IP: "The Internet Made Me Do It!"

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: "--Todd Lappin-->" <telstar () wired com>




This, from today's SF Examiner...


"The Internet Made Me Do It!"


Meanwhile, Jonah Seiger at CDT reports that Senator Feinstein has suggested
that there ought to be a law against cult information on the Internet.


[From farber: and a law against crypto information, against critizing the
Government and FBI, against marches (neo nazi and anti war. When will these
people who take an oath to defend the contitution actually bother to read
and understand it -- Dave Farber]


--Todd-->


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=hot&day=28&article=i
nter
net.dtl


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, March 28, 1997


Internet angle feeds media's frenzy


Web site makes suicide cult even more sensational


By Carol Ness
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF


Over at Wired Magazine, Todd Lappin has been besieged since the
discovery of the Rancho Santa Fe suicide cult's Internet Web site and
computer business.


Is this a new age of cult recruitment on the Internet? He heard it all
day Thursday from CNN, from Fox, from other TV networks.


"When these kinds of things happen, there's this tendency for people to
pounce on it and say the Internet did it," Lappin said. "If terrorists
use the Internet, the examples go on and on. The answer always is, "The
Internet did it.' I think that's ridiculous."


Both Lappin and Audrie Krause, executive director of Net Action, say
they expect the Internet connection to the mass suicide to feed some
people's tendency to blame new technology for human actions.


"I think that, to the extent that there is a tie to the Internet, it
will be more fuel for people who are afraid of it and afraid of the
freedom of ideas that it offers," said Krause.


Congress has already passed a law criminalizing pornography on the
Internet, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on its
constitutionality.


Realistically, Krause said, the latest Internet sensationalism is not
likely to bring new restrictions -- at least not in the United States --
because the Constitution protects freedom of speech and religion.


But proponents of Internet limits "undoubtedly will seize on this as
another reason to object and demand controls and censorship," she said.


The Internet makes access to information much easier for people, said
Krause, whose group looks at Net organizing issues and technology
policy.


"For those who want to maintain absolute control over the information
that they and their community and their children can get, the Internet
is a very scary thing," she noted.


But, said Lappin, they're making a mistake in blaming technology.


"We don't talk about terrorists using the telephone or cults using
telephones," he said. "No one is calling for regulations on faxes, or
phones, or other forms of technology we take for granted.


"If you look at the history of cults, there are lots of ways they
communicate. They're recruiting with handbills. They're using
public-address systems. To implicate technology in what is just a
deranged pattern of human behavior" is placing blame in the wrong place,
Lappin said. "It's just a tool."


People who are inclined to join cults are going to do so regardless of
the technology, he said, adding, "Cults have a long and ignoble history
long before the Internet came along."


Thursday marked the fourth time that Lappin has spent the day on the
telephone with the national media, defending the Internet. Once was over
pornography; then terrorists organizing on the Net; then conspiracies in
the making; now, cults.


"People are always looking for the Internet angle," he said. "The
reality is, there really isn't one. ... It's a straw man. The technology
is good for spreading ideas -- but the technology doesn't change
people."
###