Re: Public vs Private (Was: Re: Violation or Protection?)

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

This is a very thoughtful essay. We need more of them.

Though "I agree" messages are frowned upon, the fact is that most
Cypherpunks messages understandably are messages critiquing or disagreeing
with some part of another message...this is not too surprising.

But sometimes it's useful to say "I agree."

At 1:31 PM 8/26/96, Lou Poppler wrote:
...
>As with anything, there are gray areas and boundary cases in real life
>where this is not as clear-cut as in the private/public examples TCM
>has provided us in the past.  Let's look at a couple of fuzzy examples.
...
>Another fuzzy gray area would be the common areas in shopping malls --
>the large corridors outside the stores, with fountains and park benches
>and payphones and trees and public performance areas.  These spaces
...
>for trendy young people to want to gather.  Various skirmishes are
>occasionally fought over such questions as soliciting petition signatures
>or giving out free printed information in these spaces.

This is essentially a "squatter's rights" kind of "blurring," as I see it.
(And I don't agree with the argument for the blurring.) The argument goes
something like this: "I've been coming to this Mall for many years, and
this is where the people I want to see my protest come. Therefore, I have
earned a kind of squatter's right to enter your property and make my
protest."

The larger game-theoretic point is the one Lou notes later, that the
players on all sides use the law to jockey for advantage--the merchant gets
skateboarding and loitering banned on public streets, customers of private
shopping malls get the courts to let them set up their protests on the
property of others.

(Needless to say, I don't sympathize with either example.)


...
>This is true in perhaps more ways than those so far discussed.
>The cause of liberty is broad: it embraces Mr. May's freedom to run his
>hypothetical business by his own rules, dictating what his employees may
>and may not do using his computers and firing them if he doesn't like
>the color of their tie; it also embraces the freedom of surly youths
>and old codgers to hang out somewhere, up to no particular good and
>espousing unpopular or pig-headedly-wrong opinions, frightening horses
>and small children.

And just as one lobbying group is pushing for restrictions in public places
of "loiterers" and "bums" (my town, Santa Cruz, passed a law which
criminalized _sitting_ on public streets, even out of the flow of traffic),
other lobbying groups are pushing for interfering with rights of employers
to set dress codes, as but one example.

A constant confusion of what "rights" really are.

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
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,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."