for the List [was neo-Nazis on the Net]

[David Casseres]

Doug Millison sez
>I agree with Alan on this one. Those of us who detest -- as I do --
>neo-Nazi propaganda on the Internet can expose it for what it is, on the
>Internet, just as people fight against this sort of propaganda in other
>forms of media. But no censorship, please.  The Internet is the closest
>thing we have to a free market place of ideas -- anybody with access to the
>Internet can publish anything and attract an audience, and I don't want to
>lose that; the capability that ordinary people now have to make themselves
>heard, on the Internet, on a more or less equal status with the largest
>corporate entities,  is unprecedented.

And while I agree with the sentiments behind this position, and detest 
censorship, I have to disagree.  Censorship is when someone with legal 
authority denies you the right to express your views using the facilities 
normally available to the general public, or threatens to punish you for 
expressing them at all.

But freedom of speech does not oblige a publisher to print either Salman 
Rushdie's work, or neonazi tracts, or advertisements for pornography, nor 
does it oblige a church or a theater to provide a forum for any 
particular piece of expression.  If Dell doesn't print Rushdie, or St. 
Patrick's doesn't lend its pulpit to porn advertisers, or the Century 
Cinema doesn't screen antisemitic propaga
nda, there's no censorship.

Freedom of speech may oblige the Internet to transmit such material as 
e-mail (perhaps only to those who request it) or on web pages, which are 
available to all who can connect and which are the true Internet 
counterpart of having one's own printing press like Tom Paine.  I would 
fight hard against any attempt to keep nazis from having web pages.

But an Internet newsgroup is a different thing.  Newsgroups consume 
limited resources that have to be paid for by all Internet users, and for 
that reason a specific process was created to make sure a newsgroup 
doesn't get formed unless a vote is taken to form it, and give it a piece 
of the shared resources.  If we let neonazis have a newsgroup of their 
own, we are not just passively refraining from interference -- we are 
*sponsoring* it.  The distinction is crucially important, just as 
important as the observation that my right to swing my fist ends at your 
nose.

And finally, note that an alternative exists, the "alt" hierarchy, which 
does not get the resources that "regular" newsgroups get but which does 
let the nazis hold their discussions, right along with alt.sex, 
alt.bogus, alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork, and so forth.  Vote no on 
donating disk space, processor time, and sysadmin overhead to these 
assholes, and let's talk about Thomas Pynchon's work.


Cheers,
David