Replying to a message of Gene McAloon to Alan Cairns:

 GM> From: Gene McAloon 

 GM> He was acquitted because Norway doesn't have a law equivalent to the
 GM> DMCA. In time it will have such a law, as will all sensible
 GM> countries.

 GM> I will take it further and not hesitate to predict that the
 GM> free-wheeling, chaotic world of these early years of the internet
 GM> will end in time. The internet and its use will be constrained,
 GM> regulated at least to a degree, like any other public utility.

You are correct.  First Amendment be d*mned.

 For
 GM> example, anonymity in using it will not be allowed.
 GM> Users will need an identifier for use the same as 
 GM> for telephones or any other form of communication.
 GM> Libertarians will have conniption fits and
 GM> technoid types will scream that their "freedom" to 
 GM> do whatever they like and damn the law will choke on
 GM> their own bile. Nonetheless it will happen and I look
 GM> forward to it.

No doubt.

 GM> The academic/military community that set up the internet
 GM> is appalled at what it has become and is seriously
 GM> contemplating abandoning it and setting up a separate
 GM> system to which only its members will have
 GM> access. I have no idea if they will ever do that, but it
 GM> gives you some idea of how dissatisfied sensible people
 GM> are with the present chaotic, lawless place the internet 
 GM> really is; a place where spammers can do what they like
 GM> almost with impunity and dumb teenagers can
 GM> take down large parts of the system on occasion just for
 GM> the bragging rights that gives them.

You're behind the times.  Probably a decade ago much of academia abandoned
Usenet for private networks due to the appalling noise/signal ratio; before
everybody and his brother got a computer and a modem you could always
predict the September rise in net drivel caused by incoming freshmen and
their new computer access.  Busy people don't have time to wade through 500
posts of drek to find two that might be useful.

 GM> Can any sensible person imagine that this thing called
 GM> the internet is going to be allowed to continue in that
 GM> fashion?  It will be tamed.
 GM> Count on it.

I can only hope that you are one of Ashcroft's victims.

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