[Prev|Next|Index] 2/21/96, rab@well.com, Corte Madera, CA, USA

    Due to mistakes made, this document is multiply linked! Here are the
        alternative "Prev" and "Next" links to follow if you like:

                       [Prev-2|Prev-3|Next-2|Next-3]

        You can also take a tour of WELL users' essays, assembled by
                             srhodes@well.com

               Here is Bill Gates' essay (yes, that Gates!).

                       And here is Philippe Kahn's.

There are several essays out there which made me cry. Here is one of them.

                   --------------------------------------

                  rab's essay for "24 Hours of Democracy"

  I start off rather obvious here, and then get into less obvious points.
                           Give it a chance.....

The Net is an amazing 'place', in some ways unprecedented in the history of
the human race. Others have said this, and said much of the rest of what
I'm going to say, but I have my own spin on things, and anyway one of the
amazing, transformational things about the Net is that I don't have to be
satisfied with how someone else has expressed my thoughts: I can express
them myself. And you can read them, again and again if you like, or just
once and then ignore me forever as a fool if that's what you want to do.
Total freedom to both speak and to listen, and to not speak and to not
listen.

How is this unprecedented? Never before has literally anybody who can
scrape together a couple of hundred bucks (about a week's pay) for a
computer and a few bucks a month for a Net account had the ability to make
themselves not just a publisher, but a publisher who can literally reach
anybody on the planet with similar access. Sure, there are still people who
don't have access, but the price direction continues to be downward. Never
before in history has every member of the human race had the potential to
be able to speak directly to any other member: always before, there has had
to be a middleman, a book publisher or an editor or a media mogul or some
other person who could distort, deflect, limit, corrupt, garble, or just
refuse to carry what you wanted to say.

But with the Net, suddenly there is complete equality in the ability to
make one's expressions available to others. Of course, different
individuals have different levels of ability to cogently and clearly
express themselves in words. But whatever expression you make, by putting
it on the Net you can make it available to tens of millions of people all
over the world, and it can get to them at the speed of light -- not limited
to how fast paper can be delivered, as in the past!

You are no longer the passive receiver of whatever the powerful media
companies see fit to spoon-feed you. With the Net, you can (and do) find
both like-minded people and people with completely opposite points of view
with whom you can discuss the issues of the day (or trivia, if that's what
floats your boat). You can reach just as many people as the biggest
publishing house on the planet; or, to turn that around, they are no more
powerful than you in their ability to reach other people on the Net.

Okay, so much for the obvious stuff. Why have I repeated (perhaps even
belabored?) this? Because I contend that it is precisely this new equality,
this new democracy of ability-to-publish, which is what frightens some
people about the Net. They would feel much safer if there was just no
chance that anyone could ask the uncomfortable questions. They would feel
much more secure if the only source of news and opinion were the approved
voices of the popular media.

Oh, they will claim to be concerned about such issues as pornography. Some
of them actually seem to believe that this is a problem. Aside from the
fairly obvious parroting-of-words that many of them engage in, and the
pathological lies told by some of their leaders, there is a core of genuine
concern. Fed mostly by disinformation, but it's still there. But even with
as sensitive an issue as this, it is still true that the only effective
answer to bad speech is good speech. Censorship only hides the problem (if
there is one) from view, allowing some people to lie to themselves and
think that they solved something by banning that book or getting that play
cancelled or whatever. More speech -- as for example imparting good moral
values to one's children so that even if there is something offensive out
there, they will not be corrupted by it -- is an infinitely more effective
solution.

But the pornography problem is actually a minor issue, for all that it gets
people so upset. There are completely effective software solutions that
will prevent any accidental exposure: end of issue. More fundamentally,
what these people want is the feeling that everything is "properly
controlled". And they are willing to sacrifice the greatest source of
equality ever created in the history of the planet in order to satisfy that
desire.

Another example: on the Net, alternative political candidates have just as
much access to the electorate as the Officially Approved names do. Some,
such as my favorite the Libertarians, who were the first to use cyberspace
for campaigning, actually do much better than the older parties' candidates
much of the time. This has the salutory effect of bringing new (to the
average voter) ideas out into the general discourse much more rapidly than
they normally propogate. But those same people who want to feel that
everything is "controlled" are also generally virulently opposed to the
very idea of alternative candidates and parties (except just possibly ones
that they themselves want to annoint): they are among the people who
construct ballot access laws that make the United States among the hardest
countries in the world for small political movements to get started and to
grow in. (See Ballot Access News for more information about this.) These
people are just so enamored of "control" that they see any alternatives as
a threat, and would like to make it illegal or effectively so to express
those alternatives.

We don't have to let them do this. Most can be educated; those who cannot,
we can ignore so long as we don't let them corrupt our laws with their
narrow-minded intolerance and hatred. On the Net, it is transcendently easy
to ignore either that hateful Bible-thumper or that prattling hedonist
(depending upon your tastes and views) so that you don't have to be
bothered by them. The Net is the great equalizer, and the first community
that can truly include everybody -- if they want to be included. We
shouldn't let it be destroyed, especially not by those who simply don't
understand it.

Here's what we can do:

A Constitutional Amendment for the protection of cyberspace has been
proposed. Not by some starry-eyed libertarian, and not just this year in
response to recent events. No, with impressive foresight, it was first
proposed in 1991 (!) by Harvard Law School's Professor Laurence Tribe, who
has repeatedly been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. For the
first time in his entire career as a internationally-renowned
Constitutional scholar, he proposed a constitutional amendment:

     "This Constitution's protections for the freedoms of speech,
     press, petition, and assembly, and its protections against
     unreasonable searches and seizures and the deprivation of life,
     liberty or property without due process of law shall be construed
     as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or
     medium through which information content is generated, stored,
     altered, transmitted or controlled."

Professor Tribe proposed that this be our 27th Amendment on March 26th,
1991, during his keynote address at the First Conference on Computers,
Freedom & Privacy, in Burlingame CA. It was published in the conference's
proceedings (now out of print) and in other places; it was widely reported
in the press at the time. I was present when he proposed it, and I should
be honest and admit that my reaction was negative: I thought that even the
idea of proposing such an amendment was dangerous, as it might give some
people the idea that we think our rights aren't already protected while in
cyberspace. However, I was very much in the minority; as I recall, the room
erupted in cheers. Events since then have proven how naive I was, and I now
wholeheartedly support this proposed amendment (which would now be the
twenty-eighth: numerologically convenient since 28 is a "Perfect Number",
in fact the second one). However, we need to do more than just cheer now:
we need to start working for the passage of this Amendment. Before it's too
late! The barbarians are at the gate; they are storming the walls; we must
strengthen those walls (the Constitutional protections of our rights)
before they are breached. Let's do it!

Here is an online form which will let you express your support for this
proposed Amendment to your Congress-person, Senator, or the White House.
Use it!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Bickford has lived in cyberspace for over twelve years; he met his wife
there eight years ago.



 Keywords: Marin County, Libertarian, Free Speech, Democracy, Xyzzy, Plugh,
                                  Plover