craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) (10/14/89)
PREAMBLE:
This is a Canadian news item, but wherever you live you can be sure that
some bureacrat is planning to extend their influence over you. The freedom of
the press is crucial to maintaining a free society. Unfortunately, in a power
grab in the 1920s and 30s, most governments reserved to themselves the power to
allocate bandwidths in a broadcasting spectrum for TV, radio, and other uses
'in the public interest'. This argument was obsoleted when very wide spectra
and overlapping local area coverage became available for broadcasting (cellular
radio is an example, so are VSAT terminals). Nonetheless, institutions like the
FCC (in the US) and CRTC (in Canada) retain their power over broadcasters,
issuing them licenses, regulating their content, and holding them legally
liable for what is broadcast (forcing them to self-censor very heavily).
Meanwhile, the telephone system, which is point-to-point, is a 'common carrier',
that is, it carries communications for a fee, and is not legally responsible
for what is transmitted. You can't sue the phone company over an obscene
phone call, and this is very important protection for them and for us -
otherwise, they would have to monitor every phone call and censor it as they
thought fit to protect themselves from lawsuits. Just like TV! This is what
is in store for us when the press becomes primarily electronic - censored,
controlled, safe, the realm of established money and power. When paper is
too expensive to print news on, sometime in the next century, governments
would then be left with the power to control our most important medium of
communicating news. Whatever you think of the TV news, to have it be the
only access to reality available to anyone would clearly be a disaster.
Of course, government would like that. Nobody could check up on them.
Clearly, where the free press meets the meek mass media, as in computer
networks, the legal environment will be the greatest common denominator,
that is, the most restrictive subset of regulations is made to apply.
All electronic transmissions to a small audience must be treated as private.
Otherwise, the brave new electronic media will become as banal as the old.
Public-access 'broadcasting' like this Unix machine would be legal until
I tried to 'publish' anything other than text, at which point the operators
of this machine would become criminally liable for 'pirate broadcasting',
even though we have taken no bandwidth from others, nor provided it to
anyone who didn't explicitly request it. 'Publishing' graphic software,
since it 'generates moving pictures' would also seem to be illegal.
Certainly anything involving a video clip would be right out.
We seem in Canada to be in a rut with this sort of idiocy - there is a
censorship law that defines pornography as 'showing anal or oral sex'
and a Calgary comics shop was recently prosecuted for 'selling explicit
material to children', although the graphic novel in question, including
a full-frontal nude, was clearly marked 'for adults' and was on a top shelf.
Some judicial morons clearly think drawings with word balloons are always
for kids. These same judicial morons might think graphics are just movies.
Obviously the law is being made to be oblivious of content or redeeming value,
so any attempt to provide intelligent erotica, graphic novels for adults, or
private/closed-loop electronic media or hypermedia will be under their control.
In the same bill, the CRTC's grip is extended to cover educational TV.
What's the American position on this issue?
Some of the original posting follows...
--------------
If you grab a Globe & Mail from Friday the 13th, you will see some
very bad news.
A bill was just introduced by the Tories to widen the CRTC's mandate
to *include* pay-per-view systems, and by extension, hypermedia publishing,
private videoconferencing, and any distance transmission of material 'other
than text' privately to a requesting viewer. An earlier version of the
bill specifically excluded transmissions 'to a person specifically requesting
it', but that clause was omitted on the complaint of broadcasters...
of course! They paid big money for these licenses and they don't want them
undermined by people interested in artists' and alternative video,
unpredictable new technologies, community information systems, making all
kinds of information easier to get... they want these people (us) to be
restricted by all the same Canadian-content rules, licensing fees, and
censorship as they are.
The bureacrats claim this doesn't affect interactive text systems, but it
sure as hell is going to affect hypermedia systems and electronic publishing!
This is probably the end of the electronic free press, at least in this
country. The move is rightly identified by the Globe as 'a very significant
broadening of the CRTC's mandate' beyond issues of bandwidth allocation in
the public interest and into outright interference in free expression,
though that isn't how they put it.
Even leaving out the alarmism, it is clear that forcing electronic publishers
to abide by regulations devised for broadcasters, rather than protecting them
under the umbrella of the free press, will severely retard what they can do.
Imagine - even if your PC by 2000 can broadcast/transmit full motion video,
and presumably audio too, since the regulations cover radio, you won't be able
to do anything with this capability without a license, even if everything you
'broadcast' is in response to specific requests by customers/friends. How the
hell do you calculate 'Canadian content' in a system like a BBS, where anyone
can contribute ? Of course, such systems won't be allowed.
This legal obscenity would seem to apply even to video transmissions
sent over 'cable' from one workstation to another on a LAN... hard to say
without seeing the law. Of course, we all know how they'll solve that one..
of course, they'll solve that problem by broadening their mandate once
probably by registering all computers, period.
They'll never get mine.
Civil disobedience is the answer. Everyone get ready to set up your own
'pay-per-browse' hypermedia station, and prepare a nice 'fuck you' letter
(try to say *that* on TV and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about)
to send to the CRTC and the papers. If the electronic press is not kept
free, then we'll have lost a crucial protection of a free society.
Anyone in favor of this new law, speak up now so we know who you are.
--
Craig Hubley -------------------------------------
Craig Hubley & Associates "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------
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--
Craig Hubley -------------------------------------
Craig Hubley & Associates "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca -------------------------------------
craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu mnetor!utgpu!craig@uunet.UU.NET
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