From: betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: EFF and its growing pains...
Date: 26 Jan 93 17:51:09 GMT
	<BETSYS.93Jan22141657@ra.cs.umb.edu> <1993Jan26.043210.13172@eff.org>
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Boston

In article <1993Jan26.043210.13172@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>>   Anyway, we don't have a *problem*. We *have* free access and
>>commercial alternatives and there doesn't seem to be any threat to it.
>Great! We just want to see that everyone can do what you do.

They CAN that's my POINT! Here in Boston, Channel One, The World, a
new service called the Village, and I think some other BBS's are 
providing Internet access for approximately the cost of basic cable
television service...on a national level, Compuserve has a free-time
flyer in every modem box I've seen in a mass-market outlet, and so on.

>ever need or want to make." By "other Mitch Kapors," Mitch is referring to
>to would-be entrepreneurs *in the future* who could use the Open Platform
>to create new services and new markets.
  Again, this is worth doing but it not a civil liberties issue. If
the market WERE restricted, if private enterprises WERE having
trouble, then you would have a cause.

>Whether high-bandwidth services are available to everyone rather than to
>the technical elite *is* a civil-liberties issues, Betsy. Since you're
>part of the elite, though, you may not think this matters much.
   It would be more accurate to say that I am an old-timer. I've been
around on the BBS scene since 1983, when I got my Atari 800 and my
300-baud modem. I am doing a LOT of hands-on work helping people get
access to the net and use the net. That's what I DO, my vocation and
my one real talent, helping non-technical people to use technology.
I also help them program their VCR's and their answering machines and
I've been known to teach calculus using slices of pizza :-)
   True, I have the luxury of working on a fully-connected system, but
I also come in from BBS's and from friend's houses and UMass/Boston
isn't exactly swimming in luxury equipment either. 

>In any case, there is no zero-sum game between improving infrastructure
>and promoting freedom of speech. What good would the right to travel mean
>if there were no roads and highways? These issues are interrelated.
   I agree that the bigger the platform, the better for us all, but I
don't see that it's a civil liberties issue and I don't see that
government intervention is necessary to help a platform which is
already growing explosively.

>It is glib and easy to imply that Mitch is seeking some kind of
>moneymaking opportunity in the Open Platform. The assumption is that
>anyone who's made money in the past can't conceivably be interested in
>doing anything else. This kind of dehumanizing thinking is, to my mind,
>unwarranted.
   My apologies if that is how it sounded. That is not what I meant to
imply. I think that furthering business opportunities is a good thing
and I don't see anything wrong with lobbying to create more
opportunities. 
  What I *AM* saying is that pro-expansion lobbying and civil
liberties lobbying are two distinct issues. They are connected only by
the thread that equates a free market with political freedom. While I
respect this, I don't think it is right or fair to advertise a market
lobbying organization as a civil liberties one.
  I'll tell you what I *do* mean to imply. It looks to me as though
Mitch and John started out all fired up about civil liberties, got a
few cases under their belts, started an organization, then got all
fired up about a NEW cause and tried to use the same organization
towards their new enthusiasms. 
   Without knocking either of their enthusiasms, it is too big a
stretch for one organization. The two causes have different
constituents and different beneficiaries. The Electronic Frontier is a
BIG place and there is more than one type of struggle being fought
here. 

--
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