🚀 go-pugleaf

odin@io.org (Chuck Kahn) wrote:

>In article <4ru12d$r9o@news.interlog.com>,
>alchemy@interlog.com (Morton Goldmacher) sez:
>>Your message is the second best way of expressing your outrage over
>>the actions of iStar and other internet provider censors.  The best
>>way is to use your dollars: take your business elsewhere.  There is
>>nothing that iStar will understand better than a tidal wave of
>>cancellations.

>But look how the "vote with your dollars approach" has shaped the
>video rental market -- Blockbuster, with its top 100, bland,
>family-oriented inventory of VHS tapes, dominates the marketplace,
>buying up every other video store in sight.  What if this happens to
>the ISP market?  What if the only safe venture is a bland venture?
>-- 

As far as I can tell you can still get smut whenever you want it even
if Blockbuster does not sell it.  Family oriented films dominate the
marketplace because that is what most consumers want and are willing
to spent their money on.  The video retailers are free to carry
whatever films they believe their audience wants.  It is perverse to
think that every video retailer should be required to stock and sell
"Bimbo Orgy"  because you think that it makes the world a better place
if it is available everywhere.

The freedom to express and communicate thoughts and images, and the
freedom to carry on an enterprise in an open marketplace are the
driving forces behind iSTAR's decision.  Militant anti-censors would
compel them to act on a libertarian ideology of undiscriminatingly
carrying each and every newsgroup rather than to let them enjoy the
freedom to select newsgroups at will.

Morton M. Goldmacher
Barrister and Solicitor