Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Amendments
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 01:55:06 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Apr20.015506.11577@looking.on.ca>
References: <STANTON.91Apr12120958@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1455@gargoyle.uchicago.edu> <STANTON.91Apr15114817@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1475@gargoyle.uchicago.edu> <STANTON.91Apr19151248@Neon.Stanford.EDU>

BTW I will point out that I seriously doubt a computer freedom amendment
along the lines of my proposal could ever be passed.  Not in today's
modern society.    The USA's best admendments were done in the less
media-saturated, special interest controlled world of the 18th century.

Today you can't even get a simple and largely supported amendment like the
ERA passed.

What I fear -- and indeed what I think was one of the motivations for the
start of the EFF -- is the notion that many people have that there are
things that it should be illegal to do with a computer, even if it was
never illegal to do them without one.

A thing is either bad or good, and I am wary of suggestions that the tool
you use should make the difference on whether an activity is illegal.

The right to use a computer to conduct your affairs is going to become
more important than the right to walk down the street, or phone somebody,
or print a newspaper.

If we allow the government to regulate it willy-nilly, we allow them the
power to regulate almost every aspect of what life might be in the future.

We must not.

-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
