Organization: Genius Systems, Poughkeepsie NY
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 21:36:23 EDT
From:         Mike Lepore <saviour!scifi!lepore@UUNET.UU.NET>
Subject:      GEnie adopts censorship
Comments: To: info-nets@think.com, ETHICS-L%MARIST.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu

                                             THIS MESSAGE IS 469 LINES
                           Michael Lepore
                           Internet:  lepore%saviour.uucp@uunet.uu.net
                           GEnie:     M.LEPORE
                           July 28, 1992
             ...........................................................
             Copies of this communication, with a cover letter, are also
             being sent to J. F. Welch (Chairman of the Board of General
             Electric), J. Hergenhan (GE Public Relations Dept.), D.
             Fray (President, GE Investor Relations) and H. Runtagh
             (President, General Electric Information Services).
             ...........................................................

GEnie, the online service owned by General Electric, has adopted new
restrictions.   These include a new level of vigor in the practice of
screening bulletin messages for content which is allegedly "off topic" or
"offensive".

To be more precise, the majority of the areas of the network are not
affected, but the new practice was implemented in June of 1992 in GEnie's
Religion and Philosophy Roundtable.  If these restrictions were on the
books prior to June, they were almost never enforced.

Nearly all of GEnie's customers oppose the new practice, but the company
appears to be foregoing flexibility toward customer demand in favor of
repeated reminders to us that the company has the power to make and
enforce rules.

There is often a large difference between what the customers of an online
service want it to be, and what its owners define it to be.  Most
customers want computer networks to be more like common carriers, like the
telephone and telegraph companies, and the U.S. postal service, which do
not review or screen the information going across their networks (this
also alleviates the management of responsibility for the content).  On the
other hand, the owners sometimes operate their networks as publishers
screening manuscripts to identify those submissions which are considered
acceptable for inclusion.

It appears that GEnie did respond to customer concerns to the extent that,
in the future, the power to delete bulletin board messages is going to be
delegated to fewer of the administrators.  However, of more immediate
concern to most customers is the set of policies behind such deletions,
rather than the identities of the administrators who to carry out these
policies.

The issue first came to my attention on July 17, 1992, when GEnie user
Mark Dotson, using the nickname Doulos, participated in a theological
debate in the Religion and Philosophy bulletin board (BB).  [Mark has
given me permission to use his name publically.] His post was deleted by
an administrator.  In the BB conversation, Mark had inquired whether
another writer, who had commented on the Sacred Text, the Koran, had read
the Koran.  (I personally have no interest in the theological debate
itself, but I have an enormous interest in the issue of freedom of
expression.)

Reproduced below is the "offensive" bulletin board message that was
deleted by the management:

   >    Category 17,  Topic 5
   >    Message 607       Fri Jul 17, 1992
   >    M.DOTSON2 [Doulos]           at 21:14 EDT
   >
   >    Pacman,
   >    Did Peter say that he had read the Koran? I know
   >    I asked him that earlier.  I must have missed
   >    something.
   >               +-+-+-+- Doulos -+-+-+-+

After the deletion of this message, Mark went to the "Feedback to the
Sysop" BB topic and complained about the deletion.  For this action he was
punished by being placed on a "read-only status" for three days (able to
read but unable to write BB messages).

The management stated that the more severe penalty was warranted because
Mark was one of the bulletin board users who volunteered (unpaid) to do
some BB maintenance, designated as a "category leader".  The management
explained to all, after the fact, that it's improper for a category leader
to complain publically about BB policies.  It's common for corporate
managers and spokespersons to be restrained in their public remarks, but
many customers believe that such a rule should not apply to a customer who
has merely volunteered to do BB housecleaning.  We also realize that the
freedom of all BB users is endangered by a practice of using editing and
read-only status as penalties.

Upon hearing of GEnie's manner of punishing Mark, an e-mail group
organized over the weekend of July 18-19 to oppose the new policy.  The
e-mail group was large enough that it's members were the creators of 26.6
percent of all BB messages, as indicated by a database scan.  Even among
the users who did not ask to join the e-mail group, it is clear that the
vast majority of them agree with the group.

The customers aren't the only people who took steps to unite.  The
administrators of the Religion and Philosophy Roundtable united as well.
Several of the administrators started to speak in a monolithic voice, even
using the same wording, i.e., Mark was supposedly wrong for "going
public", and what happened to Mark is a "private matter".  In my opinion,
the way they speak with a single voice could make one wonder whether
top-down instructions are telling the subordinates what they are required
to "believe".

I used the GEnie Feedback feature to register my complaint.  Here's
what I wrote to them:

    >     Item    7518678                 92/07/20        06:59
    >     From:   M.LEPORE                        Michael Lepore
    >
    >     To:     FEEDBACK                        GEnie Feedback
    >             M.LEPORE                        Michael Lepore
    >
    >     cc:     FEEDBACK2                       GEnie Feedback Backup
    >     Sub: Feedback to GE
    >
    >     Dear GEnie management:
    >     This month I celebrate one year with GEnie.
    >
    >     I came here from Prodigy in July of 1991 because of my
    >     strong dislike (and that's an understatement) of Prodigy's
    >     common practice of deleting bulletin board messages
    >     following a sysop's individual value judgements that the
    >     messages are offensive or otherwise inappropriate.
    >
    >     I had thought GEnie was completely different --- until a
    >     perfectly harmless message by Mark Dotson was recently
    >     deleted from the Religion Roundtable, and, when the
    >     message writer did little more than point out that he
    >     didn't do anything wrong, he was punished with a read-only
    >     status.
    >
    >     There are two kinds of businesses.  There are some
    >     companies that strive to give the customers what the
    >     customers want.  There are others which give the customers
    >     whatever the company wants to give them, and tells the
    >     customers, "If you don't like it, go elsewhere."  Which
    >     kind of company is G.E. ?  (Please answer this question,
    >     not in words, but by your actions.)
    >
    >     Please do me a favor --- don't "protect" me from the
    >     opinions of others.  I am more offended by this police
    >     activity than I am offended by the "unacceptable" opinions
    >     themselves.
    >
    >     I think the religion BB was a lot better before the
    >     management recently tried to "improve" it.
    >
    >     If a message is libelous, commits copyright infringement,
    >     or contains a threat, then there are practical and legal
    >     reasons for deleting it.  But when users X and Y are
    >     engaging in a debate about a controversial subject, I
    >     don't want the management suddenly popping in and charging
    >     that one individual has become "offensive."  The very small
    >     possible advantage is outweighed by the more probably harm
    >     done to the open exchange of ideas.
    >
    >     I know that the majority of the BB users feel the way I
    >     do.  But the question is -- does GEnie management care
    >     what it's customers want?
    >
    >     Please let's have NO more censorship.
    >                      Thank you very sincerely for your time.
    >                             Mike Lepore
    >     =END=


In response to my FEEDBACK, I received an e-mail letter from Laura
Staley, the GEnie Product Manager responsible for the Religion and
Philosophy Roundtable.  Reproduced below is the response I received from
Ms. Staley.

It is my opinion that what she DIDN'T say came across more loudly and
clearly to me than what she DID say.  Therefore, I am inserting my own
commentary between the   >>>  segments.  That is, the indented passages
are from the reply to my Feedback, and the passages beginning in
column 1 are my personal judgments.


    >     Item    1694244                 92/07/22        10:02
    >     From:   L.STALEY                        Laura Staley
    >     To:     M.LEPORE                        Michael Lepore
    >     cc:     L.STALEY                        Laura Staley
    >             FEEDBACK                        GEnie Feedback
    >     Sub: Response to Feedback
    >     Dear Mr. Lepore,
    >
    >     The original situation in the Religion RT was one that
    >     occurred over days and weeks.  It was not simply "a
    >     perfectly harmless message by Mark Dotson".


Note that the administrators are asserting that PAST discussion is
relevant in determining whether a PRESENT bulletin board message is
acceptable.  According to this thinking, if someone has been very
argumentative in the past, than whatever he says in the present may be
interpreted in a specific light.  For example, suppose I insulted you
yesterday; now, if I merely say "Good morning" today, then this is
another of my insults.  This illogical position makes it clear to
most customers that the deletion of a BB message was merely being
used as a disciplinary measure.


    >      What actually happened is not for public discussion.


Whether of not "What actually happened is not for public discussion" is
entirely outside of Ms. Staley's jurisdiction.  The First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution does not exist by the grace of the General Electric
company.

If a company treats a few of its customers with disrespect, then this is
the concern of all of that company's customers, because they know that
they may be the next victims.

Several decades ago a courageous black lady named Mrs. Parks made the
news when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man.  The
result was a great civil rights movement.  I wonder what would have
happened if we had accepted a ludicrous suggestion that the issue was a
private matter between the bus company and Mrs. Parks, and was therefore
"not for public discussion".  Let's note that the resulting civil rights
movement did not need to obtain the permission of the bus company before
it could conduct public education.  Similarly, the subscribers of computer
networks do not need the permission of management of those services before
they can conduct public education.


    >     Your bulk mail letter regarding this situation was forwarded
    >     to GEnie staff.  It broke the GEnie policy regarding use of
    >     GE Mail which prohibits unsolicited mail.


This section of Ms. Staley's letter was not a response to my letter to
GEnie FEEDBACK, and therefore serves only to change the subject.  That is,
it's a distraction.  I had written a letter pointing the finger at the
company, and a manager responded by pointing the finger back at me.  I
don't have proof that this was intended as an avoidance measure, but
avoidance is all that it achieved.

However, since she brought it up, let's consider this matter of
"unsolicited mail".

As a newsletter publisher, I have a mailing list (people who have
explicitly requested communications from me).  I advised my newsletter
subscribers of the recent management actions and encouraged them to use
GEnie customer 'Feedback' procedures to register any complaints they may
have.  I also sent my newsletter to about 20 more individuals whose e-mail
addresses I had looked up in the directory, out of my belief that they
would be interested.  These additional 20 letters were unsolicited.  It is
possible that one of the recipients felt inconvenienced by receiving it,
as the length of my letter was 116 lines, and 4485 bytes.  Ms. Staley
claims that my letter was forwarded to her, which may be true, or it may
simply be the case that the management knows of my letter because several
of the recipients mentioned my name when complaining about the company
policies, for example, "I just learned a shocking thing from Mike Lepore's
recent newsletter."

Then Ms. Staley warned me that users are only allowed to send e-mail that
has been solicited by prior e-mail.  No mention was made of the three
obvious points which immediately come to everyone's mind:

(1) The rule against first use is self-contradictory.  The mere existence
of an e-mail conversation implies that someone must have been the first to
send mail to the other.  Therefore the rule logically requires its own
violation.  If the rule were obeyed in the past, an e-mail conversation
could never begin.  If the rule is obeyed in the future, all e-mail
users would vanish from the earth in one generation.

(2) GEnie provides a directory service for precisely that reason -- so you
can enter the names a people and find out their e-mail addresses.  The
existence of the directory would not be needed if merely replying to
previous mail, because the return address is given at the top of each
note.

(3) The GEnie administrators themselves send unsolicited e-mail to the
users, almost on a daily basis, to urge us to venture outside of "basic"
and use pay-by-the-hour services.  These messages also give the user
instructions for having the receipt of such messages discontinued, but the
first message must be sent before the recipient can possibly have those
instructions for discontinuance.  Therefore, if the management's belief is
that any FIRST contact by mail is offensive, they sure have a funny way of
showing it.


    >     Further use of GE Mail which violates policy could lead to
    >     the removal of your GE Mail privileges.


This reply asserts that it is merely a PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT, to use a
service that one has paid for, following the execution of a contract.
Since we are accustomed to having the unquestionable RIGHT to drive a car
which we have rented, and so forth, this assertion that use of e-mail is a
PRIVILEGE is quite startling.  She does not cite any specific clause of
the contract that I have violated, nor does she submit proof that a
violation has taken place.  There is no "due process" here, just managers
who have the technical ability to revoke computer authorizations whenever
they choose to do so.


    >     There is a tendency among some ex-Prodigy customers to view
    >     anything beyond very minimal maintenance, or any maintenance
    >     at all, as a full-scale assault on posting privileges.


Anyone who has taken a course in logic will recognize this immediately as
an ad hominem argument.  Instead of addressing only the truth or falsity
of the complainers' statements, this type of response draws attention to
the background and motivations of those complainers.

Again, it is asserted that writing in the bulletin board is merely a
PRIVILEGE, not a RIGHT.  Since the term "PRIVILEGE" was used twice, we can
assume that its use was not inadvertent.  This shows how much respect the
current management has for a legal contract which it has signed with its
customers.


    >     GEnie sysops have the discretion to manage their boards
    >     within GEnie policy.  The situation will be dealt with and
    >     resolved.


This type of statement occurs in a large number of the admisistrators'
statements.  This shows that they are missing the whole point.

This is THE POINT:  It is NORMAL for paying customers to notify those who
are selling any product or service which features are desirable and which
features are undesirable.  If enough customers do so, the companies
ordinarily try to adjust the product to be what the customers are saying
they want.

For example, suppose that the majority of G.E.'s customers wrote to the
company to notify them that we would like them to make a line of purple
100-watt light bulbs.  The company certainly wouldn't write back with
something like, "We have the right to run our business as we see fit, free
from interferance from you outsiders."  Instead, the company would try to
make definite moves to sell the kind of product which the customers have
expressed a desire to buy.

For some reason, certain online services, first Prodigy, and now GEnie,
don't know how to do that very simple thing.  When the vast majority of
their customers tell the management what kind of service we want to buy,
the management just keeps reminding us that then have the legal right to
run their companies any way they wish.  Of course they have that legal
right.  But that's not the point.

Whether or not the customers' desires are even taken seriously was
indicated by the sysop's decision to remove ALL messages concerning this
censorship issue from the "Feedback to the sysop" BB topic, hundreds of
messages, and to place them all into what he called a "flames" topic.
"Flaming" is a colloquial term for complaint that is more of an emotional
outburst than a constructive criticism.


    >     This one instance on one bulletin board does not mean a
    >     change in GEnie policy, does not mean the GEnie is suddenly
    >     reversing the practices that it has built over the past
    >     seven years, nor does it mean that a call to action is
    >     warranted by numerous customers.


Most of the BB users originally THOUGHT that the deletion of a harmless BB
message, and the use of read-only status as a punishment, were isolated
incidents.  We expected that the administrators would simply acknowledge
that someone had made a human error, which is understandable, and which
everyone is likely to do from time to time, and then everyone would be
HAPPY.  But, instead of this, the administrators assumed the role of
continuously reminding us of their right to make rules, and to run
the BB as they choose, regardless of what nearly all of their customers
want.  This made us realize that the issue goes far beyond the censorship
of a BB message.  An "I'm the boss" attitude, and the tendency to dismiss
customer concerns, is the real issue.


    >     Any more calls to action will be viewed as unwarranted,
    >     against GEnie's best interests, and harrassment of GEnie
    >     staff.
    >     Regards,
    >     Laura Staley
    >     GEnie Marketing
    >     =END=


This is fifty percent a personal threat directed at me, and fifty percent
baloney.  I have conducted myself on the civilized plane, and I get a
reply which contains a childish threat.  Moreover, the threat is delivered
incompetently.

1.  Use of the term "unwarranted":

This is an example of begging the question.  Countless BB users are now
debating the very issue of what is warranted.

2.  Use of the term "best interests":

There was no explanation of why she thinks the buyer of a service is
supposed to care about what the seller perceives abstractly as the "best
interests" of her company.  On the contrary, the agenda of a buyer is
supposed to be to negotiate for the best quality product at the lowest
possible price.  At a flat $4.95 per month, the price of using this
network is already very low, so the buyer's task is only to negotiate for
the best possible quality of service.  This is what we are TRYING to do.
However, this negotiation presupposes that the seller of the service
values customer satisfaction in the first place.

3.  Use of the term "harassment of GEnie staff":

Ms. Staley appears to be referring to the fact that my newsletter advised
other GEnie users with the following two sentences:  "I have written to
GEnie Feedback to register my complaint.  You may ask your conscience
whether you should be complaining too."

The was no mention in this reply of how advising others to write Feedback
supposedly constitutes "harassment of GEnie staff."  The term "harassment"
is applicable to an activity which victimizes others with danger, or with
mental or physical suffering.  It is certainly NOT harassment of the staff
of a business for a customer to advise fellow customers to go to the
business's complaint department to express any complaints that they may
have.  After all, the complaint department has been established for
precisely that purpose.  I wish I had a nickel for every time the advice
columnist Dear Abby told someone that they should go to the complaint
department of a merchant.  In contrast, burning a cross on someone's porch
would be an example of harassment.  I think someone is very confused here.

This concludes the response I received from GEnie Feedback and my
commentary about it.

I have found out that many other users have also written Feedback, and
received similar responses.

The customers are responding in various ways:

(1)  Some of us are moving our bulletin board conversations to other
GEnie bulletin boards (rather than the Religion and Philosophy BB), and
some are moving their conversations to other online services, such as
Compuserve.

(2)  Many of us have decided that we will not use ANY services in the
pay-by-the-hour area, but will remain exclusively within basic services.
This will continue as long as the management treats us like servants
rather than as customers.

(3)  We are compiling a list of available forums for making the consumer
public aware of what they will be paying for if they buy this service.  To
promote this consumer awareness, some of us will will use computer
networks (Usenet newsgroups, Internet e-mail groups, Bitnet discussion
groups, etc.), in addition to other types of forums.

(4)  The customers fear that the company will punish some of us by
revoking our system authorizations, but we don't want to lose contact
with each other.  Therefore we have exchanged home mailing addresses.

(5)  Future actions are being postponed while we give the management
additional time to adopt and demonstrate greater concern for the
customers' wishes.


CONCLUSION
~~~~~~~~~~

Despite the recent degeneration of GEnie's Religion and Philosophy
Roundtable, I still highly recommend this network.  GEnie continues to
provide a considerable amount of information and intellectual freedom, at
an extremely low price.  It seems to be only one area of the system that
is poorly managed.  Most customers hope to convince the management to
bring the poorly managed area up to the excellent standards of the rest of
the GEnie network.

              Copyright 1992 by M. Lepore.  The author grants the
              public unrestricted permission to reproduce and
              distribute unmodified copies of this document, in
              electronic or printed form.  Modified or expurgated
              copies may not be distributed.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Subject: (no subject given)