Gomma on Tue, 3 Jun 1997 04:29:10 +0200 (MET DST)


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<nettime> Attack against Decoder (english)


The following (translated) article is from "Il Mattino" of Naples. It
concerns "Decoder", one of the most relevant magazines in the Italian
antagonist landscape.

This raving article is against "Decoder" and the
alternative Italian telematics. It is the proof that all the
repressive legislation passed or under way to "regulate" the net will
become instruments against freedom of expression more broadly. For
those who didn't know it, the article mentioned concerns a strip by
the famous English artist, Graham Harwood ("Decoder", No. 8), on the
issue of violence on children. A harsh strip, ruthless, but whose
only goal was to make people reason on the origins of violence
against weaker human beings. But when power becomes blind, it hits in
any form, it becomes abuse, it becomes censorship, and it hits
everything and everyone.

If this was not so gloomy for the future prospects it envisages, we
could even laugh at it, but BEWARE, because this article -which the
journalist who attacks us and the right to stay anonymous was not
brave enough to sign- seems to anticipate a new repressive clampdown
on Italian networks and their activists.

As "Decoder" we will seek for advice from our lawyers to try and do
something -we do not accept being used to the ends of newspapers'
manipulation- and we INVITE all the comrades, brothers and sisters
from telematic communities to express solidarity, to activate on
these issues, and build a united front against repression.

-------

"Il Mattino" 28 May 1997

The cyber-race and its prophets. See under "violence"

There is also a magazine ,"Decoder", in glossy paper: it preaches the
destruction of all rules

ROME. A bunch of copies on adjunct attorney's Italo Ormanni.
Disgusting images of violence on children accompanied by a language
that is abusive in itself. It is not a porn magazine, of those some
guys get behind closed doors. It's a glossy paper, underground they
say, who claims to change the world. An organ of ideological
struggle, one may say party-like, if we can call this way a group
which is sailing on the Net preaching the destruction of all rules.
And what is more shocking, more destructive than sanctifying violence
on children?

Ormanni, the statutes in his hands, could only do one thing. He asked
to the police's telecommunication operative branch director, Maria
Cristina Ascenzi, if the requisites existed to sue someone for under-
age persons' exploitation. But it came out that those sick images
are the outcome of computer-aided elaborations. The crime disappears,
at least for current laws, but a chilling discovery is confirmed:
pedophily is not only stuff for a-social, depraved people: it is
used, if you pass this concept, as a tool of struggle, a ram's head
against the bases of society. Going through "Decoder"'s pages is like
have a walk into a frenzy: a summary of the cyberpunk's "philosophy"
is that any rule must tumble down. And that anyone do what they want,
totally unnamed.

Being strong or weak, being the animal that eats or the one who gets
eaten, does not matter. But this is not said because anyone of these
cyberphilosophers feel, tacitly, the eating animal. One of the most
notable parts of this vision of the world supported even through
pedophily is the coming birth of a cyber-race improved by computer.
And all, which they imagine so original and part of the new times,
inequivocably smacks like a rotten carcass.

No signatures, only proclamations. The authors don't let people look
in their faces. Only battle nicknames. It's the rule, on the Net.
This in the lefty circles who are seeking on the Net for alternatives
to the old social centre (whom detectives call "antagonist"), like in
these groups defined, instead, as rightist. Among so many living
presences, curious, even provoking, then, you can also find anti-
everything propaganda, desecrating by choice. Legislation that is now
going to pass in Parliament provides for very hard penalties for
everyone produces pornographic material representing under-age
persons. Also virtual pedophily, then, might be punished, as a non-
value and an "exaltation" of a crime. Until now the police, who can
anyway point and prosecute those inciting to racial hatred, can just
wait and see.
--
| Cybernet: Gomma 65:1200/1.2
| Internet: Gomma@decoderbbs.csmtbo.mi.cnr.it
| WWW     : http://www4.iol.it/decoder
|
| Standard disclaimer: >>>> Information wants to be free <<<<
| From DecoderBBS Italy +39-2-29527597 (open 14:00-08:00).
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