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2/12/1998

"Keep up the good work, why pick up the loaf when you get Degenerate P?"
degenerate GR
EAR PLUGS:
We got lots of response from the "What's happening to the Cotton Club lease?" Here's the real deal:
First Union bought the entire block. They had planned to demolish the whole mess, Cotton Club and Frijoleros and such included, to put up a parking lot. When locals heard they raised such a fuss, via email, phone and snail mail, that at the planned neighborhood meeting to discuss it they said "Ooops, nevermind..." Plans now involve keeping the buildings there and the tennants could renew their leases. However, I'd heard yet another rumor that the Cotton Club had lost their lease anyway - this rumor has not been confirmed or denied so I'm dropping it as such, only a rumor. Thanks for all the interest. Now read something real - the bottom of this contains the blow-by-blow of degenerate RVI's pong to SOS's ping of RVI's serve of a week ago. Yeah, we had other responses but this answers many of 'em. Read on, foolish mortal.

BLASPHEMY, continued:
Not one to let the sleeping dog lie or live, Here's my response to SOS:
> I read the Internet Free Speech rant and I just had to stick my two cents in.
> I hate to break it to ya, but the Time Warner guy was fully in the right to
> delete that post. The first amendment still applies to government and not to
> private corporations. Period. You don't like it, take your business
> elsewhere.
Were my point merely a mistake about whom the 1st Ammendment presently
applies to then your response would be sensible. But as I was, in my
rant, interested in whether the 1st Ammendment, in the name of Democracy,
ought ALSO to apply to de facto governments (e.g. corporations who
control the means of mass communications) as well as de jure
governmental institutions, your objections are moot. Tell me WHY, in
other words, capitalists are immune to the principles of Democracy and
human rights and why they ought to remain so one second longer. I don't
believe they should be allowed to do with their property whatever they
will if other basic human rights are abused or ignored along the
way. I'll be glad to help anyone and his water-pipe to the border who
wishes to live in Libertarian Disneyland instead of a Democratic
Republic, such as we're allegedly working on having here.
> The thing about free speech on the internet is that =speech ain't free on the
> internet=. It's =paid= for.
The thing about a human right, whether it's on the Net or out in the
street, is that it transcends the profit-motive. If not, then there is
no real 'right to speech,' only a well-hidden 'priviledge for some to
speak' who either own the means or locales where speech can in fact be
heard, or for those who can buy access. In my hierarchy of values,
speech is of greater importance and meaning than this lesson in finance
you've seen fit to regale me with. If money exists for anything, I think
it primarily exists to support and further basic human needs - after
which we can talk about profit and property rights and accumulation of
excess. But ONLY afterwards.
>You were basically demanding that Time Warner =pay= for this guy's racist rant by
> keeping it on their server in the name of free speech. It's their board, it's
> their game, you don't wanna play it, well, get yerself a computer, set up your
> own damn web server and let anybody say anything on it.
> Sheesh.
Well, if I were a multinational corporation with name recognition and an
instant audience and the 2nd most visited site on the Web, I would
probably do just that. But I'm not and I ought not have to be in order
to participate on and read posts by persons excersising their speech
rights on the Web at a location that is arguably quasi-public. No one
asked PATHFINDER to set up the site and attempt to make money off of free
(as in 'unfettered,' SOS, not 'paid') speech. TIME-WARNER has
flourished and benifitted from its roots in the "Free World;" in return,
this news/entertainment giant wants to establish a world which is less
than free in the new technology of the Net? I find this state of affairs
absurd; if free speech rights are good enough for TIME in the face of
possible censors in Federal Government, then free speech rights are good
enough for actual human beings in the face of a real TIME On-Line censor
who wishes to keep certain subjects and modes of expression "off-limits"
in the name of the commercial value of the site-- the commercial value
which threatens to de-value and usurp the purpose of the BBS from a place
for adult discussions to a zone for vitiated, tamed pseudo-speech and
advertisers. You may call that justice and economic good sense; I call
it bull-shit.
degenerate RVI

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