Hmmm

John van V. john_van_v at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 18 09:25:41 CST 2000


Everybody on this planet has a constitutional right to free speech since the
internet now affords all rights of free expression to all peoples who have
internet electrons running across their national borders.

It was designed this way, and you dont need anybody's assurances to assume that
these rights are inalienable.

This ideal is very real, and will become even more so when broadband combined
w/ ipv6 makes every household an applications provider service.

Hopefully perl will be there to help effect the final banishment of censorship,
facist or otherwise.


--- Soren Andersen <soren.andersen at mindspring.com> wrote:
> On 17 Jan 00, an entity purporting to be D Roland Walker
> [D Roland Walker <walker at pobox.com>] wrote [regarding Re: Hmmm]
> 
> > [JoshNarins writes]
> > > I'm sure there is no legal reason stopping me from speaking the truth,
> > 
> > Yes, the truth is the best defense in a lawsuit.
> > 
> > But there are very good reasons, both legal and practical, to avoid 
> > any type of derogatory imputation on the list.
> 
> There are -- no argument there. At the same time, there are also very good 
> reasons, fundamental and crucial, for strenuously working to preserve 
> Josh's right to post such a message here. You can be sure of one thing, I 
> personally will not stand by silently and see this list censored in such an 
> across-the-board way as what I read into the statements made here. That 
> in itself is illegal, and more importantly unethical; it violates very basic 
> premises of our legal system and our civil society.
> 
> I have a right and an earnest need to know when there are business people 
> or business organizations (especially the latter) who are criminal in fact,
> in 
> policy and in execution, and whose principle representatives are in fact 
> mentally unbalanced or exploit those they come into contact with in an 
> outrageous and unethical way.
> 
> I have as a working person and a potential client or employee a strong need 
> to be allowed to read material that offers me the chance to hear about 
> experiences of other people in my position, people who far too often are 
> rolled over, chewed up and spit out a mangled mess by business 
> organizations (precisely because they are single individuals), who, 
> collectively in the times we are living in, are often displaying a more and 
> more glaringly brazen  apparent belief that the collective human activity 
> they engage in as employees of a corporation places them above the spirit 
> (not just the *letter*) of laws that society has mandated and principles of 
> humanistic fairness and ethics that individual human beings are required to 
> show each other.
> 
> > Most importantly, it is off-topic.  I hope the soon-to-be moderator
> > will discuss it with me in private mail.
> 
> The notion that "the most important thing" is that this message was "off-
> topic" may be a statement that the author will one day want to rethink. I 
> would say that more close to accurate truth would have been for this 
> individual to write "For ME as an individual with some vested interest in 
> this list, the basic underlying life-attitude i bring to this is that i must
> try as 
> much as possible to make this uncomfortable matter someone elses' 
> problem, not mine; and to try to ensure that I can likewise dispose of such 
> even more easily in the future."
> 
> The most important thing is how we live as a human being, and that does 
> not entirely exclude the requirement that we function as thinking human 
> beings who confront ethical dilemmas head-on and strive to come to our 
> own conclusions about rightness and wrongness and what basic principles 
> must be emphasized in a particular case, most often, yes, at the expense of 
> other principles. Surely any Net-based mode of communication has the 
> potential to be exploited by crackpots who abuse the power technological 
> development has placed within their grasp (I have been a personal target of 
> such and I know full well whereof I speak). That still does not mean that 
> certain areas are "off-limits" when it comes to ethics and judgment about 
> rightness and wrongness of human conduct, merely because the major topic 
> is employment or professional activities and announcements. 
> 
> Specifically, "Business" is just an arbitrary label we give to certain 
> categories of human endeavor and actions that nonetheless are not basically 
> exempt from ethical evaluation. Being involved primarily in "business" for a 
> living does not mean one is somehow exempt from basic responsibility as a 
> human being -- a responsibility to NOT entirely hand over discriminating 
> (between right and wrong) thought into the hands of so-called "experts". 
> Far worse than a lawsuit collectively awaits a society the majority of whose 
> citizens take this route of washing their collective hands, 'opting-out' or 
> copping out entirely on facing right-and-wrong head on in their day-to-day 
> experience.
> 
> When someone says "that cannot be discussed here because someone might 
> be sued," they are exhibiting a brainwashing  or an effect of coercion easily
> 
> more effective than anything ever accomplished by the defunct Soviet 
> system (although not different in fundamental spirit). They are saying 
> cowardice -- cringing, petty, narrow-minded self-interest -- is "normal" 
> and "to be encouraged as the norm" and that anybody who stands up with 
> something to say about right-and-wrong outside of the abused and 
> perverted arena of the Courtroom as it presently exists is a dangerous 
> deviant. I am getting damn concerned about it. I'd like to register my 
> opinion that not all the technological development nor all the material 
> prosperity in the world will render the lives of those (or their children, or
> 
> their children's children) who allow such a society to come into being, 
> ultimately to remain "safe" and "comfortable" lives.
> 
> At the same time, it wears down the energy of *anyone* when there is a 
> constantly flood of unsubstantiated negative characterization on a medium 
> like this. Josh, I have to say to you that talking about someone you have 
> had business dealings with behind his back is not the first-rate way to 
> handle yourself. "First-rate" can get you a black eye or lose you your job or
> 
> get you killed. Yeah, sometimes --seldom but it happens. Point is that just 
> being a noisemaker isn't something to get too personally secure or puffed-
> up about. Confronting a creep face to face and THEN explaining to them the 
> error of their ways --making some noise -- that is "first-rate." It gains 
> oneself and everyone else, in the big picture, a lot more than merely 
> sounding off on an email List.
> 
>     soren andersen
> 
> --
> "Some lawyers have been telling people that
> you have to get permission before you link
> to something. That's a terrible affront to
> free speech."
>         - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of
>                     the World Wide Web
> 

=====
John van Vlaanderen

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