![[Book burning image]](/images/1933-05-10.jpeg)
(Books burning in Berlin, May 10, 1933, sixty-eight years ago today)
Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen. [That was just a prelude; where they burn books, they will burn men in the end.](Heinrich Heine, 1820)
This morning I remembered my famous letter to my parents:
At Northfield Mount Hermon School, I learned how to order from a catalog, how to read sheet music, how to use Krazy Glue, how to snap my fingers, how to set up an Ethernet hub, how to read the Aeneid and the Iliad, how to make a proposal, how to do line integrals, how to understand optical illusions, how to assemble audio cables, how to put on a tuxedo, how to remember IP addresses, how to debate in the Oregon, Lincoln-Douglas, and Parliamentary styles, how to expand acronyms, how to participate in a protest, how to send a sick person flowers, how to found an association, how to crimp an Ethernet cable, how to read stock charts, how to find the altitude of a model rocket, how to arrange a meeting, how to swim, how to explain Gödel's Theorem, how to give a public speech, how to appreciate classical music, how to set up a stereo, how to graph costs and revenues as a function of output, how to tie a tie, how to read Greek and Esperanto, how to throw a Frisbee, how to take a derivative, how to use an uninterruptible power supply, how to host a radio show, how to scan dactylic hexameter and iambic pentameter, how to order take-out food, how to write a genuine note of thanks, how to appreciate a sunset, how to explain the philosophy of Plato, how to understand the nomenclature of electrical cable terminators, how to play badminton, how to evacuate during a blackout, how to circulate a petition, how to use Unix well, how to recite passages from classical texts, how to do some card tricks, how to participate in distributed collaborative computing projects, how to pass on a tradition, how to use a video editor, how to write a bibliography, how to loan people music, how to create a to-do list, how to arrange dial-up Internet e-mail, how to translate the text of the requiem, how to use a digital multimeter, how to usher in a play, how to write a newspaper article, how to be a friend to a lonely person, how to make an enormous poster, how to analyze the efficiency of an algorithm, how to make a collage, how to decipher bar codes, how to play the Prisoner's Dilemma, how to sing along to music in other languages, how to use the antiseptic betadine, how to make advertising posters for various occasions, how to use an audio or video mixer, how to perform a titration, how to install memory in a computer, how to identify constellations, how to reminisce about the past, how to use a Macintosh, how to design a solar car, how to use a scanner, how to write HTML, how to read Catullus and Horace, how to know more about the Los Alamos Project, how to use the conservation of energy, how to administer computer systems, how to serve on a committee, how to compete in a science competition, how to win a rope pull, how to give cross-examination, how to build a binary search tree, how to play music on a computer, how to write a computer game, how to manage a political campaign, how to say "dishwasher" in German, how to write letters to the editor, how to use DSM-IV, how to ask someone to be my girlfriend, how to find a senior quotation, how to count in binary on my fingers, how to run a store, how to read a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, how to install site wiring, how to compete in triplespeak, how to apply to college, how to find the price at which a market will clear, how to write an autobiography, how to be Head of House for a play, how to annotate Dante's Inferno, how to describe the origin of seasons, how to appear on a game show, how to apply the mass-energy theorem, how to host a party, how to describe the outcome of chemical reactions, how to find yearbook inscriptions, how to build a regulated power supply, how to use a CB radio, how to audition for a play, how to argue for free markets, how to catch someone breaking into a computer system, how to read the gospel of John, how to compose a short piece of music, how to tie a laundry bag, how to memorize friends' initials, how to calculate equilibrium concentrations of ions in aqueous solutions, how to play an audio CD on a computer, how to call an ambulance, how to write vote-tallying software, how to use a bullhorn, how to calculate electrostatic potentials, how to write a sonnet, how to install Macintosh video input and television tuner cards, how to like Moxie, how to play a role-playing game, how to throw pottery on a wheel, how to create a routing table, how to use a credit card, how to make a decorated graduation cap, how to be interrogated, how to perform Sortes Vergilianae, how to compare works of literature, how to use the method of loci to remember lists of items, how to submit to a literary magazine, how to give announcements at a Campus Meeting, how to use a video camera, how to write a program to make pictures of fractals, how to wear a martenitsa, how to sing "Jerusalem", how to use a blacklight, how to use personality assessment instruments, how to classify and identify logical fallacies, how to make an iron-on t-shirt design, how to thank the Speaker for recognition, how to set up a recording studio, and many other things as well.Thank you for sending me to NMH.
What I thought about the list on this occasion was that I recant on "how to ask someone to be my girlfriend". Just because I did it does not mean that I knew how.
So, please explain how a bunch of people sitting around drinking coke, listening to music, and playing Settlers of Cataan -- which is what went on at the MIT fraternity party that I most recently attended -- heightens the incidence of rape, domestic violence, and assault. And if you find no such explanation forthcoming, then please stop over-generalising.(Matthew K. Belmonte, on CTY-L)
I went back to the chiropractor; it feels like she's still making progress.
Today I talked to a Loya and to a lawyer. I also had lunch with Alex, and Duncan visited in the afternoon. It's good to catch up with him.
The 2nd Circuit has issued a number of questions for the attorneys for the appellants and appellees in the 2600 case:
1. Are the anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act content-neutral? See 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 328-29 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
2. Does DeCSS have both speech and non-speech elements?
3. Does the dissemination of DeCSS have both speech and non-speech elements?
4. Does the use of DeCSS to decrypt an encrypted DVD have both speech and non-speech elements?
5. Does the existence of non-speech elements, along with speech elements, in an activity sought to be regulated alone justify intermediate level scrutiny?
6. If DeCSS or its dissemination or its use to decrypt has both speech and non-speech elements and is not subject to intermediate level scrutiny simply because of the non-speech elements, is intermediate l.evel scrutiny appropriate because of the close causal link between dissemination of DeCSS and its improper use? See 111 F. Supp. 2d at 331-32.
7. If the District Court is correct that the dissemination of DeCSS "carries very substantial risk of imminent harm," 111 F. Supp. 2d at 332, does that risk alone justify the injunction? In other words, does that risk satisfy the requirements for regulating speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), thereby rendering unnecessary an inquiry as to whether non-speech elements of DeCSS or its dissemination or its use (if such exists) may be regulated under United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968)?
8. Are the three criteria identified at 111 F. Supp. 2d 333 the correct criteria for determining the validity, under intermediate level scrutiny, of the use of DeCSS that has been enjoined?
9. If not, what modification or supplementation would be required to conform to First Amendment requirements?
10. Are the three criteria identified at 111 F. Supp. 2d 341 and the "clear and convincing evidence" standard the correct criteria and the correct standard of proof for testing the validity of the injunction's prohibition of posting on the defendant's website and of linking?
11. If not, what modification or supplementation would be required to conform to First Amendment requirements?
It's a relief (no pun intended) that the Court is considering the first amendment issues seriously, because at oral argument they seemed to ignore them, for the most part. Now the question is, among other things, how to convince them.
It does seem that the speech and conduct distinctions are often artificial. Professor Junger wrote a bit where he pointed out that speakers always engage in conduct in connection with their speech -- for example, breathing and wearing clothing (Junger's examples). And speech always has an effect, and knowledge (and social relationships) may be more consequential than "conduct".
It is said that this manifesto was more than a theory, that it was an incitement. Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and, if believed, is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it, or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. Eloquence may set fire to reason.(Justice Holmes, dissenting, in Abrams v. U.S., 268 U.S. 652 (1925), at 668.)
And if we didn't believe that what we said would do something, would we bother to say it at all?
Contact: Seth David Schoen
