From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: ONE YEAR AGO: New news censorship policy at Iowa State University
Keywords: bogus!
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:53:32 GMT

gclarkii@NeoSoft.com (Gary Clark II) writes:

[...]
>Just a short question.  Why don't the admins of the these sites just require a
>waiver from _ALL_ persons wanting access saying that they will not sue
>or otherwise bring to court for the contents of a piece of electronic media?
[...]

I don't believe that the supression at Iowa State University was
motivated by any well-founded fear lawsuits. Rather, I believe that
the supression was a reaction to a critical newpaper article in the
Daily Iowan. (The supression policy was announced about two weeks
after the article appeared.)

- Carl

ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
news/cafv01n42: Message-Id: <9300@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
=================
An article from the Computers and Academic Freedom News 01.42

Note 9 is about the Alt.sex flap at U of Iowa.

9.   "Today's Daily Iowan, Monday Nov. 25, 1991, has joined the fray.  On
the top of page 3A, on the left, is the headline 'UI Computer Files Contain
Pornography', followed by the same kind of incisive reporting of the alt.sex
newsgroups that we have been used to from the print media.  The article does
mention that the "pornography" is carried by USENET, but no mention is made 
of other material on USENET.  The article indicates that the U of I computers
contain "over 70,000 pages" of pornography, which is nonsense -- this 
is roughly the total number of postings that have been delivered to Iowa's 
machines over USENET, but nobody at the DI seems to have noticed that things
get deleted on a regular basis."

=================
news/cafv01n43
=================
The policy announcement and early reaction.

=================
news/cafv01n45: Message-Id: <1991Dec19.175822.21404@eff.org>
=================
An article from the Computers and Academic Freedom News 01.45

Notes 2-4 are about Iowa State University's restrictions on who can
see newsgroups such as alt.sex.

2. [Mike Godwin, staff counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:]
Although the policy's stated purpose is to avoid violations of law, in
fact, all (or almost all) of the material restricted is legal and
Constitutionally protected.

=================
=================

If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command
   gopher gopher.eff.org

These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4), and get file(s):

  pub/academic/news/cafv01n42
  pub/academic/news/cafv01n43
  pub/academic/news/cafv01n45

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/news cafv01n42
send acad-freedom/news cafv01n43
send acad-freedom/news cafv01n45

-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me.
 = kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
Xref: sparky comp.org.eff.talk:7660 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:3747 comp.security.misc:2241