From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Deletions
Date: 8 Apr 92 00:50:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: macc.1992Apr8.005039.3234
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <56923@cup.portal.com> Minotaur@cup.portal.com
(Frank Swilling) writes:

>In article 1265.3.15806.3 Re: Deletions
>4/4/92 14:54 79/3054 anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) sez:

>>In article <56878@cup.portal.com> Minotaur@cup.portal.com
>>(Frank Swilling) writes:

>>>Ordinarily I am not a fan of censorship, 

>>Hold that thought ...

>>>but there are exceptions.

>>...  there shouldn't be, otherwise you can't be free and
>>neither can I.

Wait a minute!  You do *not* address my point here.  The
censorship you propose undermines your freedom and mine.
Talk about that.  (But, having the floor, I'll take an
extra turn. :-)

>Still, we (those of us who aren't in jail or mental
>institutions) live in blissful harmony with exceptions to
>the "No Censorship" rule, without which our lives would be
>utter chaos and our society would cease to function.  If you
>doubt this,

We are not talking about individual choices, I believe; we
are talking about public policies.  The censorship you
proposed is a public act, with broad effects for all; it
isn't just individual choice.  Nor are most of the examples
you cite (by your own admission) particularly pertinent.
It's possible to excite great public outcry in a public
situation in such a way as to lead to immediate public
reaction to prevent certain actions (not speech, notice), in
these two examples:

>Go yell "fire" in a crowded theatre.

>March into a synagogue and start saving sinners in the name
>of Christ.

But here ...

>Go to alt.politics and let everyone know how much you
>despise the President, and how you dream of putting a .357
>Magnum up to his head and pulling the trigger.

in this one, I think such speech should be protected, but I
think it's against the law to threaten the life of the US
President.  But apart from flaming you (or turning you in to
the FBI, if it is a crime), the denizens of alt.politics
cannot curtail your speech legally.  Apart from the nature
of the "offense," this doesn't seem very different from the
one we're discussing about soc.motss.

>Go display a collection of photographs of women and children
>being tortured for someone's sexual pleasure.

Not very pertinent, I think.

>OK, these are theatrical examples, and pretty far afield
>from wanting to boot someone out of soc.motss for bad
>manners,

I didn't think we were talking about manners, really.  If we
used that as a criterion of being allowed to post, we'd have
very little to read.  (Some people might like that, I
suppose.  :-)

>but they are real and I will be surprised if you don't agree
>that we *all* *do* willingly participate in some forms of
>censorship.

As individuals, I think you're unquestionably right.  But
why I'm on your case here is that your private desire is
leading you to compromise public policies, and the examples
you adduce suggest that you're not really thinking very much
about these issues.  Well, I especially don't want to be
deprived of my freedoms by people who haven't *really*
thought about it!

>To bring the issue back into focus for purposes of our
>discussion, lets take a more relevant example of censorship:
>local BBS's.

This is massively unparallel, I think.

>Without exception, every special interest BBS I have ever
>dialed up has logged me on with a list of rules and
>regulations that I must agree to follow, with the threat of
>being booted off the BBS clearly spelled out if I break
>these rules.

Enforcement of rules in a very small domain with a
completely unambiguous and clear aspect of private ownership
(BBSs) and a possibly valid contract is one thing; Usenet
and the public or quasi-public interconnected networks
accessed by people who have agreed in writing to absolutely
nothing, about whom in many cases there *are* no rules,
certainly not clear and unambiguous ones.  So all that is
quite another thing.

>I have seen it happen that someone *did* break the rules of
>a BBS, and that someone *did* get booted off the BBS, to the
>cheers of the assembled membership.

Well, people do get booted off Usenet, too.  I don't know if
you remember a CS student at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison who posted really obnoxious remarks in
soc.motss.  His account was jerked by the department (he
*was* a somewhat deranged person, I think), but restored the
very next day (though he didn't use it) by the higher
administration because no due process had been followed, and
because the ACLU would almost certainly enter the case to
defend his freedom.  I had a small role, not in censoring
the student, but in getting him some support for his human
needs.

>So how is soc.motss different?

I think you should be able to answer that question very
easily.  This is obviously quite different.  There is no
enforcement of any meaningful kind (my claim is there
shouldn't be any formal rules).  You can enforce a contract,
but in our case there *is* no contract.  There *are* no
rules; what we are pleased to call our charter is a
tradition, but it has no legal standing of any kind.  We
might verbally belabor the miscreants (but see another
posting about that, soon to follow) with our "get thee gone,
jackass" until hell freezes over, but in fact there are *no*
enforceable rules that apply to our case.  The closest thing
we have to rules (network appropriate use policies) are
largely unenforceable -- certainly there is no due process
in place absent *very* clear violations tanatamount to
crime, commercialization, or incitement to riot.

>Except for the fact that there isn't a designated moderator
>for our group, we function the same as any other BBS.

Wrong, for the reasons adduced above.

>We have rules that we expect the membership to follow.

Expecting has almost no force other than gentility and a
tone of vague moral superiority.

>We have subjects that are important to us, and subjects that
>are against the rules to mention.

This is a fiction, start to finish.

>All that we *don't* seem to have is a method for enforcing
>those rules when necessary.

Nor can we have such a method.  If we had one (in essence,
I think that's what you proposed), I would resist.

>>Your thinking is an even greater threat to us than "Dark Knight"
>>or "Artimus."

>Please tell me why you believe this is true.

Understand that in an important sense, it's not strictly
personal, Frank.  You're a mature man (you've told us so),
and I'm sure not everyone would agree with me on this, but I
think Artimus is an isolated lunatic, of reasonable
intelligence but psychopathically obsessed.  Something of
that sort might be said of the asterisked gang or to our
most recent monument to obsessive neurosis, ***.  But these
are separate, private, and individual people.  Your policy
affects everyone -- even those who might happen to agree
with you (hardly a null set, I'm sure).  To solve an
unsolvable problem, you propose limiting access and
expression to an "approved" subset of the population.  Not
only can't it work -- that alone should be enough -- but if
by chance it *could* work, then things would be even worse,
because free expression of *unapproved* views is *essential*
for a free people.  That some people use the freedom so
frivolously, or obsessively, or ignorantly is simply not
pertinent.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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