Re: PRESS RELEASE: GERMANY CENSORS DUTCH WEBSITE WWW.XS4ALL.NL

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

At 8:18 AM 9/6/96, tank wrote:
>Please forward:

>             * * * P R E S S   R E L E A S E * * *
>
>
>GERMANY CENSORS DUTCH WEBSITE WWW.XS4ALL.NL, WITH 3100 WEBPAGES
>
>
>German internetproviders, joined in the Internet Content Taskforce
>(ICTF), started censoring the Dutch website www.xs4all.nl, containing
>3100 personal and commercial homepages. This act of censorship is
>caused by the webpage of a magazine that is banned in Germany, Radikal
>(http://www.xs4all.nl/ ~tank/radikal/).
...

Though my German friends will perhaps feel I am picking on them, this is
not so (this week Germany is in the hot seat, last week it was
Singapore....).

A Modest Proposal:

* as Germany is bent on blocking sites which carry this subversive
pamphlet, "Radikal," let us mirror it on thousands of sites around the
world.

* when the Germans went into Danmark and insisted Jews wear badges,
ordinary citizens (and the Danish Royal Family, as I recall) also took to
wearing these Star of David badges.

* wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if the "Free Speech Blue Ribbon" now
attached to so many pages were to be joined by a "Star of David"? This Star
of David symbol could mean "We support freedom to read, and our site
contains the "Radikal" publication which Germans are forbidden to access."

(I know nothing of how such symbolic campaigns are actually launched and
managed, so I'm suggesting the hint of an idea. I do think mirroring the
banned publication (_any_ banned publication, by _any_ government) on as
many sites as possible is a Good Idea.)

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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