- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 08:33:31 -0800
- To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
The flurry of concern about PICS "vs." free speech indicates among other things how some well-intentioned civil libertarians misunderstand the *possible* outcomes of this technology. Whatever method is used to rate, block, dictate or otherwise "censor" content will have a workaround and there will be no shortage of browsers and other software with "skeleton keys" so that the so-called protectors will be able to find out what to censor. They can no more keep such tools as privileges of power than they can keep the other communications channels as their own. Wirelessness precludes exclusivity. Just as we all breathe the same air and drink the same water, so all our corpuscles are permeated by the same "ether." The fear of this particular "big brother" is paranoid - there's no more "THEY" out there, we are now entirely stuck with "WE" for better or worse and just as I always could look at "dirty pictures" as an adolescent and even <gasp> read Thomas Paine or whoever else the library watchdogs proscribed, so I will be able to post an inaccessible web site. I may get punished if I get caught but as my signature says: Love. ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE http://dicomp.pair.com So - NOT TO WORRY. We are all in this together; we are all members of one another.
Received on Monday, 19 January 1998 11:34:24 UTC