>dictatorships that the prosecutors judge the defendants - that is why
>dictatorships need censors."

Well said by this person! (Except for the point about Compuserve's
"greed"...greed is good.)

I am hopeful that Germany can move away from this censorious position
(whether they prosecuted CS or not, there was clearly the threat of
prosecution, and CS caved into it).

As with the Cornell case, where students "volunteered" to perform
"community service" and thus Cornell did not otherwise discipline them for
their speech (the "75 Reasons" joke they sent to their friends), the mere
possibility of punishment/sanction is usually sufficient. This is called
"the chilling effect" in free speech discussions.

Longterm, the solution still lies with moving toward smaller units directly
accessing the Net, thus making threats harder to effectively mount.

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed