| From: | Mike Goldberg <michael.goldberg@*******.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Encryption/Censorship/Matrix Etiquette |
| Date: | Fri, 2 Jan 1998 21:42:38 MST |
Where do you wish me to start? (I can already hear Neuron Basher.)
You complained about Lilith using Latin here. After you went on and
on about how it was inappropriate for the node, based on your version
of the etiquette here, you told her to never do it again.
She agreed, but that is, let's face it, censorship. As soon as a
person, or group of people say what is appropriate and inappropriate
for material in a given medium. You have censorship. Countless
governments and corporations have done it, and now, you too have
joined their ranks.
If you had just left it as a complaint, and left her to her own
devices to do what she wanted, that wouldn't be censorship, and
complaining would be your right. But you demanded she apologize for
the infraction. You demanded that she never did it again. That is
censorship.
Censorship - The act, process, or practice of censoring.
Censoring - To examine and expurgate.
Expurgate - To remove erroneous, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise
objectionable material from (a book, for example) before publication.
So ... pounding this in beyond a doubt....
censorship - The act of examining and removing objectionable material
from a medium, in this case posting to a node.
You didn't remove it because that is beyond your control, but you
have tried to prevent it from ever occurring again. In my mind, and
to a lot of artists out there, that is censorship.
You didn't call it that, but fuck, that is what it is.
The topic was about defending teammates and what would one due if a
teammate became the target of a wetwork assignment. People were
answering and discussing it amongst themselves. I was observing.
Lilith offered her opinions in form of a quote that actually said a
lot by posting it in Latin. You that the material was objectionable
based on the fact that Latin isn't widely used. You demanded she
apologize for the post and never do it again. HOW THE FRAG IS THAT
NOT CENSORSHIP?!?
You have no idea, what is beyond my comprehension. You have no idea
who I am, nor what my background is. To tell me what is beyond my
comprehension is laughable. Yet you did it.
Not everyone here speaks English. Some people here are
multi-lingual. Some people from here are from the streets of other
countries and have never, EVER, learned the "universal" language of
English. This is a node dedicated to life in the Shadows. This is
not a node dedicated to UCAS, CAS, and British SINless who happen to
speak English. This about people who are shadowrunners who do work
all over the place. Some of them don't give a damn about English.
Some of them never even heard of English.
You are probably from Seattle. Chances are fair that you have not
ever traveled out of Seattle. (I haven't done my homework on that
point, and it could be a false accusal.) There is a whole world out
there, and you assume that the downtrodden every where know English?
I bet there are people out there who haven't even heard of the UCAS.
I bet there are people out there don't have the slightest clue where
Seattle is.
You say that using an alternative language that not everyone knows is
not a form of encryption. If I shifted every letter by one place, it
would be a form of encryption, no? Why is using a language only a
few people know, not encryption? Just because it isn't that
effective, doesn't mean its not encrypted. Did you know what the
message said? No. Thus, for you, it was encrypted.
I cannot speak for Lilith, and why she chose to post it untranslated
for the people who didn't want to go out and figure out for
themselves. (If you didn't know Latin, then how did you know it was
Latin?)
What I learned from it, is that I asked an ages old questions that
people have been trying to address for a lot longer than I have. Her
quotation has also continued to show (by your reaction among others)
what etiquette around here truly is.
Now, let me ask you this: How does her using Latin to point things
out to me that I wouldn't have picked up by her translating, violate
your sense of etiquette? She added something useful to the
conversation that COULD NOT be done as elegantly in English.
Well? Sure she could have said, "A Roman dude named, whatever, said
something about revenge that goes like this: ...blah... blah...
blah." But that is lacking in elegance, and language is as much as
an art as is operating a vehicle is for you, or my work (whatever
that is - since you know me not) is for me. Why not express it in
its most elegant form? Not only that, if she had expressed it in a
cruder form, it would have failed to bring nuances in the etiquette
around these parts that I would have never picked up. (I repeat
myself, it is mostly based on reactions like yours.)
You are right, in a sense. Midnight is not going to go after you for
name calling, or for insulting his religion by half-reasearched
accusations. I'm already going after you, as if you haven't guessed,
by pointing out that exactly what you asked for, (and this is the
first time I figured out why you were objecting to it in the first
place), is censorship. Whether or not a bunch of dead frags (early
internet protocol) did it, doesn't make it right!
Based on previous accounts and personal research on behalf of
Nightmare, I think the Wanderer on the other hand will go after you
if he gets a chance because he does not take even slight insults to
his religion lightly. What that means to you, and whether you choose
to make light of it or not is your call. I merely warned you. He
will crucify you if he ever gets the chance. The only people that
will try to stop him are your chums, if you have any. The rest will
sit by and say, "Well, he hasn't changed THAT much."
You say I like to come out from my cave to prove with my godlike
powers that you should be punished for your actions. If I was god or
goddess, trust me, I would have already done so, and zapped you into
a cute, SILENT, toad, that we could all stick in a lily pond and
promptly ignore. However, you are a metahuman, residing in the port
of call, known as Seattle.
If you call insulting everyone within ten time zones of you as being
nice, then you certainly have a more refreshing definition of it than
I ever did.
Lilith asked what she did wrong, and for the first time, in the
beginning of this last post from you, I actually saw your complaint.
The rest of the time it was Latin is this - Latin is that. So what?
I just reread your post, and I thank you for the humor. "Encryption
requires skill and software or hardware to crack." Doesn't Latin
require the same very things? If you know it, then you have skill to
understand it and translate it. If you don't know it, you have to
rely on software or hardware to translate it to understand it! By
your own fragging statements, you just made the two equal.
Encryption is designed to not only hide, but as a challenge to others
to "go ahead, make my day. Crack me. Hack me. Phack me."
For the record, I had my deck translate Lilith's statement for me. I
don't know Latin, although I can take guesses at certain words based
on the fact that Latin is a root for a lot of words in the English
language. I know of three people that frequent around here that know
Latin. Lilith, Midnight, and the Wanderer. I suspect there are
others around here, but does it really matter?
Latin is used by the church. While that certainly doesn't compete
with the fools that they let into the matrix these days, it certainly
is significant. Why does the church use English for its sermons?
Oh, probably because they want the people who can read Latin but
can't really translate it, to understand what they are saying. The
truly religious and scholars will know it and understand it. And
they both will use it.
In a separate part of your argument, you say I contradicted myself.
You contend that encryption (even though what Lilith did, according
to you, wasn't encryption) is censorship. While I find that
interesting, censorship is to prevent material from being read by
_anyone_ and _everyone_ on a certain medium. Encryption, is
essentially a private mail message to a group or a person, which
given enough efforts can be read by anyone.
That hardly qualifies as censorship to me. It seems like an mutation
of the thing called "electronic mail."
You said: "Censorship. The prevention of free speech and
understanding, the prevention of the sharing of information."
Interesting. By you demanding that Lilith not post in Latin here
ever again, you have prevented her free speech! You have prevented
the fact that her Latin in this case gave me plenty of understanding!
Furthermore, you prevent her from sharing information with me by
using such an elegant way! Instead, for your sake and perhaps other
individuals, you force her to take a more clumsy approach to say the
same thing!
You!?! You who are too fragging lazy to spend ten minutes with an
on-line Latin to English translator program, one of which all you
have to do is copy and paste the offending text to translate it? Oh
come on! The translator I'm thinking of is at: >>place<<. Free of
charge. The painful part about it is that you have to listen to the
adds for some damn schools while you wait for it to translate the
text.
But what a second, you aren't censoring her! What the frag do you
call it? Whether you base the demands on prehistoric "net" etiquette
or because you are hanging a little to the right this fine evening,
the fact remains, you demanded she never post in that manner again.
That is censorship. Whether she agreed to it or not is not really
the issue anymore.
I object to that censorship. If you want to hear my views on
encryption and its potential role in censorship, visit >>node<<. You
will find that a lot of other deckers agree with me. Which is
humbling, actually, because usually nobody agrees with me. ]<<<<<
-- Ratspeak <04:23:50/01-03-59>
***** Private: Lilith
>>>>>[ Please don't be offended by this statement. but I cannot
believe I'm defending you. Among other things you could kick my
rat's ass five ways to next Sunday if you ever found me.
When this shit settles out, I would enjoy talking to you and your
husband about where I was trying to go with all my questions. As
many people can attend to, I don't meet people in the flesh and only
meet here. If that is acceptable, please name the node and the time.
Feel free to invite others, as I merely am trying to understand the
recent events that have occurred around this node.
I'm also probably trying to understand why someone would kill a 17
year old kid in the grand scheme of things. ]<<<<<
-- Ratspeak <04:27:09/01-03-59>
