At 18.57 +0100 0-04-04, Bruce Robinson scrobe:
>I've attached an article from the Guardian on this. Hope the formatting is OK.
Thanks Bruce. That was informative.
At least, hearing it was on a newsgroup (as opposed to chat) explained the
relative permanence of the material to me. So the outcome of this case
might be that UK ISPs will be less willing to host newsgroups on their
servers, possibly... I mean, if ISPs were held liable for any piece of
email passing over their domains, or everything one of their customers
happens to request from the web over their software sluices... the mind
boggles. It is more understandable that libel law can be applied to
material in more or less permanent storage with them... but there are many
questions about this, as well.
I have no idea about the legal complexities of most of them. But I do think
they are relevant for us. As usual one thing makes me associate to
something related but different, and I dug up something I remembered from
my browsing in the older Xlist archives, from a context where there was
discussion about a new rise of McCarthyism, and the possibility of
listening FBI ears on the Net... and other immingled stuff as usual. Joe
Glick posted something that I hereby take the liberty of re-presenting,
hoping that my impression (my mere impression) that Joe would not mind is
correct. I AM floating it again because I find it wise and beautiful, and
sort of relevant to the lawsuit issue (as well as to our musings over what
can be respectfully done with texts on the XMCA.
Thoughtfully yours
Eva
>Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1991 09:15:30 EST
>From: Joe Glick
>Subject: listeners and democratic forces
>To: xlchc@UCSD.BITNET
<snip some material more dated than what follows>
>If you are important enough to be actively watched that is one thing - bugs
>might be constantly monitored (in vans and all those other devices familiar
>from the movies) - but most often bugging involves the collection of data
>which goes unanalyzed for long stretches of time. As much as we would like
>to imagine a huge apparatus that makes us just the most important thing on
>the buggers mind - we probably are not. We are, if and when we are bugged,
>just another point of light among the thousands.
>
>In the meantime . . .
>
>The forms of communication opened up and the networking possibilities allow
>new things to happen that couldn't have happened before - lateral
>communication
>is very difficult to control - and timing militates against its being an
>effective means of control. Just like phone records in court trials - there is
>information that can be found - but found only after you look for it.
>
>For me, the issue of McCarthyism doesn't devolve on whether there are or are
>not McCarthy's out there. I am positive that there are. And some will have
>limited effectiveness. My personal spectre is that those people will get
>broadly effective in the way that they were in the 50s - where public
>discourse becomes affected and the private is affected by fear of it
>becoming public. That is why I am mildly positive at this point - there is
>too much monitorable but uncontrollable possibility in people's hands.
>
>Those technologically provided possibilities are, to be sure, able to be
>transformed from lateral to top down communications - but the task is
>enormous. This is not the best of all possible worlds - but better than
>that- it is a world with sufficient chaos and anarchic complexity in it so
>that simple atttempts at authoritarian control will have a much harder time
>than under different technological conditions.
>
>Joseph Glick
>City University of New York
>Graduate School
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