DON'T Nuke Singapore Back into the Stone Age

[Arun Mehta <amehta@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in>]

At 17:55 29/08/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:

>Personally, if this crackdown in Singapore happens, I intend to post
>various anti-Singapore and anti-Lee Kwan Yew & Sons screeds to various
>newsgroups that Singaporans might like to read. Then, if the Yew Dynasty
>decides to pull the plug, it'll be to more and more groups.

There are two sides to this: after all, it is the Singaporeans who finally 
have to sort out this problem with their government, and denying them
the Usenet platform for discussion would only hinder that process.

Then again, inappropriate postings are the bane of the Internet: the consensus 
on which the Net functions relies heavily on people not posting
inappropriately. 
Of course, posting anti LKY stuff on a Singapore newsgroup might be perfectly
appropriate -- it is the "more and more groups" part I am worried about.

I quite frankly disapprove of the mail-bomb suggestions made on
the list. Accessing
the Internet is hard enough without these additional roadblocks.
Mail-bombing one
person on a server punishes everybody else on that server too. We need to work
with the people in Singapore on this, not make enemies of them.

I'm glad that the situation in Singapore is attracting much
attention on this list, and that
people want to do something about it. China is seriously
interested in the experiment, 
and India will be too: the law here holds the ISPs responsible
for ensuring that nothing objectionable and obscene is carried by
them, and what simpler way to comply than to
simply use the Singapore proxy. Right now, the law isn't being
enforced, but soon some
headline-seeking politician will point out this out, and the
problem will be with us. So, 
it is important to nip the Singapore experiment in the bud.
However, I think that  the constructive approach, one which
furthers the Net, "routes around", would work better.

For instance, I'd love to see some smart venture capitalist fund
a project that makes
use of surplus, off-peak bandwidth on a transponder on any of the
myriad satellites 
floating over Asia to download Web pages on request. Ideally, I
should be able to 
send via pgp and anonymous remailer a request for a page, which would soon
come beamed down unencrypted via satellite. No more waiting hours
for the latest 
version of Netscape to download, and then restarting from scratch
every time the line drops. Also, goodbye censorship. Even if the
government decided to cut off
Internet access completely, I'd still be able to receive what others such as Tim
think might be of interest to me.

How would this generate revenue? Well, there could be advertising appended to 
select pages, for instance. In any case, with so much uncertainity about how
commerce on the net will work, and in good Internet tradition a la Netscape,
it would probably be smarter to start with a free service, and figure out later
how to make money from it, once it becomes popular.

In a few years, satellite-based Internet access will become widespread and
affordable. However,  the next few years are  really crucial. Governments are
still trying to figure out how to deal with the Net, frame
legislation, etc. This
would be a good time to present them with a fait accompli. Hong Kong will
revert to China next year. What better gift to the nervous freedom fighters 
there, than to help them with their Internet access? Maybe Hong Kong will
take over China, instead of the other way around...

I remember in Sculley's book "Odyssey: from Pepsi to Apple"  he mentions how
Steve Jobs finally convinced him to join Apple by asking if he wanted to sell 
sugared water for the rest of his life, or would he rather change the world. 
The Internet presents opportunities like that to far more people,
and this, IMHO,
is one of them: any would-be Sculleys out there?

Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta@cpsr.org
http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/  finger amehta@cerfnet.com for public key