X-Message-Number: 5044
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 23:01:57 -0400
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <>
Subject: Re: FWD: ONLINE USERS STILL SMALL MINORITY

(Minimal cryonics relevance -- sorry.)

 (David Stodolsky) writes:
> ONLINE USERS STILL SMALL MINORITY
> A new study by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press
> says, "Consumers are still feeling their way through cyberspace."
> Of 3,063 adults surveyed, only 14% were online users, ...

This seems remarkably *high* to someone like me, who was here when
were fewer than a thousand online, worldwide -- about 0.00002% of
the population.

> The survey used a series of litmus-test questions to determine that
> online users tend to be more liberal and/or more tolerant ...

Liberal (in the American sense of the word) is anything but tolerant.
Anyhow, so long as the news media continue to have a huge blind spot
for everything libertarian, they will continue to seriously misread the
online situation.  They might as well have tried to categorize everyone
into Christian vs. Satanist.  The 20th century news media will be the
laughing-stock of the 21st century.

> While 52% of all respondents favored restrictions on online
> pornography, only 42% of online users agreed, and among those
> with direct Internet access, only 27% agreed.

What is an online user *without* direct Internet access?

I'd like to know the actual question they asked.  This is incredibly
muddled.  Pornography is *already* illegal online (and offline) (in
the US), and always has been.  Were people agreeing that it should
remain so?

Or were they saying they believed that Exon's bill, which would prohibit
anything online which anyone anywhere finds offensive -- presumably
including web pages which link to other pages which link to other pages
which contain anything which anyone finds offensive, should be passed?
(If it were to pass, I would have to remove all my web pages, and stop
posting and e-mailing anything except recreational math, for my own
defense.)

Or (as I suspect is most likely) were the respondants to the question
simply confused about what is and is not allowed, and about what the
proposed laws actually say?

It sounds like another hatchet piece to me.  Ask yourself why the news
media feel so threatened by the net.  What do they fear?  Why do they
want to do everything they possibly can to belittle and smash it, even
at serious risk to their own reputation?
--
Keith Lynch, 
http://www.access.digex.net/~kfl/


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5044