Comment by cwkoss
4 years ago
Does anyone have insight into what the primary disagreements were between Gilmore and the rest of the board?
It looks like there is subtext that there was a contentious issue they couldn't agree upon, I wonder what it is.
He's an old-school internet freedom activist.
Judging from what's happened with many similar activists, I'm guessing a hard-line anti-censorship mindset isn't compatible with today's social/political landscape in which rampant misinformation on the internet has direct effects on meatspace.
Of course, this is purely conjecture. It could be completely unrelated.
Information distribution has always had direct effects on meatspace.
That's what makes an anti-censorship stand relevant and important. Nobody would censor if there were no physical impacts.
i used to be into hardline freedom of speech... now i acknowledge that real life nuances are a lot more complicated.
censorship is messy and complicated and usually involves a dangerous concentration of power, sure...
but truly free and anonymous speech that can originate from places that are immune to it's effects or can be falsely attributed for the purposes of subversion can also result in a dangerous concentration of power.
what's the difference between a censored truth and a chorus of convincing lies originated anonymously that buries the truth?
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Yeah, this is my interpretation as well. I mean, he formulated "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".
Funny enough, if I recall correctly, that quote was specifically in the context of USENET.
And the story of USENET since then might be educational... USENET itself, and the infrastructure running under it, are hard to censor, but many of the individual service providers that ran USENET endpoints and provided them for their customers went "This is more trouble than it's worth" and stopped providing that service. It's harder to get on USENET now than it was in the days AOL offered it.
The Net interprets censorship as damage, but a critical mass of service providers concluding something isn't worth the resources can have the same effect as censorship.
Freedom is serious business and worth dying for. If our freedoms online are taken, make no mistake, it will be war.
I agree, but...
Whose freedom? And what is freedom?
Market dynamics support corporations which can generate the largest numbers of ad clicks. You can't run an organization which doesn't ultimately conform to market dynamics. That leads to polarization, hate, and misinformation. Do we want to go down that path?
Are corporations people? Should corporations have freedom-of-speech? Should corporations be free to lie? Should government employees? Should corporations be free to engage in speech which is known to actively harm people?
I really don't know.
I do feel like some forms of intentional lying should be illegal. If a government employee says something, or an academic does, I should be able to trust they're not being intentionally untruthful. Where does that line lie? I don't know.
I also feel like individuals should have real freedom of speech. Not just freedom from government prosecution after speech, but freedom from economic prosecution, and to some extent, social ostracization.
I feel like we need a serious discussion here, though.
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War with whom?
The government? Tech companies? ISPs?
All are in some ways restricting certain freedoms, while enabling others.
And what freedoms are you afraid of being taken that have not already been taken in some form?
I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you. I support full and absolute internet freedom. I have the ability to put absolutely anything I want on the internet with zero restrictions, but depending on what it is and how I put it there, there are many ways it may then cause me to lose freedom in some way.
Which one should lead to war?
"This represents a clear and present danger to our constitutionally guaranteed freedom to be online."
> He's an old-school internet freedom activist.
A commenter on The Reg speculated that it's because (according to this commenter) Gilmore has lately veered into arguing publicly for legalising marijuana, and the EFF doesn't want to be associated with that.
If he has, that feels more plausible a cause than him being "an old-school internet freedom activist" per se.