On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 02:38:19PM +0000, Theodore Hong wrote: <> > I would argue the opposite. I think that our best defense is to try as > hard as possible to make a blocking mechanism impossible. The presence of > a blocking mechanism is what triggers the legal obligation to use it. > Compare Cubby v. Compuserve with Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy -- Compuserve > gets off because they exercise no control over content. However, Prodigy, > by attempting to filter some content, was made liable for what it let > through.
Yes, but what is design and what is implementation? Freenet node operators are running a system intentionally designed to make content control impossible - in a society that legally expects its citizens to spy and turn in one another (which is exactly what our society have become in this respect), how will running a network designed so as to not be able to serve the thought-police be a better excuse then simply running a software implementation that does not allow it? The fact is that, whatever we do, data will still need to be addressed in some way to be found. Whatever we do, an Authority for Illegal Information (happiness is a society that has such a thing), could still publish blacklists of such addresses which people should serve requests for. And, since if they have to manually tell each node operator which information is illegal they may be stuck in a no win wack-the-mole situation, they could very well say that node operators, to show a necessary goodwill effort, have to update their blacklists in realtime from the Authority for Illegal Information. At that point anybody who "gets" Freenet will be screaming that that sort of central control is a gross deviation from the network's design goals, but why should the thought-police care when those goals are exactly the opposite of theirs (the freedom of information versus the suppression of it). Listen people: You cannot build a network to allow the free publication of information in a legal system where the free communication of information is considered a crime, and expect running that network to be legal. Period. No amount of maneuvering or loophole searching can better this situation - either Freenet stops being free, society starts being free, or Freenet will be outlawed by society. Why do we have to have this discussion again and again? <> -- 'DeCSS would be fine. Where is it?' 'Here,' Montag touched his head. 'Ah,' Granger smiled and nodded. Oskar Sandberg md98-osa at nada.kth.se _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl at freenetproject.org http://www.uprizer.com/mailman/listinfo/devl
