--- KitFox <kitfox_at_firstlight.net> wrote:
(Snip)
Find another host and move, I think you said at the
end there.
Fine by me. Yahoo is nothing special, nor are the
groups, as such.(Because they are so badly managed by
Yahoo for the most part.)
The caprice of ***holes is something beyond our
control.
Very well.
But at the core of all this is another issue, one of
freedom of expression.
I think we have done ourselves an equal disservice.
We have let ourselves "run scared". Freaking out and
dumping tens or hundreds of people from groups in
order to "save" something.
As I said in a private letter to someone. This is like
offering the Capitain of the Titanic a chunk of ice
from the berg for his highball. It may be a nice
gesture, but it's a bit late for all of that.
It has been and contiunues to be my conviction that
Yahoo is *Looking* for reasons to close this and other
groups down, in part because they are not "PC" (and I
don't mean the computer clone) and because groups cost
(them) money, and some suit aomewhere is trying to
improve the "bottom line" that much more.
Greedy? You got it!
Petty? Unquestionably!
But, fellow furries and skunk fans, I gotta question
for you.
What's so different?
By that, I mean that we've had to face all this BS in
other places (From Cons in where we have to put posted
notes over artwork, to identity Gestapo that has to
"make sure" someone is over 18, 21, whatever number
you want) before they put some sticker on your badge
that somehow mysticly makes you an "adult" in their
eyes, even if the mereist glance will tell anyone with
an IQ out of the single digits that you're over some
magic number.)
We're all here because we are friends and admirers of
artists whose artwork pushes limits. All of us dream
of pushing limits. Limits need pushing, until they are
as few as possible to maintain civilization and a
basic codex of law.
Point is that the moment we "run scared" in the face
of someone who for whatever trumped up reason decides
they don't like us, or what is done here, or there, we
take a step back. And people that would close us down
and silence us all take one more step forward.
It's called Tyrany, as pure and awful as it gets, and
drop by drop, freedom is reduced, as if by an acid,
and melts away, until one day, there's no more room
for it anymore. No room for us, artwork, or anything
else that pushes limits.
Faced with tyrany of any sort, no matter how benign it
may seem (until it comes up and bites your tail), we
have to respond.
And that responce has to come from us, because this
side of the issue is about us.
I'm all for telling the good folks at Yahoo, thanks
but no thanks, here's your precious HD space back,
thanks fur nothing. (Which is what these groups cost,
Right? Until that is, they start costing us something
else that we ought not pay in any currency of freedom
of mind, nor of expression.)
What we need to do now is to develop alternatives. For
Jim, For Des, and whoever else may be up a gum tree
next week, at the caprice of an ***hole.
Because, mes amis, next week, next month, or next
year, we all could be up that same gum tree, listening
to the sick, sad sounds of people with saws, as they
cut the gum tree down.
We know the problem.
Furries are, as a community, very "tech literate"
people. We have both the resources and the know how to
solve this problem.
But do we have the will?
That is our true problem.
Roci
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Received on Tue Nov 26 2002 - 01:00:37 CST