🚀 go-pugleaf

alaing@intranet.ca (Alain Goyette) wrote:

>I for one think that the list they pulled was crap but, it is a sorry
>state we are getting into when others can decide for you what it is
>that you can do, think, like or dislike.

Methinks you judge iStar a tad too harshly, Alain.  I don't think they
care all that much about what you read, but I am sure that they are
very concerned about what sits on their hard drives.

You see, if the RCMP want to get themselves a bust with great PR
value, they don't have to bother looking for individual users to find
out who subscribes to newsgroups with child porn in them. All they
have to do is go to the source and pay a friendly visit to an ISP. I'm
sure they are just drooling at the prospect of nailing somebody really
big, who distributes this kind of stuff to hundreds and thousands of
users, regardless of their age.

Would you jeopardize _your_ growing business and personally risk up to
5 years in jail for somebody else's dubious pleasures?

Your questionable freedom to smut is not dependant on iStar or any
other Canadian or American ISP.  You can arrange with any news server
in the world to allow you to get it from them, if you can't live a
happy life without it.  But no Canadian ISP has any obligation to any
user to bring in stuff that they feel may contain materials prohibited
in Canada.

If you have a problem with the child porn provisions of the Criminal
Code, then your fight is with the Parliament, but not with an ISP.
The Parliament of Canada are "the others" who have decided what you
are allowed to see or read, not the service providers.  All the ISPs
are trying to do is to stay within the bound of the law.


Karl Pollak               FidoNet 1:153/965
Richmond, B.C.            Canadian Infomaticon BBS