Archive-name: alt.hacker/faq/part 2
Posting-frequency: weekly
Version: 1.1


An alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet


Dave Hayes
dave@jetcafe.org

------------------------------

Subject: 0. Table of Contents

5. Frequently Debated Windmills
5.1) Arbitrary notions of "net abuse"
5.2) The fallacy of "harm"
5.3) The existance of the Cabal
5.4) The uselessness of reputations
5.5) The bludgeon of ownership
6. A response to the "Alternative View" of this
"Alternative View"



------------------------------

Subject: 5. Frequently Debated 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.

5.1) Arbitrary notions of "net abuse"

Many vocal opponents to free speech tend to cite "abuse" as their
only reason for not embracing freedom. Here are some common strawman
assertions and their rebuttals.

- Free speech is all well and good, but what is to prevent someone
from unreasonable users from committing "net-abuse"?

The fallacy 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.

There is a strong vocal minority of news admins who constantly preach
the same party line (see definition of Cabal above), and it is
a tactic of propaganda to keep repeating the same thing over and over
again hoping it will be eventually regarded as true.

In fact, 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 some random form of authority (e.g. weapons, laws, shell
scripts), they attempt to bully people into submission into their
way. This does not mean that there is a general 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 but are
misinformed as to how to do it. Such people should be gently reminded
of the arbitrary nature of their standards, wide variety of people on
the net, and existance of their killfile.

5.2) The fallacy of "harm"

Some strawmen advocates go so far as to imply that "harm" comes from
speech. In fact, I can think of no thing more incapable of producing
harm than speech itself. To wit:

- We can't allow free speech. What if something extremely damaging is
posted?

Any "damage" that arises out of speech is not caused by the speech
itself, but by those who listen and then subsequently act. Speech in
and of itself does not "damage" anything.

Another way 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, soon one thing is silenced, and then another.
Quickly the entire philosophy of True Free Speech soon crumbles. Worse,
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
for the sake of some illusion of safety.

- But there really are damaging things that can be posted!

Well. 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
* personal information which should be left private

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."

The key here is self-control. Control of others is usually a symptom
of a need to control oneself coupled with a lack of willingness to
exert such control. We, as humans, cannot successfully and efficiently
control other humans, therefore our controlling impulses should be
directed at ourselves.

-Freedom of speech does not mean yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater.

Patently false. Yes, it does mean that. It doesn't mean you -do-
that, it means you have the freedom to do 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.

Thinking that it is the responsibility of the person who yelled "FIRE!"
strips your power away from you and makes you not responsible for your
life. Is that what you want?

5.3) The existance of the Cabal

Many debaters commonly forget that I define "Cabal" differently (see
definitions above) than everyone else. There is a reason for this
definition, it allows Free Speech Advocates to quickly determine who
is clearly not a Free Speech Advocate.

- (TINC) There Is No Cabal. Anyone saying this is obviously a kook.

(TISACSMF) There Is So A Cabal, See My Faq. :)

Anyone denying the existance of a cabal, and in the same posting
labeling someone with a label designed to inferiorate, is clearly
a Cabal member by my definition.

To deny the Cabal is to say that no one fits the definition, which is
patently false since examples pass through Usenet every day (one
example being Spam Cancels). Thus anyone denying the Cabal's existance
is attempting to hide the fact that it does exist, which helps the
Cabal and therefore implies that the denyer is a Cabal member
themselves.

Besides, 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?

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 all of 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.

5.4) The uselessness of reputations

Human beings are not perfect. A precedent of consistent action is not
guaranteed to produce that consistency in the future. To wit:

- 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.

- 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 "Spam", demonstrating the new jargon term "cybermob".

Mobs are generally ignorant, dense, and single-minded. They have a
tendancy to be created and sustained by emotional issues, with
subsequent loss of sanity for most involved. Do you really want to
trust the judgement of someone else to the effects of 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).

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.

- 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. (Maybe we already are...)

I would think that you don't really need to be taken seriously by
anybody who would attempt to coerce you in this way.

5.5) The bludgeon of ownership

Citing ownership of the press does not justify any attempt to censor
based on that ownership. In fact, using ownership as a "bludgeon"
to stamp out views that are disagreed with is still Censorship,
even though it may be justified by the definition of ownership.

- 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. Simply put, this definition of
free speech is not useful, and hardly free.

If you can't say something where and how you want to say it, is your
speech truly free? It cannot be, since someone who can control where
and how you speak can interfere with your ability to communicate, thus
restricting your freedom.

To put this another way: 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
freedom of speech, by the very fact that they use this argument.

- 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, which unfortuantely includes the ability to commit acts of Censorship.

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.

-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.

- 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. See the section on filtering
above.

- 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, any messages are
allowed by implication.

Retroactively claiming that these messages stole resources from you is
patently and arrogantly without basis. You are providing resources
simply by attaching a server daemon to an NNTP port and accepting
articles, via this you have agreed to let other people scribble onto
your disk by implication.

Turn off your daemon if you don't want that. Filter incoming articles
if you are still finicky about what you are going to accept (and if
you do you are not a Site of Virtue). But you may not usefully demand
that someone else stop posting because it's "your" disk if you open
your port to a full feed of Usenet.

- Usenet is free. Internet service isn't.

Oh come on. This is confusing 'free=not under control of some
arbitrary power' and 'free=without cost or payment; gratis'.

You shouldn't be paying for censored news. If you are, you are
probably wasting your money.

---------------------------------

Subject: 6. A response to the "Alternative View" of this Alternative View.

Consider the following excerpt from this FAQ:

"While all of the people who call themselves 'Freedom Knights' give
lip sevice to free speech, some of the most prolific of them seem to
be more interested in gaining power for themselves. They have been
known to post things like 'newsadmins are not necessary to the
people's usenet,` which is patently ludicrous because news servers do
not run themselves, or ad-hominem attacks against people who do not
take them seriously, such as accusing UUnet newsadmin David Lawrence
of raping children.
These so-called Freedom Knights have done more to hurt the
credibility of Dave Hayes and his goals than anything else ever
could."

I find it laughingly ironic that the news admins who are interested
in "gaining power for themselves" can spot this so readily in those
who call themselves Freedom Knights. This is a fine example of a
characteristic nature of humans: that which pisses us off the most
is but a reflection of our own nature.

Most of these people (including that FAQ writer) cannot read. Here are
some things I think people should know.

-No one is known as a Freedom Knight by calling themself that. Freedom
Knights are known by their deeds. Some on the Freedom Knights mailing
list have taken to harsh actions. That is their business, and not
mine. They are not only there on the list as an excellent litmus test
for free speech...but most of those people they are referring to have
been so fed up with the fascist-like actions of the news Cabal that
they are through being nice.

-Credibility is ultimately a fool's desire. I am rarely willing to put
myself at the mercy of someone else's standard of right and wrong, but
even if I was to do so...I can think of no worse group of cliquishly
machevellian people to enslave my actions to than those Cabal members
who are the denziens of news.admin.*.

------------------------------


$Log: freedom.html,v $
Revision 1.1 1997/12/06 08:14:01 dave
"VERSION.pm: fksite version 1.0"

Revision 1.11 1997/12/05 05:37:59 dave
Finally found a workable censorship definition. Cleaned up a few
inconsistancies. This one should fly better.

Revision 1.10 1997/08/19 06:56:10 dave
Lots of things, added more in table of contents, attempted
to tie together the 'strawman' section, added more definitions,
added suggestions, and updated as much as I could.

Revision 1.9 1996/09/30 06:37:19 dave
Added section 5.1. Added the funny blurb from alt.sex.sounds.
(ROFL)

Revision 1.8 1996/04/27 19:52:01 dave
Added reference to J.D. Falk's FAQ after he agreed to reference
this FAQ in his.

Revision 1.7 1996/04/16 08:31:53 dave
Added section 6

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