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91 lines
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91 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
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Well, now it appears that they are coming for the bbs's also. Well
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they'll get mine when they pry the keyboard from my cold dead
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fingers.
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Communication Is Your Right
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The growing national and international outreach of computer bulletin
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board systems (BBSs) and their effectiveness in reaching the masses
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outside of the Establishment media were discussed on the October 7
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broadcast of The SPOTLIGHT's nightly call-in talk forum, Radio Free
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America, with host Tom Valentine.
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The guest was veteran Washington-based investigative journalist
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Patrick M. Clawson. He has worked for Cable News Network (CNN) and
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NBC News and is now becoming active in the BBS industry, which, he
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noted, is under fire from the gouernment. The SPOTLIGHT is also
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involved in this new medium, through the LogoPlex BBS based in
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Richmond, Virginia.
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An edited transcript of the interview follows. Valentine's questions
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are in boldface. Clawson's comments are in regular text. [Clawson's
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comments are in square brackets for this file]
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You've recently entered into a new communications endeavor. Could you
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discuss that?
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[ I've been helping to organize a trade association, the National
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On-Line Media Association. That is an organization of people who are
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running computer bulletin boards around the country. The computer
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bulletin boards have become quite a force. It's a great way of
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getting your news outside of the traditional stream. Frankly, a lot
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of the news you get through the BBS is a lot more accurate than the
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stuff you read in the mainstream press. ]
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[ Many people around the country are getting onto BBSs. ]
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[ What's happening with this on-line media is quite exciting. It
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really is going to upset the balance of media power in America. Lots
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of people are very discouraged with the way the conventional news
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media reports the news. I am, too, and I've been a member of the
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Washington press corps for a long time. ]
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[ The thing that's interesting about this bulletin board
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technology as it is proliferating across the country is that for the
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first time in the history of the world any person can be a publisher
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and can have their voice heard worldwide, on these computer networks.]
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[ Any person can report the news and put the word out worldwide to
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any person who wants to read it. That's a tremendous change in the
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balance of media power. It's going to liberate people. It's going
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to give them a chance to report things and to dig out government
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corruption in a way like they've never been able to do it before. ]
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Is the Establishment getting leery of the development of the computer
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bulletin boards?
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[ What's happening to a computer bulletin board system based in
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Boston is a very interesting story, and it has gotten no press play.
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This is a clear sign of how the media industry is changing. ]
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[ There's a gentleman in Boston named Brian Miller. He and his
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wife run a bulletin board, Channel 1 BBS. This is one of the largest
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bulletin board systems in the country. They have built this system
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up through hard work to the point that it's quite well known. ]
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[ The state of Massachusetts, in its infinite wisdom, has now
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decided to reinterpret the state's tax laws on telecommunications to
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try to make it retroactively fit this company. The state is using
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this as a test case. The state has hit this company with a tax lien
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of more than $150,000. This is a small business, and this lien could
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shut this company down. ]
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[ Here you have a media voice in Boston that is being threatened
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with silence, and it has gotten no national publicity at all. If the
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U.S. government or the District of Columbia government moved against
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the Washington Post with a major tax assessment in a clear effort to
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shut them down, we would be hearing about it.]
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[ There have been several cases across the country where the FBI
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and/or the local police have gone in and raided bulletin boards under
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the pretext that the board may have transmitted pornography or
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somebody might have posted somebody's credit card number on the
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board. ]
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[ However, instead of taking some kind of carefully defined legal
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action to deal with those issues, the law en-forcement people have
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broken down doors and grabbed equipment and shut down these media
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operations. ]
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