STDIN

A Recap On Liberalism

There is both positive freedom and negative freedom. It is the water that fish swim in, but that water is at war with itself, so you could be swimming along not taking any notice and then bam get splashed in the face.

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Shamo realizes Liberalism is tough to define

Free speech is the market place for ideas and promotes circulation.

Is computer code covered under free speech?
-it is written, but it is complicated due to the fact that it does have action on the world
Does free speech even exists?
-If it was up to Stanley Fish (no relation to the afore mentioned fish) we would “dump the baby from the bath tub” because there is no such thing.
-you have to look at free speech through various lenses not just the pros and cons.

Phun With Pfaffenberger

Usenet was greeted in response to Arpanet.
“In announcing the software’s availability, Daniel, then a graduate student, described Usenet as a poor man’s ARPAnet, a phrase that, Daniel recalls,
explained exactly what was going on. We (or at least I) had little idea what
was really going on the ARPAnet [the Internet’s predecessor], but we
knew we were excluded. Even if we had been allowed to join, there was no
way of coming up with the money. It was commonly accepted at the time that
to join the ARPAnet took political connections and $100,000. I don’t know if
that assumption was true, but we were so far from having either connections or
money that we didn’t even try. The Poor man’s ARPAneto was our way of
joining the computer science community, and we made a deliberate attempt to
extend it to other not-well-endowed members of the community. (Daniel, 1993)” (368-369)

Creators of Usenet were faced with a dichotomy. While they believed in free expression, but they were using professional equipment, it became a major what to do, what to do? situation. The Backbone Cabal which enforced the “golden rule” those that have the gold make the rules (377), began imposing various means to put a stop to those who were using Usenet with out netiquette. The Backbone soon collapsed with the introduction of alt* newsgroups. It had all started at a barbecue when Brain Reid decided to put his foot down, “John was distressed because they wouldn’t create rec.drugs, and I was distressed because they wanted to force me to adopt the name ª rec.food.recipesº for my recipe newsgroup.”
The administration soon went down.

Scientology and Free Speech

Scientologist used copyrights to squelch free speech

I’m sure this guy thought it was epic lulz when scientologist spammed Usenet

But this raises the question of weather or not people have the right to post sacred texts.

Nietzsche Knowledge
A hacker before hackers they have recently discovered a book of his entitled I’m so smart I invented hacking before computers existed (unfortunately the only copy is owned by the man pictured above).

Always dapper

Nietzsche did possess many characteristics that would make a great hacker. He was boastful as were many of the hackers that Sterling discusses. He sought pleasure and like hackers anything that got in his way was a nuisance. His idea of Will to Power can be applied to the perfection hackers seek and the elite that come from possessing the knowledge needed to be a hacker.
He was obsessed with pain and suffering, and not believing in enlightenment science or Christianity he turned to art to explain why such exists in the world. He created the idea of Apollonian and Dionysian creative impulses, a duality, logic and order against the primal pleasure of delight.
Hackers are also faced with this, there is an extreme order to code, but then there is the excessive drive that many hackers seem to poses along side the extremely logical. One could look at the Underground, and the LoD and compare it to Dionysian but they are fundamental Apollonian.

Elitist Contempt in The Digital Underground

According to Bruce Sterling in the Hacker Crackdown much of the hacker world was ruled by elitist contempt, there were certain things that you should didn’t do because other hackers would look at you as stupid, and much of the thrill for hackers came from boasting and acceptance from peers. You needed to have a trophy, but stolen credit cards were no trophy:

“The Atlanta Legion thought most "rules" of cyberspace were for rodents and losers, but they *did* have rules. *They never crashed anything, and they never took money.* These were rough rules-of-thumb, and rather dubious principles when it comes to the ethical subtleties of cyberspace, but they enabled the Atlanta Three to operate with a relatively clear conscience (though never with peace of mind).

If you didn't hack for money, if you weren't robbing people of actual funds -- money in the bank, that is -then nobody *really* got hurt, in LoD's opinion. "Theft of service" was a bogus issue, and "intellectual property" was a bad joke. But LoD had only elitist contempt for rip-off artists, "leechers," thieves. They considered themselves clean.”

Richard posed an interesting question involving the “Is Computer Hacking A Crime?” article, as to computers comparison to religion on page 51
Some points that came up
-In order to have religion you need structure, and there are none
-Perhaps more of a Mystic Religion, when you have reached such a high level you do not need institution
-Computers as Voodoo, Voodoo priest are seen to have special powers, and like hackers legends build up around them.

“What conjoins hackers together?”
When your on the verge of defining it, it slips away.