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Ian Clarke, Ernie Miller On Free Speech, Privacy 391

Posted by simoniker from the itchy-and-scratchy-of-yro dept.
mpawlo writes "I am still pursuing my new pastime, interviewing interesting Internet policy individuals for Greplaw. Fresh catches include Freenet creator Ian Clarke on his decision to leave the USA, free speech and Freenet and former Lawmeme editor-in-chief Ernest Miller on DRM and privacy, copyright and the First Amendment... and, of course, why blogs matter. Maybe this will provide some food for thought."
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Ian Clarke, Ernie Miller On Free Speech, Privacy More

Ian Clarke, Ernie Miller On Free Speech, Privacy

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  • Rights? What are they? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04, 2003 @04:48AM (#6866860)
    See, I'm an amerikan (a conservative, not a neocon bush-head asshole...there's a BIG difference) and I'm trying to grasp the concept of this whole "rights" thing. What rights we have left are being stripped away for the appearance of security, and the mindless sheep of amerika (bleat) are too stupid to realize it.

    Moving to Canada won't fix the problem, as anything amerika gets involved in, canada will likely get screwed up in just via proximity.

    The more I see the more I realize the end time is coming. Don't bother planning for the future folks, you don't have one.

    • Re:Rights? What are they? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Renderer of Evil ( 604742 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:59AM (#6867050) Homepage
      (a conservative, not a neocon bush-head asshole...there's a BIG difference)


      This is wrong. The Bush administration is not comprised of conservatives.

      They are statist reactionaries. They want a very powerful state, a huge state in fact, a violent state and one that enforces obedience on the population. There is a kind of quasi-fascist spirit there, in the background, and they have been attempting to undermine civil rights in many ways. That's one of their long term objectives, and they have to do it quickly because in the US there is a strong tradition of protection of civil rights. But the kind of surveillance you are talking about of libraries and so on is a step towards it. They have also claimed the right to place a person - even an American citizen - in detention without charge, without access to lawyers and family, and to hold them there indefinitely, and that in fact has been upheld by the Courts, which is pretty shocking. But they have a new proposal, sometimes called Patriot II, a 80-page document inside the Justice department. Someone leaked it and it reached the press. There have been some outraged articles by law professors about it. This is only planned so far, but they would like to implement as secretly as they can. These plans would permit the Attorney General to remove citizenship from any individual whom the attorney general believes is acting in a way harmful to the US interests. I mean, this is going beyond anything contemplated in any democratic society. One law professor at New York University has written that this administration evidently will attempt to take away any civil rights that it can from citizens and I think its basically correct. That fits in with their reactionary statist policies which have a domestic aspect in the economy and social life but also in political life.
      • Look up some info on granddaddy Prescott Bush. He thought Adolf Hitler was the greatest thing since the time when it was legal to own slaves.
      • They aren't reactionaries, they are authoritarians. In an earlier day they might legitimately have been callec reactionary monarchists. And earlier Tories. But the monarchy has been too long gone for it to qualify even as "reactionary". Unfortunately, the same personality type has continued to scheme for it's return (with themselves at the head).

        Actually, from the Bush quotes, he doesn't aim so much for a monarchy as a dictatorship. Not too much difference, I suppose, except that there are precedents

  • This is not a /. Interview... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SMOC ( 703423 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:22AM (#6866935)
    but I've got to ask:

    Does it bother you that the main use of Freenet at the moment seems to be pr0n of a less-than-mature nature?

    I can understand the argument that child porn is something we'll just need to accept if we want to allow true freedom of speech, but last time I checked freenet, just about the only content I could find was child porn, so it seems either pedophiles are more tech-savvy than average, or the need for anonymity for other "forbidden" content is not so great yet.

    Of course, The RIAA's actions might change that quickly.

    • Re:This is not a /. Interview... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BJH ( 11355 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:30AM (#6866953)
      How did you know it was child porn?

      Did you... download it?

      Quick! Over here! I've found a child pornographer!
      Please, someone arrest him! Think of the children!
    • ..."we need to accept [bad thing] to have [good thing]" strikes me as being very small minded.

      it may be more difficult, expensive, take longer etc., but a better solution will usually exist.

      and when it comes to things such as free speech and child porn, I for one hope politicians do not opt for the "quick'n'easy" option.
    • I haven't used freenet in a couple years and at the time there wasn't much content but it certainly wasn't just kiddie porn. Can anybody cite legitimate uses of freenet they are engaged in?

    • >last time I checked freenet, just about the only content I could find was child porn

      How, pray tell, did you find kiddie porn on freenet without knowing what you were looking for [sourceforge.net]? Where exactly did you actively seek out and find the keys for kiddie porn? [sourceforge.net]

      You're mistaken, trolling, or you're an active kiddie pornographer. Which one it is?

    • I can understand the argument that child porn is something we'll just need to accept if we want to allow true freedom of speech

      Wow. This argument is horse#@$# of the worst kind. Accept it? I think NOT! Bamboozling and/or forcing kids into performing on camera is base criminal behavior. To equate the evidence of the crime (the pictures/video/whatever of the crime) to protected free speech or even commercial speech requires you set aside:

      * The criminal act committed in creating said kiddie porn.
      * The

      • I can understand the argument that child porn is something we'll just need to accept if we want to allow true freedom of speech

        Wow. This argument is horse#@$# of the worst kind. Accept it? I think NOT! (...)

        Is the subject line the start of a protected free speech ASCII text or an image of kiddie porn?

        You can not choose "anonymous free speech" and "not anonymous kiddie porn". Your choices are "anonymous flow of information" or "not anonymous flow of information".

        Let me try giving you a real world analog

    • Freenet is dog slow. Downloads there will be orders of magnitude slower than what my line is capable of. So unless you *have* to get it from Freenet, you'd rather get it from somewhere else. In addition, it is very difficult to use Freenet for anything but file transfers, as the latency (and lack of containers to group stuff) makes surfing it almost hopeless.

      Those two put together, along with the CPU and memory use of Java makes it feel very much "under construction". Regarding the pedos, Freenet mostly ju
    • Does it bother you that the main use of Freenet at the moment seems to be pr0n of a less-than-mature nature?

      Straw man reasoning. Cite the figures, show the proof of this very serious allegation.

  • EURO DMCA reloaded (Score:4, Informative)

    by Elektroschock ( 659467 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:44AM (#6866990)
    Not only the US became mad. In would also like to remind you of the EU IPR enforcement directive [eu.int] that will be discussed as early as sept 11 in the europarl JURI committee.

    http://www.ipjustice.org/081103codepress.shtml [ipjustice.org]

    "If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use 'intellectual property' regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms", said Andy Muller-Maguhn.

    http://www.ipjustice.org/ipenforcewhitepaper.shtml [ipjustice.org]

    ---
    :-) Please also look at the evidence of anti-conspiracy conspiracy theory:
    discussion: sept 11 (WTC 2001)
    issued by EUC at January 30 2003(Hitler's takeover of power 1933)

  • Godwin's Law (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:48AM (#6867006) Journal
    Godwin's Law is mentioned. So I looked it up:
    Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
    Pretty funny. hey's law is that everybody wants to have their own law.
    • Pretty funny. hey's law is that everybody wants to have their own law.

      Gotta have your own law dontcha? what a Nazi.

    • However there is also a widely recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

      Of course. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

      -- Steve

    • It's may have been intended as a humourous stab at a law, but it's become a cliche which people use to limit discourse. Invoking Godwin is nowadays no better than invoking Nazis.
    • This law really needs to be modified to include child pornography.

      As an internet discussion about censorship goes longer, the probability of a statement about how the subject or its inverse protects pedophiles and child pornograph approaches one.

  • ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <(circletimessquare) (at) (gmail.com)> on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:51AM (#6867015) Homepage Journal
    ian's comment strikes me as a huge breach of godwin's law [astrian.net]

    yes, the patriot act sucks, but we're not putting jews in ovens or rolling panzer tanks into canada or holding mass book burnings

    hyperbole and hysteria are interesting phenomena, look into the issue if you find yourself with a feeling of vertigo

    relax people, there is a LOT wrong with the current state of US politics and government (i personally view the influence of corporate money as a larger issue) but our adherence and commitment to the basic principles this country was founded upon is strong and well in the hearts of the majority of americans

    there is no illuminati folks, there is no man behind the curtain, no one is going to wave their hands and *poof* 250 years of american fundamentals are going to disappear overnight because we got scared on september 11th

    and if you don't believe me, blink, and in 2004 or 2008 gw bush will be gone

    some 1000 year reich that is

    and the last time i checked, the eu isn't exactly a hot bed of personal freedom, capice?

    hyperbole

    hysteria

    please by all means, do not stop fighting the patriot act, but PLEASE don't believe the hype, i am getting kind of sick of the everyone crying wolf- know what i mean?
    • yes, the patriot act sucks, but we're not putting jews in ovens or rolling panzer tanks into canada or holding mass book burnings
      Well, you are sure running panzer into Irak, and the DMCA is sure like a lot book burning...
      • no, you are dead wrong

        iraq is no poland, the differences are very fundamentally different

        if you don't see that, you are drowning in propaganda, not hyperbole

        dmca is a travesty, but it's not book burning, by many orders of magnitude it is less evil, even though it is still evil

        so with the dmca, there's the hyperbole you suffer from ;-)

        • I'm not at all sure that the DMCA less evil, but I don't think you can really link it to Bush. I'm sure he would have been for it, but as I recall he was involved in state politics at the time.

          You can, of course, link it to the Republican party, and to various commercial interests. But please note that the Democrats didn't mount any significant opposition. And they could have. They could have stopped it cold. But they didn't.

          The Republicans may be more actively evil, but the Democrats don't oppose th
    • There were no Illuminati folks in the Nazi heirarchy either, and the US has attacked and now militarily controls two nations. Ovens came later, and aren't likely to follow here, but camps came first. Guantanamo has been tendered to Haliburton to be rebuilt as a permanent camp, the centerpiece a dedicated interrogation facility. Both nations vilified the 'other' or outsider, both began by severely delimiting personal rights in freedoms in the name of nation security. If none of this draws uncomfortable parra
      • how many reasons do you want between how different nazi germany is from the present day situation we find ourselves do you want from me?

        i have a feeling that we could play tit for tat compare and contrast ad nauseum, and neither of us would budge

        because the details aren't important, the psychology is

        you seem to live in a world that does not resemble reality

        in the twilight world you live in, everything the us does is evil, and the us never does anything good in the world, and the solution to all of the p

  • Real reason Ian Clarke is leaving (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Surak ( 18578 ) * <surakNO@SPAMmailblocks.com> on Thursday September 04, 2003 @05:52AM (#6867021) Homepage Journal
    No, not for a second. I have a deep conviction that the freedom to communicate is absolutely essential to human progress. This conviction was forged during my youth growing up during quite turbulent times in Ireland, during which I learned that terrorism is not a product of freedom, it is a symptom of the absence of freedom and understanding. Censorship is the enemy of freedom and understanding, and therefore the friend of terrorism.

    Exactly right, man. And it is that absence of freedom that will cause *further* terrorism in the U.S.

    Anyone think this is the *real* reason Ian Clarke is leaving? He's worried about possible terrorist actions taken against the U.S. government by its own citizens?

    • You're saying that he may be *really* leaving because the citizens of the United States will rise up against thier own government? Anyone that thinks that will happen is a fool. There is no chance in hell that a group of citizens composed of more than a handful of wackos would take up arms against the U.S.government.

      First of all, the U.S. government would obliterate said group - in the media. They would instantly become Evil Spawn of Satan Terrorists, lose public support (if they had any) and eventually wi
      • What Photon Ghoul hasn't mentioned, folks, is that he is an NSA operative. ;)

    • Knowing Ian (and I do, or at least I used to), he's missing being able to get a decent pint more than anything...

      It's funny, you know, reading Slashdot and seeing someone you know's name up in lights. Ian's something of a geek icon these days, yet to me he's just one of the few decent guys in the AI class, who lived across the road in fourth year, and had a slightly questionable taste in leather jackets.

      I can remember bumping into him just outside the shop at Potterrow during exam time in third year, and
    • No, he's worried about possible terrorist actions taken by the U.S. Government against its citizens.
    • He's worried about possible terrorist actions taken against the U.S. government by its own citizens?

      What, you mean like the mostly-forgotten oklahoma city bombing? The forgotten and still unsolved anthrax mailings?
      • He's worried about possible terrorist actions taken against the U.S. government by its own citizens?

        What, you mean like the mostly-forgotten oklahoma city bombing? The forgotten and still unsolved anthrax mailings?

        Are you so certain those weren't the other way around? They convicted and executed Timothy McVeigh on almost *entirely* circumstancial evidence and a forced confession. Doesn't that seem the LEAST bit odd to you?

  • By leaving the USA, couldn't he eventually be branded a terrorist (for attacking US economic interests) and jailed without due process?

  • Who got the A that year? (Score:3, Funny)

    by harmonica ( 29841 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @08:24AM (#6867587)
    I understand Freenet was a school project and that you got a B. Who got the A that year?

    Some Finn who had the crazy idea of writing a Unix-like kernel for the x86 platform. Never heard of that guy again...

  • That's the last time... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Thursday September 04, 2003 @10:33AM (#6868677) Homepage Journal
    ...I make a hyperbolic statement under my real nick on /. I mean, its like living in Stalin's Russia!

    Oh shit...

  • IMHO, the problem is that economic and political growing pains happen anytime society advances - and since the USA is ahead of the curve, it usually experiences these problems first. I don't think moving away will help much (unless you leave the fray so as to return later when things settle down) because eventually the same growing pains will reach elsewhere too.

    Other cultures will be less able to protect their liberties when the onslaught of growing pains starts to knock on their front door. I wish we

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