Rant:Freedom/ Slash/Lawyers./Parents/Common Sense

[Steve <bboy_mn@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "heiditandy" <heidit at n...> wrote:
> Milz wrote: 
> > 
> ... the only HP fanfic site to get aletter from Rowling's lawyers 
> was RestrictedSection.org, ...edited...
> 
> ...edited... even though RS.org has a *Do Not Enter If You're
> Under 18* page that you have to click past, the law firm seemed 
> to think that this would encourage kids under 18 to go on and 
> read. 
> 
> 
> heidi

bboy_mn:

...ooowwww... I hate that. That is the most lame and pathetic excuse
imaginable, especially if it comes from parents. (Which makes my
following response slightly off your topic.)

There are more and more parents today who are abdicating their
parental responsibility with the excuse, 'if we tell them not to, it
will just encourage them to do it'. 

[My deepest response to that can't be printed in a public formun, so
here is an alternate response.]

It may be true, but I don't think so. If you tell your children NO, if
you set and define limits, if you give them boundaries and values,
then your children at least have something to go on. They at least
have an idea of what you don't want them to do. They have a sense of
limits and boundaries, and a guideline for right and wrong. Don't do
that, and you cast your children adrift in the ocean in a lifeboat
with out oars.

True they are going to make their own decisions, but would you rather
kids made a decision in a vacuum, or would it be better for the
parents to have laid out these limits and guidelines? Would it be
better for a parent to have expressed some values rather than just
assume the kids would figure it out?

If you don't tell your kids, how are they ever going to know? 

Back to the [*Do Not Enter If You're Under 18*]. It's not my job or
the job of RestrictedSection.org to teach your kids values. That's the
parents job, and if the parents have been doing their job, it's
unlikely that their kids will ever come to the RestrictedSection of
the library. It's the job of the RestictedSection.org to give fair and
clear warning, which they have made every effort to do. After that, it
is up to the values and judgment of the reader to make their own free
choice regarding whether to proceed or not.

How is it possible for an organization like a free non-profit fan
fiction archive to police this. They can't. Even a lot of commerial
sites that go through all kinds of "[] Check this box if your parent
said it was OK" or "return this email to acknowledge parental
permission" are just bogus attempts at creating an illusion of safety.

You can't get a Yahoo profile/webpage/email unless you are at least
13. So what does Yahoo do to verify this? They have you enter your age
in your profile but there is nothing other than your word to verify
it. (Actually, in the on-line world, anyone with a credit card number
is instantly an adult.) You could be 8 and tell your profile you were
18, and that would allow you to get a profile and get into all the
porn photo archive sites (or so I've heard). Yet what can Yahoo do?
There are a big corporation who makes lots of money, yet the expense
of administering a detailed verified profile for each person would
mean that they would have to shutdown. Really, what can they do? Have
you mail a photocopy of your drivers licenes? But a photocopy could
very easily be a scan, and a scan can be manipulated in a photo
editor. So how about actually mailing your drivers license to Yahoo?
Well, first of all, that would mean no drivers license for two weeks.
Second, I have friends who very carefully taked an Exacto knife or
razor blade and trimmed a number from one place on their license and
glued it to another place. Suddenly, they had aged quite dramatically.
So even that is not foolproof.

In the end, the foundation of a free society is freedom of choice. In
a free world, it is your job to police yourself and your kids (within
reasonable limits, of course). In a free society, you make choices and
you live with those choices. The alternative is the government and the
thought police make all your choices for you. Not a pleasant thought.

Freedom and Security-

I realize I'm off on a rant, but we are on a subject that presses a
hot button for me. There is this crazy notion that freedom=security,
but it doesn't. Freedom is not easy, it's not safe, it's not sure, and
it's not secure. CONSTANT VIGILANCE is the cost of freedom.

You may find this hard to believe, but there were people who imigrated
from communist Soviet Union to the US, and couldn't take the level of
insecurity that comes from living in a free country. No social
medicine, no quaranteed job, no free schools; to those people freedom
was a very scary thing, it meant a great deal of uncertainty in their
lives, and they couldn't take it, so they went back. They traded
freedom for security.

Free-
A mountian man is free. No one tells him when to get up. No one tells
him when to go to bed. No one tells him what to eat, how to think,
where to sleep, or what he can or can't do at any given time. Complete
freedom, but almost no security. Where is his next meal coming from?
It's coming from him. If he wants to eat, he has to go out and take it
off the land. If he wants to sleep, he has to create shelter. There
are no police to chase way the boogie man or the scary bears. No one
to keep the wolves at bay. There is no one to plow the snow, build
sewers, or streets. He has total freedom, but almost no security.

Security-
Prison is the ultimate security, your every need is taken care of; no
taxes, no car payment, no utilities, no insurance payments, no job to
worry about. Food, shelter, clothing, a regimented schedule are all
provided. No need to think or do or be; it's the perfectly secure
life. Hummm... but if it is perfectly safe (theoretically speaking)
and secure then why do we use it as punishement for people? Because
you lose the thing that a free spirit cherishes most; freedom. Prison
is secure, but it is not free.

Sadly, we fall into our easy comfortable middle class existance. Life
seems good, life seems easy, but the boodie man is always lurking. So
we trade away our freedom for a little more security, but the boogie
man doesn't go away, so we trade away a little more. Soon out of fear
that our nice un-demanding comfortable middle class life might be
threatened, we trade away all our freedom, confident that the
resulting police state will keep us safe. Then we discover our assumed
source of security, is the greatest threat to our lives. In our fear,
we have handed our lives over to the boogie man. When you trade away
all your freedom for the sake of security, in the end, you discover
that you have neither freedom nor security. Then a lot of blood has to
spill to regain the freedom that was casually traded away. The blood
of your sons and daughters is a pretty high price to pay because their
parents valued a false sense of security over the uncertainty of freedom. 

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms -
Ooowwww.... I know you didn't want to see that title. Let's look at
the Bill of Rights, signed 15 years after the Constitution. The
Constitutional Congress created a new form of government that stressed
balance of power. It was divided into 3 main branches Executive
(President), Judicial (Supreme Court), and Legislative (Congerss),
each with a some degree of accertable power and each with some degree
of power to overrule the other branches. Each keeping the other in
check; balance of power.

So why wasn't that good enough? You have a balance of power who's
purpose is to keep the government under control, why would you need
more? Now comes my favorite part; today, what are the FOUR branches of
government? I already gave you three in the previous paragraph, so it
should be an easy question. 

I'll pause here to mutter pointlessly while you think about it. We
have three branches of government that can regulate and balance each
other. Why would be need a fourth? We seem to have cover all the
bases. So have you guessed yet? The fourth branch of government is the
 people; an ENPOWERED people. 

While the three governmental branches keep each other in check, the
citizens granted themselves the power to keep ALL of the government in
check. The Bill of Rights is the peoples power to control their own
government; by force if necessary. In a sense, we granted ourselves
the right and the power to be subversive to our own government. My
government obeys me because I am a threat to that government. As a
citizen, I have POWER. I have the power to keep and own enough guns
that we as people can form our own citizen's army should the need ever
arise. And that army, who's allegance is to the people not the
government, has the right and the power to fight against 'all powers
foreign and DOMESTIC'. Read the Bill of Rights, it doesn't say
anything about guns and hunting. It says the citizen have the right to
have power over their government, even armed power if that's what it
takes.

Every freedom and power we guaranteed ourselves, is a means by which
governments through out history have oppressed and surpress it's own
people. We can speak, assemble, and associate with whom ever we want,
because that allows us the power to organize resistance against our
government should the need arise. I have power that prevents the
government for seizing my person or property without a duly swore
statement of a witness indicating that a law has been broken. The
government can not stop the press from diseminating information to the
citizens. No one can tell me what church to belong to. 

Each and every freedom we have supresses the means by which government
have oppressed people through out history. Give up one of these
freedoms, one of these rights, and you are giving the government a way
to oppress you. Don't be fool by the illusionary promise of security.

Why should I be allowed to have access to information about bomb
making? Because there may come a day when our government has become so
corrupt, so oppressive and so self-serving that I as an empowered
citizen may need to use that information to defend my country from
itself. If you give the govenment the power to suppress the
disemination of information then you give them the growing power to
enslave YOU.

Fan Fiction that is 'not for profit' falls under that protection of
the freedom of expression and the freedom to diseminate information
without government interference. 

Part of the very very high cost of freedom, is individual
responsibility. Tell your children what is right and wrong, and live
those values in your own life, and you won't have to worry about the
choices they make. You won't have to worry about what they do when
they encounter [*Do Not Enter If You're Under 18*]. 

Abdicate that responsibility or worse yet, turn it over to someone
else and I guarantee you, one day the federal boogie man will come
kicking down your door, and there will be nothing you can do to stop him. 

Freedom is never easy, but it is free.

That IS my story, and I AM sticking to it.

bboy_mn