But I don't want to pay free speech insurance!
Libbertarians will of course not want to charge sheeplike web browsers
for the insurance premiums that free speech requires under our
expensive blood-feud-based legal system, but I think this is a bad
idea. Without this idea, publishers and sheep are still free to
choose different ISPs, except that skipping the insurance will
probably end up tied to accepting other Interweb restrictions.
Libbertarian optional insurance has to solve the problem of why not
buy the insurance only after you're challenged? Either subscribers
may do this, in which case the premiums would be so high as to make it
pointless, or they may not in which case you are in effect saying to
some subscribers, ``nya, nya, stupid Jew. If you'd converted to
Christianity and changed your name before all this shit happened, then
maybe you wouldn't be in this gas chamber, so don't look at me
for help---I voted for Konos!'' Also, the option isn't quite
as clean as all that---what if you are publishing pages for free on
your friend's machine, and your friend didn't buy insurance? ``The
market'' is not as granular as fundamentalists seem to believe.
Already we know that when you're broke or your group has no funding,
some places are subjectively better for hosting personal or community
web pages than others. A favorable legal position ought to be part of
the Internet ``package.''
rants / map / carton's page / Miles Nordin <carton@Ivy.NET>
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