Xref: alphanet.ch news.admin.censorship:1234 news.admin.net-abuse.announce:1554 Path: alphanet.ch!imp.ch!news.sprintlink.net!crusher.ici.net!news.wizard.com!dimensional.com!winternet.com!mr.net!umn.edu!spool.mu.edu!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!melba.bby.com.au!news.mira.net.au!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!nntp-server.caltech.edu!avalon.softaware.com!not-for-mail From: dave@jetcafe.org (Dave Hayes) Newsgroups: news.admin.censorship,news.admin.misc,news.admin.policy,news.admin.net-abuse.announce,alt.culture.usenet Subject: An Alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet Followup-To: news.admin.censorship Date: 28 Mar 1996 03:54:04 -0800 Organization: JetCafe - A Non-Profit Internet Service Provider Lines: 454 Sender: dave@kachina.jetcafe.org Approved: dave@jetcafe.org Distribution: world Expires: 27 Apr 96 04:53:59 Message-ID: Reply-To: freedom-knights@jetcafe.org (Freedom Knights of Usenet) NNTP-Posting-Host: kachina.jetcafe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Summary: This posting clarifies and defines True Free Speech Keywords: FREEDOM, CENSORSHIP, NET-ABUSE, NET-COPS X-URL: http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet Posted-By: auto-faq 3.2.1.4 Archive-name: freedom-faq Revision: 1.6 Posting-Frequency: Posted once each month An alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet Dave Hayes dave@jetcafe.org ------------------------------ Subject: 0. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1.1) What this document is 1.2) Prerequisites 2. Background 3. Basic Definitions 4. Basic Philosophies 4.1) Declaration of Free Speech 4.2) What is 'True Free Speech'? 4.3) What is 'net abuse'? 5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills) ------------------------------ Subject: 1. Introduction 1.1) What this document is This document represents an ongoing attempt to educate people about true freedom of speech among the emerging cyber-communities. There is a companion document to this, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ, which should be read AFTER this document. 1.2) Prerequisites If you don't know what Usenet is, you're reading the wrong document! Go look in the newsgroup news.answers for appropriate introductory documents. There are many, and each has their own point of view. In order to understand the discussions here you should be familiar with USENET in general, and have a reasonable amount of experience posting and/or reading news. If these documents are not in news.answers or news.announce.newusers on your site, they can be had by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in the directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/announce/newusers. If you have a WWW browser, the following URLS should help you out: It helps to be familiar with news administration, how news works in general, and have kept up in some discussions on news.admin.*, but this is not totally mandatory for understanding this document. Finally, you should believe that no expression, however annoying, profit-oriented or counterproductive, should be prevented from being distributed. If you do not believe in this way, this document will only make you angry. (If that's what you want, then read it.) ------------------------------ Subject: 2. Background For a long time, I've been a loud advocate of free speech in most of the USENET related administration groups. I've participated in a few net.political actions to ensure the freedom of speech that we'd like to enjoy. For my efforts, I've been publically branded a loon, insane, idealistic, moronic, obnoxious, wacko, a kook, and other expletives which I'd rather not go into. Many times, I've repeated the same arguments over and over, all of which relate to this ultimate goal of absolute free speech. Well, after several years even a loon such as myself gets tired of repeating the same stuff over and over. It had been suggested that I write a FAQ of sorts on my ideas, and I felt the time was right, so here it is. Herein lies the heart of my arguments, and questions with answers about them. The companion document, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ describes a new credo that willing USENET participants can actually adopt and use if they so desire. I implore you not to adopt -any- credo (even this one) or philosophy just because someone you see does so as well, for these credos only work for individuals who have personally and honestly decided that these are good ideas. Use your own judgement and take your power back from those who wish to steal it from you. ------------------------------ Subject: 3. Basic Definitions Here are some definitions which you'll find apply to things in this document, and most of my arguments. Beliefs - Networks of assumptions about the way things are. Ethics - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy one's own true self. Directly opposed to Morals (see below) Lawful Speech - That speech which does not conflict with Morals Morals - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy a governing, social, or communal entity. ------------------------------ Subject: 4. Basic Philosophies 4.1) Declaration of Free Speech We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Unhindered Communications, Unregulated Exchange of Ideas, and Freedom of Speech, that to secure these rights the Usenet is instituted on networks of the world, that when any administration of Usenet becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institue new administration, laying its foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Free Communication. [With much thanks to the Declaration of Independence] 4.2) What is True Free Speech? True Free Speech is that speech which is hindered by nothing other than the speaking individual's own ethics (see definition above). Where True Free Speech exists, no external party may restrict someone else's speech, for any reason, period. Speech, in the above definition, does *not* restrict another's speech. It can't. It takes a person to *act* on that speech to restrict another's speech. That person, then, would be the responsible party. A news admin setting up a news server to act is one way to create the illusion of speech-restrictive speech. The litmus test for True Free Speech is speech that makes you -want- to silence another person. If that speech is not silencable by you (whether you want to or not), you have a state of True Free Speech. 4.3) What is net abuse? Any action that stops a properly configured transport system from performing its normal store and forward services. The key words are "properly configured". For that definition, you'll have to see the "Site of Virtue" FAQ. 4.4) What is Censorship? Censorship is the restriction of communicated ideas based on their expression style or their content. On Usenet, this is defined as reading or parsing anything but certain specific headers of a news article to determine whether or not to delete it from the news spool of a news server. By this criterion, the following RFC 1036 headers can NOT be interpreted in any way, in order to avoid censorship: Sender: From: Subject: NNTP-Posting-Host: Approved: Also, any invokation of the "Usenet Death Penalty" by aliasing a site out of one's feed is considered blatant censorship. Unless a clear newsfeed redundancy problem can be identified, such aliasing is considered censorship. ------------------------------ Subject: 5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills) This section contains the many frequently debated arguments (with "Dave Hayes" like answers) over free speech issues. If you find yourself embroiled in a debate with a control freak, the information below should help you out. If you find yourself embroiled in a debate with me, you might want to save time and read below. - Free speech is all well and good, but what is to prevent unreasonable users from committing "net-abuse"? The strawman here is that someone else is defining "net-abuse" quite differently than I do above. Any label of "net-abuse" is based on an arbitrary standard of conduct held by a person or group of people (even mine). There is nothing that says that this standard of conduct is the one true and right standard of conduct. People's standards vary. You, as a free person, have an unalienable right to a choice as to whether or not to adopt any standard of conduct. This is based on your ethics, not their morals. Thus, if someone labels you "unreasonable", that's not your problem...it's theirs. I'm not saying you should now go out and kill someone. I'm merely stressing the importance of ethics, internal codes of conduct which you will not violate (because -you- wrote them), in determining whether or not you did something wrong. - But there IS a general consensus on what net abuse is! Most news admins have adopted it. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that there some written consensus on or standard of net.abuse. There isn't, and if it claims to be, you can determine the invalidity of such a claim by observing just how many people argue about it. Without a consensus, it's quite arbitrary as to what people will claim abuse is. If someone has written up something, think about whether you agreed to abide by it or not before the fact when you are called to task on some violation. It is the root of dishonor to hold someone responsible to a code of conduct they didn't know about. Not only does this not work, but it's damn unfair. You may get localized consensi who decide to act not unlike the street gangs in LA or the legal gangs in American Federal Government, armed with scripts and authority, they attempt to bully people into submission into their way. This does not mean that there is a consensus. You can't expect 50,000 or more who come to a consensus on an issue this complex. Typically, the label of abuse is used as a wedge to stop someone from posting something that isn't liked, but this isn't always the case. Sometimes, people are genuinely trying to help things out. Such people should be reminded of the arbitrary nature of their standards, and of the wide variety of people on the net. - We can't allow free speech. What if something extremely damaging is posted? This strawman can easily be debunked by recognizing who is defining 'damage'. See above, as this is the same as saying something is "net-abuse". The true test of freedom of expression is when the advocates of True Free Speech are confronted with expression that they find they would like to silence. If this test is passed, the expression remains a thorn in their side. The thorn serves a great purpose as a reminder of the true freedom they have. If this test is failed, the entire philosophy of True Free Speech soon crumbles, and true freedom of expression becomes a bad thing in the eyes of the people who tried. "After all, people will abuse anything if given the chance", they'll say. We already have true freedom. We just keep agreeing to give it up. - But there really are damaging things that can be posted! You didn't listen above. Let me try another way. Here are some commonly dredged up examples of "damaging" information: * recipes for strong encryption * pornography and obscenity * recipes for making chemical, biological, and atomic weapons * recipes for making counterfeit money Dr. Dimitri Vulis said it really succinctly: "Posting such information to Usenet doesn't force anyone to use it to take some illegal action. And even if publishing such information by itself violates your local laws, it's up to your local law enforcement agents to silence you, not the Usenet Cabal." - There is no cabal. Anyone saying this is obviously a kook. Ah, and if there was a "secret society", what better way to hide it than by denying it and causing those who do not to look foolish? A "Cabal" of usenet has been identified. This Cabal is defined as: "Those net citizens, including some usenet administrators, who by their own consensus reality, set themselves apart from and superior to usenet users and use this illusory superiority to restrict or censor any usenet user's attempts at communication through usenet." The Cabal generally works in concert with each other over their own private channels of communication. You can tell a Cabal member by the arrogant holier-than-thou way that they refuse or block your attempts at communication, regardless of external perceptions of reasonability about those attempts. Just to be clear, I have no reason to believe that these people are acting out of deliberate malice. It's simply a trait of human beings to abuse positions of power and respect to their own ends. In this case this trait is damaging the freedom of usenet. - If a lot of people complain about someone, there must be something that person is doing wrong. Just because a mob comes to your door and demands to lynch someone, doesn't mean that the someone in question did anything worthy of being lynched. Usenet has become mob-oriented with several issues, most notably the famous C&S spamming, demonstrating the new jargon term "cybermob". Mobs are generally ignorant, dense, and single-minded. They have a tendancy to be generated by emotional issues, with subsequent loss of sanity for most involved. Do you really want to trust the judgement of someone else to this phenomena? Yes, once you become a sysadmin, the rest of the Usenet community will expect that you are prepared to discipline your users when they engage in whatever they decide to call net-abuse. Hopefully, by then, you will have grown past that. And what does this discipline really accomplish? Usually, nothing. - Someone is defaming me. They should be silenced. Forget USENET, what if these people were to say the same things in person, or to other people while you are not present? Again, Free Speech requires that people have the *ability* to defame you. Remember that you also have the ability to defend yourself. If such defamation gets too intense, see your lawyer, and attempt to get the defamer to agree to stop. - Free speech means the ability to say what you want. It does not guarantee you _where_ you want to say it and _how_ you want to say it. This is a definitions strawman. If you can't say something where and how you want to say it, is your speech truly free? Would you like some arbitrary person telling you where and how you can say certain things? I can see it now: "Sure you have free speech, at 3AM on channel 145 for 2.5 minutes." Anyone using this argument has no understanding or desire for free speech, by the very fact that they use this argument. Free speech, as defined in this document, guarantees that you can say anything, anywhere, and anyway you want to. - USENET operates on certain principles. Create your own net if you don't like the way it runs. This is a political hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to convince you that everyone else likes things the way they are, and that everyone else is in control of USENET. If you are running a site, this is patently false. USENET is a collective anarchy, where site admins have authority over their part of the collective. You have absolute control over your site to run it any way you want to. If you aren't running a site, don't waste your breath arguing with these people. Find a Site of Virtue to post from, and support Sites of Virtue. That way, we -will- create our own net. - If you argue for free speech, people aren't going to take you seriously. This is an emotional hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to play on your need to be taken seriously to coerce you into doing things their way...or they won't take you seriously. There are others who won't take you seriously if you cave into these coercions. Still, others won't take you seriously at all. If we become affected by everyone's impressions of us, we will certainly be candidates for an insane asylum. I would think that you don't really need to be taken seriously by anybody who would attempt to coerce you in this way. -But this is Usenet, a place where speaking is a privilege, not a right. That all depends on your site admin. If you are at a Site of Virtue, speaking is a right. -Freedom of speech does not mean yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater. Patently false. Yes, it does mean that. Practically, if you hear someone yell "FIRE!" then you have some decisions to make. Are you going to believe that person or not, especially when you see nothing? If you do believe this person, are you going to run for the door like a crazed animal, or quickly make your way to the exit in a civilized manner? Whichever you choose, it's -your- choice and -your- responsibility. It is -not- the responsibility of the person who yelled "FIRE!" that -you- chose one direction or another. Any other decision strips your power away from you. - It's wrong to force me to read your trash. Given that people have to manually select articles from a menu, it's hard to imagine someone forcing their fingers to press certain keys in a certain order, so that people are forced to read anything. Indeed, the entire concept of force becomes ludicrous when one recognizes that one can simply close one's eyes and not read anything presented to them. This does bring up a point, however. There -is- a place for censorship. Your personal newsreaders. - But who gave you free speech rights on my computer? YOU did when you loaded the news transport software. According to RFC1036, making a news server and getting a feed allows the transport of messages between your news server and another. If you do not specifically filter messages, those messages are allowed by implication. - You can't think like that. Your reputation will suffer. The value of a set of words is contained within the set of words, NOT in who said them. It is a common mistake of most human beings to judge the validity of a set of words mostly upon the reputation of the messenger. ------------------------------ Subject: Revision History $Log: freedom-faq.1,v $ Revision 1.6 1996/03/13 22:56:11 dave Added Dr. Vulis suggested changes: Approved line = censorship, examples of speech commonly considered damage, other misc. Revision 1.5 1996/03/04 00:03:59 dave Added definition of Cabal Revision 1.4 1996/02/28 21:53:33 dave Changed libel back to defamation. Revision 1.3 1996/02/28 00:32:34 dave Changed "slander" to "libel", as the latter is more appropriate for USENET. Revision 1.2 1996/02/19 08:16:15 dave Tightened up the definition of TFS, added a definition for Censorship, added a few words here and there for da flow. Revision 1.1.1.2 1996/02/19 07:52:11 dave Initial Import -- >>> Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org <<< You need not wonder whether you should have a reliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.