Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.censorship
Subject: basic logic (Re: About FCC and modems...)
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <9105252122.AA00779@cabot.dartmouth.edu> <1991May30.225004.1954@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
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Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
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I'm sorry, asking for constructive information about the whole FCC
deal rather than ou;t-of-hand dismissal is not like asking someone to
prove they are innocent. No claim that this was definitely happening
was made, and the request for concrete info rather than out-of-hand
dismissal did not, in the "prove innocence" analogy, assert guilt if
no such info was provided; some of us nonetheless appreciate info and
constructiveness.

As I pointed out before, even Amnesty International, in their Urgent
Action alerts, does not guarantee 100% the info is correct. They do
the best they can, and the issues are sufficiently important to alert
the public to the best picture of the truth currently available.

Aside from it being impossible time-wise, I also do not double-check
things posted to PeaceNet any more than PeaceNet double-checks what
they get from IPS (InterPress Service), for example. Ultimately it is
the original source whose trust is at stake. The header I included
showed it was not posted to PeaceNet by IPS or from Reuters, etc, but
a private person reporting on what they had learned at a recent
computers conference. This is not to say the issue is dead.

As a matter of fact, the FAQ answer and info forwarded me is *entirely*
inadequate -- for the purpose of out-of-hand dismissal. The key
information is that there have been repeated, recurring alarms on the
net about this, explaining the knee-jerk out-of-hand,
don't-check-evidence dismissals. So there has been a very real
consideration of this idea in the past by the FCC. Since (1)should
this law now or in the future be reconsidered the consequences would
be serious and (2)nothing institutional, nothing to do with the vested
interests which would have benefitted from this law when it was first,
and for real, considered a few years ago, has changed, as far as can
be told from the lack of any evidence that it had in all the info in
FAQ or from email, it follows that (3)it will continue, indefinitely
or until (2) is no longer true (e.g. Congress passes a law, or amends
the constitution saying this can *never be done by FCC or others :-),
so be the case that the possibility of future reconsideration could
and should be taken seriously, and not dismissed out of hand. I don't
have the time to follow this further on the net or argue further.