A Chilling Tale

Wednesday, February 14, 1996 by Dave Winer.

Required reading for web people. Check out:

for an incredibly eloquent and chilling demo of what the new Telecommunications Act has cost us.

Before the act, the LIBIDO e-zine was a beautiful site containing sexual imagery, written and photographic. It was wonderful stuff.

It's gone - replaced by the most eloquent essay I've read on the subject of freedom and censorship. It's a chilling essay. A cold shiver. A new sense of reality. Electronic book burning. Coerced! Virtual. And real, very very real.

Can it happen here? It's happening!

Then check out A Society of Parents. In this DaveNet piece I linked to a picture on the LIBIDO site. This essay was designed to detect censorship on the net. It's a broken link now.

It's so damned sad!

Sad for us, and sad for the next generation.

Censorship has reached my writing. And since you read my writing, it has reached you too.

A flow of creativity. Turned off.

Not cool.

What's next? 

I've assembled a list of eleven back issues of DaveNet that talk about freedom on the net and what it means to me:

http://www.hotwired.com/userland/24/davenets.html

About a half-hour of reading. All human feelings are expressed in these pieces: optimism, fear, joy, anger, sadness, and sexuality.

Should I follow the example of LIBIDO, and take them offline?

Maybe that's the next thing after black backgrounds?

Make the web disappear for a week?

People are calling for civil disobedience!

Maybe this is what comes next.

Dave Winer

PS: Where are the creative people of the music industry on this stuff? I wish Jerry were here! We need a theme song. Who wants to write it? We need something to dance to!