From: icicle@cats.ucsc.edu (Andrew Christian Haas)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs.internet,comp.org.eff.talk,rec.photo,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Illegal photograph postings (was: Your police at work for you!)
Date: 8 Apr 92 06:05:51 GMT
Followup-To: alt.bbs.internet
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz


My message came out garbled somehow in the posting, and as it was hastily
 written, I guess most people did not understand my true intentions.

What I was meaning to say was that I wish for freedom on the net. Since the
 information on the net is a virtual reality, and does not exist except for
 in computers, screens, and people's heads I believe the only limitations
 existent in it are in the medium and the hands and minds of the people that
 use it. Of course the hardware requires money to set up and maintain, but
 the beauty of networks such as Usenet is that at least in the past they were
 much like BBS systems in that they were set up by computer enthusiasts, most
 of whom held other jobs and had the computer as a hobby. In the early days
 of such nets, when I was just ending my telecommunications hobby as a teen-
 ager, there was a "net hour" when network information was traded over the
 phone lines to the net computer in the next town over. So there wasn't the
 high cost of dedicated lines and such that must be inherent in Internet.
 There wasn't the high speed, either; but now with high speed modems such a
 possibility of a low-cost fairly high-speed net must now be a reality.

Just as the European settlers to the United States brought along customs and
 realities with them that were not necessarily true for the "New World," and
 in doing so ended up subjugating a land and a people in the name of progress
 with blatant ignorance, stupidity and greed, I believe we are turning our
 new medium into a new form of slavery. Wasting our time with GIF legality
 of pornographic photos seems to me absurd and trivial. Has our specialized
 society gotten so competitive that we need to scrape every single penny
 from men's (not women's) need for fulfillment? Pornography is not debasing
 of women; it is debasing of humanity. Those who would exploit people's basic
 needs for sexual fulfillment for a profit are the worst villains, and the fact
 that at least United States' society is stuck in the post-World War II era of
 neo-Puritanism where people can't even walk about nude on most beaches without
 being gawked at and/or arrested is a sad commentary on the illness of our
 society. The fact that we pay tax dollars to support such a regime is even
 sadder still. Government needs to change to meet people's real needs for food,
 clothing, health and personal fulfillment, instead of creating artificial ones
 to help "spur the economy." 

I have seen the personal computer progress from a TRS-80 Model I up through
 all of the supercomputers of today, and can remember a time in the not-so-
 distant past when there was talk of making even software free of cost.
 Sure, hardware costs. Many of the huge and oh-so-expensive and trick-filled
 software packages would not be available without paid software developers.
 They also would not be here without the lowly little garage computer hacker.
 Have we forgotten our roots?

If I want to expand my knowledge of the world and computer systems. I want to
 meet my needs for personal fulfillment and in doing so help the world in
 which I live in meet its needs and solve the problems which plague humanity.
 I believe that only by freeing our minds and hands can we begin to free
 our bodies from pain. Oh, you're not starving? Oh, you're not oppressed?
 Oh, you're not homeless? Well, neither am I, I am very thankful and lucky
 to say, and I hope I can work toward a tomorrow where no one is, and where 
 I can freely express even my baser instincts without being financially or
 personally attacked.

Art is the ideal becoming real.
Conservativism is the reason I'm pre-med.
						icicle@cats.ucsc.edu