CDR: Can we PLEASE discuss free speech instead of content?
Ray Dillinger
bear at sonic.net
Tue Sep 19 08:20:33 PDT 2000
>On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 01:52:54AM -0400, Jodi Hoffman wrote:
>> And more from this "only TEENAGERS and adults" website...
<MASSIVE SNIP>
Ms. Hoffman, please stop posting this crap to the Cypherpunks
list. It won't help. It is damned insulting to everyone here
that you seem to expect us to confuse content with context.
Although you seem to demand it, and although several people
have allowed themselves to get dragged down to that level
by your hyperbole and your refusal to talk about anything
else, the content of the site is utterly irrelevant to this
discussion.
Please understand, the content of the site is NOT what the
argument is about, and you constantly dragging it back into
the discussion is unproductive, not to mention infuriating.
The argument is about context -- whether it is tolerable to
have laws that constitute prior restraint of speech. It is
NOT. The content of the site is utterly irrelevant to this
question, and posting chunks of it as though it were is only
insulting the other subscribers of this list.
Speech MUST remain free, even if the actions it advocates are
both odious and illegal. Speech is not action. Suppressing
speech on the basis of content, as though it were action, is
intolerable. Content is not Context.
Bear
---
"And even though I say 'Fuck you', enthusiastically
enough, it's not as though I ever would, not in a
million years... Well, maybe if I was stoned off my
ass, but that doesn't count...'
Hunter S Thompson
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