PED has, as his conscious goal, the destruction of the Internet as a forum for unregulated free speech and its replacement by a mass-media/government controlled surrogate which will be nothing more than TV on your computer. This is likewise the goal of the rest of the major media. They want the net dead, and they want it dead NOW. This is not a case of people being 'misguided' or 'ignorant' or 'uninformed'. They know what they are doing, and they know why they are doing it. Their own survival is at stake, after all.

>* Sylvia *
>	who lives on and writes about the 'Net, and doesn't see any
>	conflict.

Rake in the bucks (or pounds) while you can. It's a short-term gig.

*----------------------------------------------------------------*
Evolution doesn't take prisoners:Lizard
Indecency:Fuck the CDA.
Information on explosives: The formula for gunpowder is 2 parts
charcoal, 3 parts sulfur, 15 parts saltpeter.
Information on abortion:Planned Parenthood of San Rafael
:(415) 454-0471
URL:http://www.dnai.com/~lizard


From: lizard@dnai.com (Lizard)
Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: Re: Is PED lying? (Was: From TIME: Elmer-DeWitt Gets Spammed)
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 18:28:17 GMT
Organization: Ferengi School Of Business Ethics

On Thu, 14 Mar 1996 07:17:20 -0500, ped@well.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) wrote:

>In article , jericho@netcom.com (Damien
>Sorder) wrote:
>
>
>> A Denial of service attack is the most they could claim. Even then the 
>> absolute worst would be one felony 3 count, IF the secret service LIE 
>> about how much 'damage' was done. How much money did it cost you to clean 
>> your mailbox PED? Seriously. 
>
>About a day's work, spread out over a week. But I've learned a lot--like
>the marvelous unsub * (netwide command. Next time I'll do better.

And why hasn't TIME covered the lawsuits against the CDA? Never mind -- I shudder to imagine how you'd write up the article.

"The ACLU, known for years as the shills of Naizs and pornographers, in partnership with the collection of criminal hackers called the EFF, have launched their fight against decency by trying to overturn the wonderful Congressional Decency Act, the only hope we have of saving the Information Superhighway for our children."

*----------------------------------------------------------------*
Evolution doesn't take prisoners:Lizard
Indecency:Fuck the CDA.
Information on explosives: The formula for gunpowder is 2 parts
charcoal, 3 parts sulfur, 15 parts saltpeter.
Information on abortion:Planned Parenthood of San Rafael
:(415) 454-0471
URL:http://www.dnai.com/~lizard


From: baby-x@swarm.com (baby-X)
Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: Re: Is PED lying? (Was: From TIME: Elmer-DeWitt Gets Spammed)
Date: 17 Mar 1996 23:05:03 GMT
Organization: Swarming Systems

lizard@dnai.com wrote:

# On Thu, 14 Mar 1996 07:17:20 -0500, ped@well.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt)
# wrote:
#
# >About a day's work, spread out over a week. But I've learned a lot--like
# >the marvelous unsub * (netwide command. Next time I'll do better.
# 
# So, are you going to do a story about how the Internet empowers
# *everyone*, so that victims of mailbombs can easily and quickly
# devictimize themselves? Or will you leave your readers with the fear

              Christopher D. Frankonis - Rootless Cosmopolitan
              baby-x@swarm.com - http://www.swarm.com/~baby-x/
        ------------------------------------------------------------
        S   W   A   R   M   I   N   G      S   Y   S   T   E   M   S
        The Philosophy of Interference and the Persistence of Vision

From: sethf@athena.mit.edu (Seth Finkelstein)
Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,
misc.news.internet.discuss
Subject: Re: Is PED lying? (Was: From TIME: Elmer-DeWitt Gets Spammed)
Date: 26 Mar 1996 19:00:58 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article ped@well.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
>In article <4ij24p$57g@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu>,
>arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) wrote:
>
>> What is your stance on the use of your Time article to support the CDA?
>
>I think it sucks. I'm not saying the article didn't do a lot of damage.It did.

And what are you doing to repair that damage, Mr. Senior Technical Editor? If anything, it looks likes you're still writing damaging articles.

>But TIME has consistently--and repeatedly--opposed putting
>restrictions on Internet content that aren't imposed on print.

Kindly reconcile this with the lurid cover, the inflammatory pull-quotes, the journographic illustrations that accompanied the text. If this is _Time_'s idea of opposition to Internet censorship, I'd really hate to see what they'd do if they were in favor of it.

Some of the Communications Decency Act court hearings were this week. It's a perfect opportunity to write a *cover story* on the challenge to the law that imposes on electronic speech the greatest censorship restrictions of any medium. So where's _Time_ coverage? Instead, you're writing articles about emailboxes being overloaded. There definitely seems to be something wrong with this picture.

>Even the Cyberporn cover came out against what was then called the Exon amendment.

With friends like this, we don't need enemies.

Here's an article I posted on this topic on July 28, 1995. It seems little has changed.

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: Re: More PEDagogy (was Re: TIME Cover on Cyberporn)

In article  ped@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
>In article <3v8o2m$n5t@news.missouri.edu>, jourmike@mizzou1.missouri.edu
>(Mike McKean) wrote:
>> pornography.  But I could honestly tell my students PED deserves 
>> respect rather than scorn IF HE'D SWALLOW HIS PRIDE and urge his 
>> colleagues to learn from his mistakes.
>>         He probably won't.  I'm not sure I could take my own advice 
>> were the roles reversed.  But PED, if you can't do what you should,
>> at least spare us any more embarrassing rationalizations.    
>
>Good advice. 
>
>I don't know how else to say it, so I'll just repeat what I've said

	It's not the *how*, it's *where* - on the cover of _Time_
magazine. We've been telling you that for a while.

>before. I screwed up. The cover story was my idea, I pushed for it, and it
>ran pretty much the way I wrote it. It was my mistake, and my mistake
>alone. I do hope other reporters will learn from it. I know I have.

	Now I suppose this is where I'm supposed to be gracious and
accept your apology. Unfortunately, between trying to get all my Rimm
files in order for MIT's Technology and Public Policy program, and other
Rimm problems, I'm not in a very good mood. So that may be why I hear
the above as "Whatever you guys say, OK? I'm sorry, alright? Now get off
my back already, I just said I'm sorry."

	Well, are we ever going to be satisfied? I'll tell when I'll be
satisfied - when you do all that is in your power to make amends. That's
the essence of a true apology - not the mouthing of words, but the
*effort* to set things right that displays true regret. You're now an
editor. Don't tell me you can't swing a cover story. You did so before
your promotion. Now at least *try* to fix the damage you did.

	Let's have a big feature, cover story, "The Witchhunt Against
The Internet". It can have a cover of Senators, journalists,
researchers, all participating in burning a computer at the stake.
Inside, a cartoon of poverty, poor education, malnutrition, with a
figure labeled "Senator Grassely" ignoring all of those and waving a
copy of the old _Time_ issue over a pair of wires and saying "We must
protect the children!".  Have photo insets of EFF's Mike Godwin and
CDT's Jerry Berman. Have big pull-quotes such as "On Usenet there are
only a few dozen sex groups, among many *thousands* (big bold
highlight) of others".  Another pull-quote - "On the net, people must
search out sexual material. You're far more likely to see something
objectionable walking down a typical city street". Debunk the child porn
hysteria. Point out that the only court cases of people having child
pornography forced on them have been from *Federal prosecutors* mailing
it out unsolicited (as really happened in the Amateur Action case, and
another one that the Supreme Court ruled entrapment). Long sidebar on
the Rimm hoax and how it happened, with a real *mea culpa*. Be sure to
include your statement "We could have run Nexis and Books in Print
searchers. We didn't think of it. It's to the credit the power of
grassroots, bottom-up reporting, that somebody on the Net did.".

	Do this, and THAT'S an apology. Otherwise, it's just empty mouthings.


>I've also tried to explain how it happened, not to rationalize my

>mistakes, but to answer specific questions. I didn't want to seem


	I wouldn't say "rationalize" mistakes - "be completely oblivious
to the magnitude of them" is more like it.


>unresponsive, and I generally don't mind a little embarassment. But I

>think you are right; answering those questions in this forum is only

>creating more bad will. If people are genuinely curious about how the



	No, wasting our time with transparent nonsense is creating lots
of bad will. You've spent a lot of time dealing with us in a traditional
journalistic mode - you assume to be telling us the facts (even if you
don't really have them yourself). You write, we read, *maybe* we make
some *controlled* comments back to you. There's a real medium difference
here, though. We can talk back to you at length, and dissect tawdry
cliches (I'm still peeved over "The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in
between"), and you can't edit it away. That can't be pleasant. And many
of the writers here understand the overall subject much better than you
do, because we use it every day, while you're just a tourist (who just
trashed us to boot).



>Cyberporn debacle came to be, I will reply to queries in e-mail.



	Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm not encouraged by what you've said in
this group. Come back when you have the cover story I described above in
preparation.



--
Seth Finkelstein  				sethf@mit.edu
Disclaimer : I am not the Lorax. I speak only for myself.
(and certainly not for Project Athena, MIT, or anyone else).

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