Perverts and Consumers 108
Perhaps the luckiest break the Net and Web got was time: nearly a generation to grow and develop before journalists, legislators, lawyers or CEO's quite realized what it was, or accepted its political, economic and cultural importance.
Still, it's always been inevitable that politicians, corporations and media companies would try to regulate and control the Internet. It's becoming much too important and lucrative to be left alone.
Until this year, most efforts to control the Net consisted either of lunatic software or legislation advanced by opportunistic politicians -- decency acts from Congress, blocking and filtering programs from companies.
Rattled institutions refused to take the Net and Web seriously, or perhaps simply hoped it would just go away. Then they seemed to grasp in the mid- 90's that networked and linked computing somehow threatened the way they work.
So the largely mythical Net Pervert was invoked as a means of controlling this booming new sub-culture.
The pervert (and, to a lesser extent, the inaccurately-labeled "hacker") was the perfect late 20th century techno-nightmare, the ideal rationale for trying to stick a finger in the crumbling dike that was holding back the Information Revolution.
The Net was promoting isolation, addiction, loss of privacy - the end of civilization itself. Since the Internet was unsafe, and children were vulnerable to it, government agencies and law enforcement authorities had to regulate it.
So, as the media told it, the spectre of the online Pervert and his cousin, the Predator, grew. He lurked out there in the ether, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting children, to draw them into child pornography rings, to lure them into real-world encounters where they were kidnapped, murdered or raped.
There have been a handful of cases where this horrific scenario actually occurred. But given the number of interactions between children and the Internet, kids have always been statistically more likely to have jet planes fall on their heads than to be harmed online.
In fact, statistically, children are more likely - 300,000 times more likely, according to author Don Tapscott and Justice Department crime abstracts - to be harmed by the people they live with than by strangers they might encounter online.
Partly because real-world online crimes are so rare - despite the staggeringly disproportionate amount of media attention they receive - something gradually becoming obvious to computer-acquiring middle-class Americans, the invocation of the Pervert as a means of controlling the Net hasn't worked.
In the last few years, even the most mule-headed and reactionary corporations have figured out that they'd better learn to do business on he Net, if they're going to do business at all. So one way or another, the wild, unregulated frontier atmosphere that has characterized the Internet's first decades are coming to an end.
The good news about Judge Jackson's findings of fact about Microsoft is that the company's arrogant, rapacious and predatory behavior will be curbed. But that's the bad news too. We might be haunted one day by those voices wishing that the marketplace had been given the chance to do the job rather than the federal judiciary.
For the diverse and loosely-affiliated collection of sub-cultures we call the Net and the Web, a new era is definitely underway.
The Microsoft anti-trust action and a wave of legislation now before Congress heralds the beginning of a new, monumentally significant period in the history of the Net - the systematic effort by corporations, lobbyists and lawmakers to make it a safe, rational and, above all, profitable environment in which they can do business. The corporations that dominate media and commerce in America are the biggest, richest and most influential forces in recent U.S. history. And they're going digital.
To a one - lawyers, record companies, Hollywood studios, publishers, media conglomerates, politician institutions - the Net threatens their ability to set social and economic agendas, to dominate markets. There's plenty of debate about whether the Net can ever be harnessed by any the growing coalition of companies or government agencies wanting to do so, but there's no longer much doubt about whether they're going to try.
Their assault on the Net - sure to intensify over the next few years - marks an evolution in what will surely be one of the 21st century's slam-bang political struggles: that of individualism versus corporatism.
For much of the 20th century, political scientists and freedom-lovers worried about governmental tyranny - monarchies, fascism, Communism, Nazism as the primary threat to personal freedom. But increasingly, it's mass-marketing that threatens to kill off innovation, freedom, and individual expression.
Microsoft's history suggests a faint glimpse of what's to come.
These corporate and legislative political struggles make movements like open source and free software more vital by the day, not only in terms of freedom of speech and ideas, but of corporate flexibility and innovation as well. They may, in fact, signify the best chance of keeping the Net and Web competitive, innovative, cheap and lucrative.
At the moment, lawmakers are passing a growing list of measures that will put the federal government's stamp all over the Net. Many more are on the way. Perhaps prompted by all those lobbyists nibbling on their ears, congress has finally stopped worrying about whether Johnny will get on the Playboy website and gotten down to big issue worrying corporate America - how will they will do business on the Internet?
Congress now wants to create rules for selling Net addresses, define legal standing for digital contracts, ban some content and programming, including advice on legal contracts, medical research and information, restrict the spread of medical information, prohibit online gambling, curb the dissemination of music and sexually- explicit material, and regulate spam.
Much of this legislation is being initiated by companies, not members of congress who have, until now, been happy to view the Net from a wary distance, enacting the occasional, unworkable and totally decency act to keep up appearances.
But today, Internet legislation currently before Congress includes bills concerning digital signatures, cyber-squatting, database protection, Internet filtering, online alcohol and gun sales, Net gambling, online privacy, Net access, encryption and opening broadband cable Internet lines to competitors.
Many of these bills represent the handiwork not only of the usual clueless lawmakers, but of increasingly Net-savvy professional organizations and corporations who have hired lawyers and lobbyists to set this brand new digital congressional agenda.
In Washington, The New York Times reported on this week, "The Internet is an easy target." That's not really new, but it's significant that it's becoming big news.
In many cases, these companies are invoking protection of the Consumer - the successor to the lurking Pervert - as a rationale for controlling the Internet.
Rules, they say, are necessary to protect individuals in the booming era of Internet commerce. Stories about sexual predators online are being replaced by a wave of tales of consumer rip-offs.
When businesses invoke the protection of "consumers," it's a like lot politicians invoking the "morality" of children: grab your wallet and/or your kid and run for your life.
As is standard in Washington, the real shaping of such legislation occurs in ways completely opposite from Net conversations - it happens out-of-sight, in secret, at lunches and meetings, dinner parties and functions attended by lawyers, pundits, lobbyists and legislators.
The vast horde of reporters encamped in Washington still includes only a handful who know anything about the Net or technology. The press cover these issues only sporadically, as compared to stories they consider significant, like the nature of the oral sex the President received. That makes it even harder for the public - especially those much-invoked and mythic "consumers" in whose name new legislation is being proposed - to follow the debates and developments.
And it makes it much easier for the techno-blockheads in Congress to pass laws that corporations - the biggest political financial contributors in the United States - want passed.
There is also considerable hypocrisy involved: an increasing number of these bills originate with the very Net corporations and online services who have repeatedly called for the government to keep its hands off the Internet.
AOL is lobbying for laws that would force cable companies to open their high-speed Net lines to competition. eBay supports a database protection bill that many online fear could restrict access to information on the network. Powerful lobbies representing banking, law, publishing, medicine and the insurance industry also are players in this growing but quiet campaign.
More than any other single ethos, the Net has always embodied individualism. From the first BBS's to giant messaging systems, the Net has made it possible for people to communicate with one another in unprecedented ways, to build the infra-structure of a new culture and share it with one another.
The Internet is forcing business, education and politics to change. It's spawned countless new kinds of virtual communities, in which millions of individual people can express themselves in unfettered and unrestricted ways, and can access much of the archived information in the world for free.
Preserving those traditions isn't the goal of corporatism, or of legislators busy at working trying to fence off the digital frontier. Their real agenda is, in fact, just the opposite: reversing every single one of them.
Ahhh love your government (Score:1)
% of perverts (Score:4)
--
Nice job, but... (Score:4)
However, I think he may be a little too quick to scream "hands off!" to the government. (I'm sure he's read Hobbes, but if he has, either he saw serious problems that I totally missed or it just doesn't show).
But today, Internet legislation currently before Congress includes bills concerning digital signatures, cyber-squatting, database protection, Internet filtering, online alcohol and gun sales, Net gambling, online privacy, Net access, encryption and opening broadband cable Internet lines to competitors.
Why are these all bad things? Specifically, why shouldn't there be laws regarding digital signitures. Maybe he's referring to specific (and scary) proposals, but he didn't mention them. Digital signatures should be legally binding. Yes, that means a whole bunch of really complex laws will need to be passed, but without binding digital signatures, the internet will have a hard time evolving beyond it's current role.
I can see why Mr. Katz may think laws against cybersquatting are A Bad Thing, but to assume that most of his readership agrees is foolish.
The Internet, ideally, has no regional boundaries (I realize this is not really the case, but you get the picture). This raises tricky questions about gun and alcohol sales, as well as gambling. Personally, I would rather have laws passed then risk being prosecuted because the laws are fuzzy.
"Ah," but you say. "We're talking about the American goverment here (Yes, I realise that many of Slashdot's readers are not in the US, but Katz's article seemed to be only referring to US examples. If you have a problem with that, take it up with him.) and they're almost guaranteed to mess it up."
While I would certainly agree with that, just because the federal government might screw it up doesn't mean we should flip out if they try to get it right.
Easy target ? (Score:3)
IMHO, Congress, as individuals, are scared to death about doing anything adverse to the open 'standards' of the net. If there is one thing congress understands, it's backlash. They know about www.gwbush.com [gwbush.com], The Drudge Report [drudgereport.com], the death of DIVX, the death of the Communications Decency Act, and other movements that have been powered, at least in part, by the net. Congress is still trying to grasp what the net is all about, and until they think they figure that out, they will most likely keep their paws off of it.
Of course, I'm probably wrong.
SciFi not wrong. (Score:1)
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:2)
And much more important, IMHO, is the fact that it's setting up a conflict between an internationaly standard arbitration process (via ICANN, if they get things figured out) and a fractured, chaotic system in which local laws are made to apply.
In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:5)
Until 1995, 90% of the net was American. By 2005, more than 50% of the net will be Non-American. I make the changeover point sometime around 2002; Europe is about 12 months behind the USA and has 20% greater population, and the rest of the world (notably the Pacific Rim) is in there too.
The real action to keep your eyes on is not the speechifying in Congress, but what happens at the G8 summits and in the various low-key trade treaty meetings that happen from time to time. International treaties are effectively law -- once ratified they are binding, and they're a lot harder to make an end-run around than local ordinances. To this end, you really want to watch out for what is happening in the European Commission offices -- a market for national bureaucrats to talk shop -- and eye up what they agree with the US government about. Once the EU and the USA work out a common subset of ground rules, those rules will almost certainly stick.
Moreover, what the EU member states want and what the USA wants are very different. Take Germany's recent willingness to undermine the Wassenaar Agreement by providing public funds for GPG. Or France's current turmoil over a move to a maximum 35-hour working week (the leisure society coming home to roost as a way to abolish high structural unemployment). Or the EU-wide interest in privacy law, so totally alien to the US political process, but counter-balanced by a more overt US commitment to freedom of speech (at least in theory).
There will be interesting times ahead as a cross- border consensus gets thrashed out. And because the net knows no frontiers, you Americans can expect some European values to come home to you.
We don't need the government to protect consumers (Score:1)
Mythical Men. (Score:3)
I'm not concerned one tiny little bit about the gyrations that congress or any other legislative body / group goes through. It does not concern me. If tomorrow they made it illegal to program with intent to create software for non-microsoft products, I would blatently ignore them, even if they made the punishment 40 years in jail.
Virtually everybody who's half-way intelligent in this country (that would be no more than about 20% of the population) has given up on the concept of freedom, justice, and the american way. Freedom died back in the 60's (Anybody remember that little skirmish in Chicago at the democratic convention?), justice has been dead since the 30's (Martin Luther King, the O-J trial, Monica Lewinsky, a plethora of political prisoners... the list goes on).. and the american way is a long infomercial these days.
Forget it. The law is no longer for the common man. Follow your own moral compass, and let the politicians and the "moral majority" (an oxymoron if you ask me) follow their own path. It's like trying to plan your diet - one week it's "ok" to eat eggs, the next week it isn't.
--
"Those who refuse to see are the true blind..." (Score:2)
But I do know that whatever new thing comes along, Congress (opposite of Progress) usually thinks we need protecting from it. Seriously, we don't need tons of new laws, and if corporations can't do business on the net, too bad. I'd be heart broken if they had to leave and left the net to the people who can really change the world.
He does have one good point. Technology changes so fast, we will be able to tell our grandkids that we were there when it all started and made sure it didn't get corrupted...
Could the government be scared? (Score:5)
There were two issues that I found that the economists and the governments have with the internet. The first is that any transactions that take place on the web aren't taxed, and therefore the governments will get less money, and then the quality of the services the governments provide will go down. The second was that because the major divisions of the world (the boundaries between the countries) really have no bearing on the internet, the divisions will instead be based on interests, desires, needs, etc. This they fear because it erodes people's sense of community (the physical one, not the internet one).
A place like this, slashdot, is one of these "communities" that is a threat to a goverment. Because the members identify more with the other members of their internet community (sorry about the buzzwords here), and identify less with the community that they actually live in, they care less about what happens in that community.
One really good example is the number of young people in the US that vote, or have even bothered to register to vote. Many think that it doesn't affect them, or that they can't do anything about it.
I think we need to keep a very good eye on our government. It's shown its ability in the past at sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong, and it could really screw over what we now have with the internet.
Ok, this is a rather long-winded heads up for those of you who don't think that the government can do anything, look at what's going on with MS right now. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but the government could bend that into an excuse to heavily regulate the market. That could pose many obstacles to Open Source.
Nailed. (Score:2)
Interesting to note, however, is that Katz mentions that (paraphrasing) the Net and the Web have had a generation to develop to get where it is today. The Net has been around since the 70s. However, without the HTTPD protocol and the HTML markup language, or equivalent mechanisms, the net would still be solely the realm of academia and those few fortunates that had net feeds to play MUDs and only a thousand newsgroups. Why? Before the Web was developed, using the net was arcane: you had to know weird unix commands to get files, and there was no simple point-and-click like interface for these tasks. 99% of the population would never had begun to understood these things, and the same goes with e-commerce. Without the web, a few companies may have gotten onto the net, and maybe have had email addresses for contact, but certainly no storefronts or the like.
The Web has been both a major boon to the Net, as well as a benefit. However, there needs to be a balance between the profittering of ecommerce and the free sharing of information between peoples for the web to work as intended.
Regulating the net is like regulating the oceans. (Score:1)
Trying to stop "perverts" will never work. (Score:1)
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Until 1995, 90% of the net was American. By 2005, more than 50% of the net will be Non-American. I make the changeover point sometime around 2002; Europe is about 12 months behind the USA and has 20% greater population, and the rest of the world (notably the Pacific Rim) is in there too.
The real action to keep your eyes on is not the speechifying in Congress, but what happens at the G8 summits and in the various low-key trade treaty meetings that happen from time to time. International treaties are effectively law
Good points, but as we all know, the US never follows international law. I do not know of many treaties that the US has ever honored with the exception of nuclear test ban treaties. What happens if the US tries to push their own regulations anyway and says "screw the world"?
"The state is the pooper-scooper of capitalism" (Score:4)
In the late 19th century, the development of the Industrial Revolution and the market economy went hand-in-hand with increased government regulation.
Why? Preindustrial societies could usually control their members with social pressure, religious sanctions, and village-level regulations. Capitalism made it easier for people to evade (or stop caring about) these kinds of sanctions, and so in more and more cases, the State was called in to regulate commerce. Entrepreneurs under Gilded-Age capitalism had more freedom in certain areas (setting wages and prices, for example), but they also faced new regulations in other areas (such as food purity and workplace safety, if I remember correctly).
Karl Polyani, in The Great Transformation, has many interesting things to say about this.
I wouldn't be surprised if, by the same token, as the Net grows more popular and influential, the State takes on more and more responsibility to clean up after it.
The net doesn't need new laws (Score:3)
A good principle would be that technology (the means) should not be the target of legislation. It is unacceptable activities and results that should be outlawed. For example, Pres. Clintstone wants to protect privacy of electronic medical records. Why not protect privacy of all medical records? Why should it matter if a privacy invader uses an electronic computer, a hydraulic computer, or a pencil and paper?
The politicians are promoting themselves by posing in combat against the evil phantoms that the public imagines technology creates. Technology is not a source of evil, but amoral enterprises and amoral politicians can more easily fleece the public into submitting to domination by approved technologies by convincing us that the wired age changes everything, so we need all new laws.
Better that we should decide what is right or wrong, fair or foul, without getting distracted by hardware/software issues.
Kings of the Wild Frontier (Score:1)
Legislating against free speech, restricting what I can see and can't see should not be called legislation, lets get real here folks, it is censorship.
Do I want to be censored? No, of course not, I believe that as a reasonably responsible adult I can choose what I want to see and what I don't want to see. Just becaust there is porn on the net doesn't mean I want to look at it, just as there porn mags being sold in many places doesn't mean I want to buy them.
Am I worried that my 6 year old nephew can get access to hardcore porn on the net? No, why? The same reason as I know he wont be watching hardcore porn videos, its called parental control, I often wonder why governments forget about this when it comes to movies, tv, and internet. It is the most powerful law going, at least my Mother was when I was 6! :-)
Legislation should be different to censorship, and I welcome it. I want sites where I buy stuff to have to comply to some law somewhere. If what I get is not what I ordered I want a specific 'net based law I can fall back on that will protect me. The fact that much of the legislation before governments in many different countries at the moment lumps everything to do with the net all together does not help anyone who actually uses the interent on a regular basis. The other regular media only ever pick up on the anti-porn, harmful to children stuff and everthing else gets no attention at all. This is not good, and I am sure that even here at /. there will be replys to this story saying that any attempt to control the net is wrong. There needs to be something somewhere that protects my rights.
Now re-read the next article you see in a newspaper or magazine abot our evil internet, and replace the word "internet" with another mass form of communication "telephone", see how stupid some of the rubbish the politicians are sprouting is now? Imagine if a law was passed saying that you cant use certain words on the telephone? Essentailly thats what they are trying to do here. Would you elect the politician who trys to introduce that law, no and neither would anyone else. The law would be laughed out of congress as being unworkable, why isn't the same happening here?
Actually its pretty easy to see why the same is not happening here, its because of ignorance. Ignorance on the non internet-savy public. The public that believes TV and Newspaper when they say that the interent can be used for evil, the public that cheers the politician when he says that the internet is evil. Will we the net users win against this ignorance, probably not, but I believe that the internet culture cannot be legislated for.
How can one country legislate the WORLD WIDE Web? That makes no sense to me, there are no borders here. You cannot walk into a store in the high street and buy a gun in my country, but you may be able to in yours, different countries different laws. How this applies to the 'net is anyones guess at the moment. Governments the world over are falling over themselves to bring in new net laws, unfortunatly (or in fact fortunatly for us) there is pretty much no uniformity on these laws and because of this there will in essense be no law at all. If the US passes a law to ban slashdot, well set up on a server somewhere else, who loses? We don't.
Finally, I believe that the internet will be impossible to control, different legislation affecting different countries, new ways of accessing the net stopping the mass blocking of sites, I believe that the legislation will get politicians re-elected, give them a few good sound-bites that the ignorant masses will eat up, and we will all continue as we are.
Thanks for listening.
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:2)
Not everyone thinks that American way is dead a great many people actually care.
Now for the burning question: why does everyone hate the government so much? Do you really think that other countries are any better? If the government was all gone tomorrow and the army with it do you not think that some shall we say even more oppressive regime (ie communist China) would not step in to fill the void? To put it bluntly your life would most likely be forefit because you are an "intellectual" and a "free-thinker" under the communist system that many of these counquerors believe in. No my friend I will continue to believe in the country that has a better ammount of soverientity than any one else for quite some time.
Now is the time..... (Score:3)
During this period of transition to our new government I have been appointed as interim king of the Internet. As such I am implementing a few new procedures in order to make this transition as easy as possible:
1. There will be a new closed domain (.perv) where like-minded people can play by themselves.
2. There will be a voluntary 1% tax on all Internet sales in order to fund our new government.
3. The implementation of an Internet review board to review physical non-Internet aligned governmental policies toward our world with the power to banish them from our domain after a full review process.
4. The Scheduled date for the internet constitutional congress will be January 15, 2000 if you are interested in attending or would like to nominate someone as a representative please contact my office at king_internet@hotmail.com
As with any such transition there is bound to be rumors floating about as to our ultimate goals. So please bear with us through this trying time as we establish the first government truly representative of its citizens.
If you have any questions or comments about this transition please contact me directly at king_internet@hotmail.com
Fugu King of the Internet
apples and oranges (Score:2)
the invocation of the Pervert as a means of controlling the Net hasn't worked.
That's because controlling the environment is never (or very seldom anyway) the right way to deal with malcontents within those environments. And a lot of people know it. It has little or nothing to do with how many - or how few - perverts are really out there. Regulate the net because there might be perverts there, and you end up penalizing all the law-abiding folk instead. It's like dealing with regular offline perverts. If there's one in your neighborhood, you could insist that everyone stay indoors in order to protect themselves. But that's the wrong way to go about it. A better approach would be (to use a very politically-correct term) to empower the law-abiding folk, so that they're aware of the pervert, and can avoid falling into his/her clutches. It works the same way for online perverts, nosey privacy-destroying corporations eager to target new markets, and other dangers. Knowledge is power. Spread the knowledge, and you reduce or eliminate the need for draconian regulations.
In many cases, these companies are invoking protection of the Consumer - the successor to the lurking Pervert - as a rationale for controlling the Internet.
It's still the wrong approach, whether it's companies or governments who are attempting it.
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:1)
Optimisation (Score:2)
It doesn't really matter whether they have any clue or the laws and rules they propose are good, bad or idiotic. The good ones hopefully stay, the bad and the idiotic will be overturned once enough people (and businesses) protest against it. This is happening for the last few years with those moronic export laws for strong encryption. The same happened with the CDA, COPA etc.
For matters that are important to the average citizen, the optimisation process between total laissez-faire and total regulation is well understood and - basically - works. The important thing is to get it started. It doesn't really matter how. Some spectacular bad laws may even speed the process to equilibrum.
I bet, inside the next three years, the whole matter of domain-names and trademarks will be solved. Probably a few martyrs and some really clueless judges will be necessary, but those are cheap to come by. Then there will be some supreme court rulings, lots of laws, rulings against those, an adaptation of the trademark concept and in the end a workable solution will emerge, which is accepted by the majority.
So don't panic, and go on complaining about all those absurd laws. It helps!
Servus,
johi
The internet is what YOU make it. (Score:2)
Companies like AOL and MS may be trying to kill the URL (see Internet Keywords) as a way to restrict people's net experience to the corporate world, but they can never totally succeed because of the net's open architecture. (Yes, MS may wish they had the power to close this loophole, but they don't.)
Countries, including the USA, will try regulating the net. Some may succeed, on a small scale for a short time, but over the long run, they will have to give it up because it's ultimately bad for business. (See Singapore for a sterling example.)
Yes, the domain name battle is already lost to those with more money and lawyers, but who cares, really? Any CONTENT you may wish to find is still available, and that's the important thing.
Low-cost, content-agnostic web hosting is out there, and available in many parts of the world, such that national content-restrictions (such as the new US legislation criminalizing LINKING to information about scheduled drugs) can be subverted. It may not be bandwidth-agnostic (a popular pr0n site will still cost you some bucks to host), but that's life, and was true well before lawmakers started nosing around.
I used to think the internet was on the decline b/c of commercial interests; I now realize that every time one popular hangout is coopted/overloaded (usenet, eternal September), more spring up in different forms. (Slashdot being a great example, even though it is in mid-life already.)
The internet, unlike the physical world, doesn't have a limited amount of real-estate, (I know, theoretically it does, but it's incomprehensibly vast compared to what we see today.) and for that reason alone, I firmly believe the 'net is what you make of it.
-Isaac
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:1)
First of all, local government (city, county, state, country?) cannot reasonably be expected to enforce most of the activity on the Internet, due to the Internet disregard for such political boundaries.
Second of all, are these being provided without law? Well, no, in many cases. Cyber-squatting is a huge problem, on both extremes (ppl obviously doing it, and ppl obviously not doing it, but being accused of it none-the-less). Digital signatures being legal is commerce, and requires the government laws, as is gun and alcohol sales, and net gambling. DB protection, I'm a little less clear on, but eBay should have the right, for example, to limit how their database is used.
As per online privacy, there's no question in my mind that there is a problem here, and its only going to get worse. The US government has always (recently) had its hand into encryption.
Now, filtering and network access are a little harrier, and I'm less apt to say 'something needs to be done' (esp wrt filtering). There are several ways to access the internet (even for broadband). While in each access method there may be a monopoly, the variety of access methods rules out (short term) monopolistic activity.
That all said, the government has shown incompetence in the past in general, but every once in a while, they get something close to right, IMHO. I'd be more willing to say "our community (well, the US portion) needs to help the US government get it right" than "our community needs to tell the US goverment to keep their grubby paws to themselves."
Perverts and JonKatz (Score:2)
But there are some gaps in the article. For instance, there is a
- fundamental
difference between legislation of technology, and legislation of content. AOL lobbying for access to lines has nothing to do with government 'parent protection' ideas.Also, these types of legislation will only substantially affect the state of the art. All of the "free and unfettered" things will continue to be so. usenet, email, BBSes (in one form or another) will still be unregulatable.
One of the most insidious aspects, though, is that new technology and apps will be developed to comply with whatever laws are in effect at the time. If, for example, restrictions on cryptography are in effect, then products won't be developed with strong cryptography. (and to tie into the previous paragraph, this still won't make PGP and so forth go away)
Helpmehelpme (Score:1)
Can we just have the government regulate the AOL portal? That would solve our problems by taking care of the vast majority of stupid onliners...
Wait a minute, I have an AOL account... just leave my cable ISP alone and I will be happy.
Viva la pervert (Score:2)
Re:"Those who refuse to see are the true blind..." (Score:1)
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Re:Now is the time..... (Score:1)
Shouldn't that be "with themselves?"
Re:Viva la pervert (Score:1)
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:2)
That's the way the country was created! A fairly loose group of sovereign states united by a federal government with very limited explicitly enumerated powers. It's in this quaint little document they wrote in 1789. And that's the way the country worked until, starting in 1861, because of a (perhaps unfortunate) clause outlawing seccession, the centralized government started to accrete power for itself. Fifty years later the federal governments ability to levy income tax was started to finance the Great War, and it was a pittance compared to what is collected now. The state governments are quite capable of doing stupid things (and often do), but so is the Federal government. The states have a great advantage of being more responsive to their particular slice of the great American diveristy. Tell me for a minute that every issue in COnnecticut is equally relevant in California.
>Now for the burning question: why does everyone hate the government so much? Do you really think that other countries are any better?
Just because some of has serious problems with the government doesn't mean we want to abolish it, nor does it mean that we don't realize that other countries are worse. However, being the best government in the world (IMO), does not mean the U.S. Government does everything well and does not mean it is not subject to a whole lot of stupidity. When it comes to keeping the Commies out and maintaining the safety of our food and water supplies, roads and keeping the monetary system working well (and many other things that don't come immediately to mind) I think our governments (Federal, State, local) do a damn fine job. But I will also be happy to site innumerable examples of total governmental stupidity to anyone who wants to listen for hours.
The biggest problem with Internet regulation is not what the legislatures want to accomplish, I think we all agree the ends sought are for the most part good and desirable, but the fact that the people making the decisions have only the most superficial understanding of what they are doing (CDA anyone?), and seem unwilling or unable to educate themselves enough to make informed decisions. That's a recipe for disaster in any endevour!
Jon Katz -- the /. demagouge? (Score:2)
civilization (Score:1)
Re:civilization (Score:1)
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:4)
(2) The real fear is that Internet types who don't like the present taxing regime will set up shop in Antigulla or similar countries, which have no tiresome income tax or regulations. Certainly if you have loose roots in your existing community, moving to Antigulla could be an attractive proposition. You'd probably miss the urban amenities of your present location, but I understand Antigulla has a pleasant Carribean climate. Watch out for the occasional tiresome hurricane, though.
(3) On the other hand, I have yet to find a government that provides quality services. Businesses have had to adopt to lower profit margins; I see no reason why governments can't adapt to lower revenues. In my view, anyway, there are enough goods that will be bought locally to prevent a collapse of sales tax revenues. For instance, fresh food will always come from grocery markets, and even Internet markets have to pay sales tax if they do home deliveries in your area. I buy a lot of books at amazon.com, but I still buy a lot of books from my local bookstore, too. What happens in my case is that publishers make more money, because instead of looking longingly at that $50 book in the store, I buy it at amazon instead of reluctantly passing it by as I did in the past. In the end, I spend more money on books, and maybe 10% less at bookstores than I used to - hardly a catastrophe for local tax revenues.
(4) Pretty much ever since I was born, I have never had any identity with my local community. Flatly, none. I don't think the Internet has created this situation - I think it existed long before the net and even pervasive personal computing. I haven't found a really good explanation for why this is, but I suspect the primary reason is that during the 60s and 70s, people started to fear each other. They started to be afraid of crime and people unlike them. So suburbs were formed, with the intent of isolating people in a safe environment. It worked in crime terms, but psychologically it seems to have been very isolating. Another factor is a basic feeling of futility about the workings of the political process - which seem to be way above the abilities of the average person to manipulate.
I think this way predates the Internet, so I can't say the Internet is to blame.
In my view, our local governments have dug their own graves. Here in California, we get poor-quality roads, long lines at the DMV, an indifferent police force that cares more about giving out parking tickets then protecting us, schools that don't educate, a dysfunctional welfare system, etc, etc, etc. So why should we pay an 8.25% sales tax plus $
I'll be darned if I know. You tell me.
Finally, it's worth noting that the most cohesive communities, the communities where neighbors are genuinely friendly and seem to care about each other, are the ones where they face a common foe. Malibu and Topanga, California, for instance, face tiresome natural disasters every few years, and I think it makes the communities and the relationships stronger. Perhaps that is, in an odd way, a path towards community building and success?
D
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Introducing the Rorschach Article! (Score:2)
What does it say about Slashdot that people are willing to take this as insight and inspiration? It's rather disturbing. One would like to believe that slashdot geeks have minds analytical enough to make reasonable value judgements, yet it seems that many are willing to draw inspiration from extremely nebulous and woolly talk, even willing to suggest that the person responsible for this vague talk is observant or wise. It's rather like deriving insight from emacs' Doctor mode: Jon is not having any ideas, and his ability to summarize and explain the old ideas he's using is weakening. The sheer wandering, centerless quality of his output raises questions of whether he is well: most people's thought processes are not so disconnected.
Now that I've said that, anyone is welcome to mark it flamebait 20,000 times until your mouse drops off. I don't mind being 'censored', I just wished to say my piece, particularly since people were citing this article as something _better_ than most Katz articles, when in fact it is simply _vaguer_... shockingly vaguer, in fact. How much farther can this go before Slashdot notices- or before Jon Katz needs help? There comes a point where the writing tells a pathological story as well as a literary story. If Jon posted an essay in which every other sentence left out a key word, would people consider that grounds for his needing a medical checkup? I do agree that writing an essay to be read publically by large numbers of people and leaving out a key word in _one_ sentence is merely evidence of sloppiness, though it does raise the issue of where that word went: what happened between the brain and the hands and the eyes that he didn't spot that? It helps nobody if Jon Katz has some sort of breakdown and begins posting greatly deteriorated essays to slashdot- even if the subjects he picks are those that slashdotters can talk interestingly about.
And Therein Lies the Rub (Score:2)
On another note... How much of this would be enforceable if encryption became prevalent and anonymity online was ensured?
Regs will be superfluous (Score:1)
There is no point in fussing over the possibility that the US government is going to legislate the 'Net. Commercial forces will do it for them.
Within a few years, most Americans will have a choice of exactly two ISP's: their cable provider (AT&T in most cases) and their ILEC Telco (SBC, in most cases). With dial-up access disappearing, the independent ISP's are on Death Row.
The two big ISP's will be working some very big-dollar deals with advertisers and such. I guarantee that those deals will include the ISP restricting subscribers in various ways. If you thought that AOL's Terms Of Service were onerous, just wait until you see what happens when your ISP lands a zillion-dollar deal with McDonalds. Your ISP will become child-safe.
Re:Regs will be superfluous (Score:1)
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:3)
From another perspective, if a government were going to make a mistake as a matter of course (not a bold assumption) then would it be better to have it affect the whole nation, or one state? In the second case other states could examine the scenario and learn what not to do, or perhaps develop a solution to the problem. The internet has only made this process easier because it gives citizens an easy way to take there business and assets else where, thereby giving their government a sure sign that they do not like the way things are being run. This will only get easier as the net progresses.
The same situation exists between the nations of the world. In the most extreme situations, people who are displeased with their country emigrate, often to the US. Again the net will only facilitate this process by allowing the easy transfer of assets across borders. Politicians should be very worried about anonymous payments via ecash, when that becomes possible they will have to seriously compete to keep assets in their borders.
As for hating the US government even though other countries have it worse. This is one reason internal competition (between states) could only help us by giving us a better standard to judge our governments by. Also, as a previous poster replied, just because we don't think the US government is the best it could be does not mean we would rather live anywhere else in the world. In a small display of hubris I would say the US is the best place to be living at this time in history, by this I do not imply that Americans are better than everyone else, only that the political and social situation in the US is very favorable compared to other nations at this point in time. I certainly hope America is not the best humans can do as a civilization/society before their extinction.
Politicians (Score:1)
Re:"Those who refuse to see are the true blind..." (Score:2)
Look at the Federal government -- if it were "controlled by corporate interest" it'd be tearing down regulations left and right, going towards flat taxes, not trying to legislate *any* benefits, and increasing the DoD at the expense of social spending instead of the exact reverse.
You also wouldn't have a mostly New Left/Third-Way administration...
Complacency? (Score:2)
Over here we've had the Demon [demon.net] Usenet-hosting debacle [wsws.org] to cope with and I'm not happy that an ISP should be liable for anything other than equipment and service provision. As soon as you get governments, courts and corporations involved in the 'Net, you've got problems - all the innocence of one's student days is over.
If you want an example of the sort of depth of argument that does the rounds nowadays, check here [ed.ac.uk].
Re:Kings of the Wild Frontier (Score:1)
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
In theory, I'd agree with you guys. But the USA has an unfortunate track record of being able to export "policy" (NOT legislation!) by bringing commercial and PR pressure to bear. Look at how many governments have been signed up in the "War on Drugs" and their offspring - FDA directives, written by an anonymous US bureaucrat, are being incorporated in legislation all over the world even though in the USA they never went through the legislative provess, public debate, or review by anybody else.
Corporate Tyranny (Score:2)
Broadband service providers are encouraging this with "features" such as NAT'd IP addresses, prohibitions on servers, asymmetrical bandwidth, service specific bandwidth restrictions, and customer hardware/software restrictions.
My nightmare is a broadband network interface that is essentially a Cable TV decoder box with bells and whistles. You will only have high-speed access to the service provider's corporate partners. Your upstream bandwidth will be limited to what is needed to support selecting a channel and pressing the buy button. Any speech that is annoying or offensive to the service provider will result in immediate service termination. The service provider will mandate the use of client software provided by one of its corporate partners (guess who).
Re:"Those who refuse to see are the true blind..." (Score:1)
Congress responds to money like it is an aphrodisaic. The more they smell they more they want to regulate. In some cases, it's a good idea; you can't trust a corporation to have your interests @heart.
I don't like Katz's tiring assertion that "market forces" will/could have/eventually fixed Microsofts problem. They are a monopoly. Monopolies tend to _Control_ the market.
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:2)
About half of the problems can be solved without laws. For example, cybersquatting has gotten a lot more expensive now that you have to pay up front. Creating a .inc domain woul;d probably solve most of the remaining issues. Alcohol sales are not unique to the net, and there are existing laws that cover the issue very nicly. The same is true for gun sales.
As for database protection, Ebay does not sell their database, they publish it freely. Why should they be able to limit what you can do with it. If you allow them to prevcent meta auction sites, how long will it be before it becoms illegal to post a price comparison chart on the net? A pricelist is a database, even if it's on paper.
The best thing the US Government could do is to set up a key signing service so that REAL digital signatures can be validated.
All current plans WRT digital signatures are even less trustworthy than a pen and ink signature. If the current proposed legislation is their idea of digital signatures, I'd prefer that they do nothing.
Online privacy could be best helped by removing government restrictions on encryption, not by adding new restrictions elsewhere. Less is DEFINATLY more here.
Network access is a non issue, or would be is common sense were applied. Cable companies are REQUIRED to carry local broadcast stations in the relm of TV. They should likewise be REQUIRED to carry local ISPs in the relm of internet connectivity. It's not all that different. All of that can be solved by an FCC ruling on current issues rather than by new legislation.
regulation of the cable industry (Score:2)
Up until recently, cable companies were given free reign over just about everything they did, as they were a one-way broadcast medium. Now they want to move into the consumer/broadband telecommunications arena. Well, sorry, the FCC already has regulations regarding services like that, and the RBOCs, LD carriers, and every littel podunk telco out there has to follow them, at some level. Just because the telcos use twisted-pair and the cablecos use coaxial doesn't make them any different. What matters is that they are providing part of a national communications infrastructure, something that requires them to guarantee a certain level of service, provide said service for specific rates (that they're not allowed to determine, the local principality determines that), and allow other competitors into the market. The FCC, with their hands-off policy towards cable has basically said, "No, AT&T, you have too much of a monopoly in the phone market, you have to divest and play by all new rules. Oh what? Cable? Uh, sure you can have that monopoly back..."
Congress is right in trying to stop that silly shit...
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:1)
You can try to do something about this kind of thing. Get the government out of *your* decisions. Vote libertarian [lp.org].
Remember: Only ~12% of Americans vote - and of those, they're split half/half between the two major parties. The libertarians only need 7% of the population to vote for them for them to win.
Co-opting thru IPv6's QoS (kinda off-topic) (Score:1)
This makes me wonder, once Disney and Ted Turner buy up all the bandwidth they'll need, will the common man be able to serve content at anything more than a dribble? Big companies can bid up the price of bandwidth to *far* in excess of what the little guy can afford.
This feels like much more of a threat than any legislative attempts to regulate the Net.
What do y'all think?
Re:Viva la pervert (Score:1)
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:2)
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:1)
Products shiped across state lines ARE subject to sales tax. It is called use tax and you are "required" to pay by filling a certain form (not that anyone does it or that it is enforced but it is the law).
The overall point of the previous poster is that we need to be weary of a "jealous government." As the government begins to lose hold on something it is prone to knee jerk reactions which can negatively impact markets.
The point being we need to exercise our political identity as a community in order to ensure our freedom and not sit passively by letting others make decisions that affect us all.
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:1)
If you can break the law in a way that no one who has cause to hurt you can prove, the law ceases to apply in that situation. Microsoft's monopoly, for instance, was brought down because of complaints from those they stepped on. Meanwhile, politicians and the media are free to slander the unpopular (for instance, with stereotypes of the Pervert and the Con Artist), even if this slander is technically illegal, because the injured parties won't complain: there are too few of them. In practical terms, though, clueless politicians' speeches and unenforceable (either unpopular, infeasable, or contradicting higher laws) bills can typically be ignored, at least in the short term.
But the question must be asked: what lies down this path of apathy?
"When they came for the jews, I thought I wasn't a jew, so I did nothing.
When they came for the gypsies, I wasn't a gypsy, so I did nothing.
When they came for the homosexuals, I wasn't gay, so I did nothing.
When they came for me, there was noone left to do anything for me."
And thus have Holocausts occurred...
Re:"Those who refuse to see are the true blind..." (Score:2)
You've got a bizarre view of what corporations & rich individuals want in the way of laws. They don't want a lack of laws - they want laws that benefit THEM & hurt their competitors. That's why we have such a nightmare of regulations - every company that can make a congressional puppet dance keeps trying to push through THEIR view of what's best for them, and worst for their competitors.
Taxation and the internet (Score:2)
Not all tax collection schemes are equally vulnerable, however. Property taxes on concrete objects, especially land and buildings, and to some extent plant and machinery, are not so vulnerable. So the idea that government will be made bankrupt I think is absurd, but they may be forced to fundamentally change the way that they tax. A move from an income to a property tax is also a move from taxing labour to taxing capital, which may lead to interesting political issues.
Re:Regulating the net is like regulating the ocean (Score:1)
> seen. Of course a new global entity takes power away from existing separate nations.
It is fine if the power STAYS where it belongs: WE, THE PEOPLE.
It is not if the power goes to those big CROPORATIONS.
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:1)
> Here in California, we get poor-quality roads, long lines at the DMV,
> an indifferent police force that cares more about giving out parking
> tickets then protecting us, schools that don't educate, a dysfunctional
> welfare system, etc, etc, etc. So why should we pay an 8.25% sales tax
> plus $
> these "services"?
Poor sweet little dear. Well, if there hadn't been PROPOSITION 13, I would sympathize, but it's hard to sympathize to self-inflicted wounds.
When it comes to services from the State (not the Government, that's really something very different from the State), you get what you pay for, just like with private enterprise.
All goods & services worth price charged.
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:1)
Re:I hear ya! (Score:2)
I assume you're referring to the IDO (Iris Development Option)? The IDO is "available" to pretty much anyone who asks their dealer nicely for it when buying a used machine. You can also get it if you make a moderate-sized bid on eBay. This is piracy, but it's relatively benign in that I really don't think SGI cares; they'd rather see us use their machines than not.
At any rate, since Irix 6.2, the header files you need are included with the base OS and you just have to install them from the CD and you're good to go for GCC.
The real Microsoft tax in my view is the constant crashing - and my Indigo2 has been 100% reliable since the day I bought it.
D
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Re:Now is the time..... (Score:1)
Nothing prevents us from establishing an Internet based goverment. I also believe that a 1% voluntary tax would be enough to get the government started.
king_internet@hotmail.com
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:2)
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:2)
No, it doesn't make me sympathise with your argument. Overall, California is still one of the highest taxed states in the union, and yet it has rotten services. We'd better make the most of what we have, instead of looking at Proposition 13 for an excuse.
Not all goods and services are worth the price charged, especially when there is a tenuous link between price and quality. If a con man manages to promise something without delivering it, do you get angry, or do you say the service he provided was worth the price?
I feel exactly that way about government.
D
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Katz, Microsoft, and Linux (Score:1)
a) an anti-MS reference
b) Linux ass-kissing
into absolutely every article he posts on
You could argue the anti-trust thing had some relevance to his argument, but the way he rams it straight in after talking about internet porn has all the subtlety of a severed head in your driveway.
Katz, write out 1000 times (alright weenies, 1024):
Slashdot readers will not love me just because I bash Microsoft and praise Linux.
Re:"The state is the pooper-scooper of capitalism" (Score:1)
Re:Regs will be superfluous (Score:1)
--
Re:Optimisation (Score:1)
Check out Jonathan Rauch's book Demosclerosis: the Silent Killer of American Government for the gory details. All these stupid laws have vociferous advocates, namely those who benefit from them, and the rest of the public are too apathetic to fight any particular law...and Archimedes' Principle (not the "Eureka" one, but the one that says for any epsilon > 0 and positive integer N, there's some other integer M such that M * epsilon > N...or as Dirksen said, "A billion here, a billion there...pretty soon you're talking real money") takes hold, and we've lost our freedom and money by thousands of small steps.
South Carolina sold our driver's licenses (Score:1)
I am a perverted consumer! (Score:1)
The way I see it...would you go to a flea market and hand someone a thousand bucks who says they will send you a computer in a few weeks? eBay is the same damn thing. People think it's somewhat more nefarious because it's on the internet, which everyone knows is evil, and brimming with people trying to steal you wallet and your children.
The government should stay the hell out of it. If I want to order questionable merchandise online while watching porn babes getting fucked in the ass, that's MY business.
~
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:1)
Here's the original (found in the alt.quotations archives); it's from one Martin Niemoeller, a prisoner of Dachau in 1944:
Most notably the original author refers to political and religious groups but does not mention anyone of abnormal gender orientation. I guess in the end Niemoeller felt sorry for most of the groups he's failed to support. But not those he saw as perverts.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Re:Could the government be scared? (Score:1)
What we are seing could very well be early skirmishes in the conflict between the forces of the "mass-market" industrial past and the new, but still disorganised forces of a new society. Corporatism after all was an offspring of the industrial revolution.
Right now the old forces are befuddled by the changing landscape, but they do have one advantage: the ability to manipulate a government system originally designed by elements friendly to rising industrialism 200+ years ago.
In this light, representative government - the system itself - is geared against the Net and any other new information technologies that threaten the old order.
Of course they're scared, so should we. It's gonna be one hell of a fight.
-M
Re:% of perverts (Score:1)
god bless them. uh, i mean, um, nah, thats what i meant.
Re:Optimisation (Score:1)
The other thing that concerns me about this approach is that we -- the consumers and the individual netizens -- don't really have a huge say in what makes a bad law or regulation, and what makes a good one. It's more likely that the voices the legislators will listen to will be the voices of big business (RIAA, anyone?). And the intersection of their interests and ours is small.
New regulations could be a means of creating -- then widening -- the barriers to entry to the online business world. As one must find ways to comply with more and more laws and restrictions, smaller businesses, individuals, artists, etc., may find it very difficult to offer their goods and services online, and their presences could shrink. A wholesale corporitization of the internet would be a sad thing indeed; and I'd hate to see it become another playground for the oligopolies alone.
John
Re:Viva la pervert (Score:1)
You should have the right to give away information -- it is only pictures. You should have the right to do with your own body what you desire. And we are slowly getting there, but you have to realize that us here online that are good Internet citizens are pretty much the elite of society. You know that your rights are for you and that you have to be careful when dealing those ideals out upon others -- they are not always seen in the same light.
You should have the right to sell porn, and I have the right to not buy it. The problem is not that you sell it, but that people want it. A lot of people. Porn makes a lot of money -- they are voting for you! There are a lot of dumb people in this world that get pleasure from an image in their head, and not from actual human contact. A meaningful conversation is just not appreciated as much as I care for it. Heck, if I make eye contact with someone on the street they think I am weird or making a hostile move!
The problem is that most people really are pretty stupid and would kill themselves and there would be bodies laying all over the darn place and that would just be a big icky mess. The government and enlightened individuals the past really has done a lot of good, and some occasional harm which we usually note. Some people need to be protected from themselves because they really are too dumb to do it on their own. Should I and others have the right to go and get myself killed so long as what I do with my body is not the equivalent of littering? Sure! But some people usually want to take others with them against there will, which is a problem.
Parents cry out because their children get online and find this stuff. They think that the computer is a new type of TV/childsitter. They do not have the smarts to know how to give their young the attention that they desire and need. These adults hardly know how to take care of themselves.
We are at the top here and that is just the way that it is. We do not ask what our country can do for us, we say the heck with them and do it ourselves. We are the programers, the sysadmins, the smart people that makes information and innovation flow around. We just have to be a little patient and understanding to put up with the stupid people around us.
Please pardon my lack luster attempt at social or political correctness, but you get the drift likely.
America... and the land of the free (Score:2)
Now we see this. I remember at least 50% of the posts on that article being about how this could *NEVER*, "not in a million years" happen in the US, because of the "Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms".
All governments are as bad as each other. Never has the saying "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" been more true.
let's hope so (Score:1)
There's a point in here somewhere... (Score:1)
If people who know something about how the Net operates don't get off their asses and vote, it's going to be left to the net.clueless, the net.profit-motivated, and the net.paranoid to make LAW that governs how Americans use and operate the Internet, and that's likely to be retarded.
We're already beginning to see it happen: CDA, Clipper, export restrictions on encryption protocols, DCMA, and other dog$#!+ that panders to the basest lusers among us. Even if politicians could hire someone to provide them with a clue, they aren't likely to listen to it in the face of thousands in campaign contributions, or on behalf of people who by and large don't even vote.
That's the reason that net-literate people need to vote in much larger numbers, but it's also why they need to band together and provide Americans with clueful alternatives to the candidates and initiatives that are in front of us now.
So while the Slashdot community is putting its collective foot to Jon's ass, I'd implore them to also consider voting, and when they do, to consider technical coherency a factor in whom they decide to elect.
_____
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Um, US does this already, is'nt it ? What would happen if US does this more, it's World War III, i suppose.
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Nah, that's what your Orwellian government wants you to believe... :-)
Re:In 2002, the USA will be outnumbered ... (Score:1)
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:1)
As for why a "liberal minded person should take account of Hobbes," they should do it if it is relevant. Hobbes' work addresses the role of governments in human society. If a person is going to discuss the role of governments on an aspect of human society, especially if they argue their is no role for government, they should be aware of Hobbes' ideas (if not necessarily Leviathan itself) and discuss them.
I don't think you mean it this way but you seem to be arguing that if you don't agree with what someone is saying you don't need to pay any attention to what they say. What matters is how influential their argument is. If it well expressed or popularly believed or raises troubling questions about your own argument, it needs to be addressed. Whatever the drawbacks to Hobbes' political philosophy, his ideas are worthy of consideration. If you say government = bad than you should address those ideas.
Re:Mythical Men. (Score:1)
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:2)
However, I think he may be a little too quick to scream "hands off!" to the government. (I'm sure he's read Hobbes, but if he has, either he saw serious problems that I totally missed or it just doesn't show).
I rather took this to be unfair: Hobbes' view of the world is not a particularly nice one, and I think it leads one down a somewhat totalitarian line of thought. Hobbes is interesting, sure, so is Plato, but neither of them wrote *the truth* about how the world came to be the way it is, and someone who does not share their view is under no obligation to argue why they disagree with either of them. They are useful intellectual resources, not layers down of the default view of the world.
Re:Nice job, but... (Score:1)