Parler

Sun Jan 10 20:52:49 UTC 2021

You’ve described capitalism perfectly, and it works just as it should on the Internet, at least so far. Yes, the Internet has been a free market. But it won’t remain that way unless we resist censorship by a few wealthy companies. Parler, fortunately, has some backers who can foot the bill.

 -mel

On Jan 10, 2021, at 12:40 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 12:29 PM Mel Beckman <mel at beckman.org<mailto:mel at beckman.org>> wrote:
It’s gratifying to see the many talented engineers here working on a solution to the underlying problem: Censorship. Don’t confuse freedom of speech (which protects us from government censorship) from freedom of commerce, which is a uniquely American aspect of Internet design.

As John Gilmore wisely said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Let’s start helping the free market route around the censors!

 -mel

I'm sorry, Mel

The market hasn't been "free" for quite a long time.

There's easy solutions to the problem--hiring really good engineers
to write your own AWS-lookalike where you can host whatever content
you want, hosted in buildings you've built on land you've bought.

It's most definitely not free, though.

I'm available to start immediately--but I charge $2M/year, plus expenses,
including a full security detail to protect me from the types of people who
are likely to use the platform once it's done.

You're "free" to hire me--but I most definitely don't work for free.

You're "free" to buy your own land to build a datacenter on; but it
most definitely isn't available for free.

You're "free" to buy electricity to run the servers you put in that
datacenter you've built--but the electricity is most definitely not
arriving for free.

The part Gilmore missed is that the 'Net only routes around
censorship if someone is willing to foot the bill.

Matt

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