Organization: Bar-Ilan University Computing Center, Israel
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 09:35:31 IST
From: Hank Nussbacher <HANK@BARILVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.admin.policy,alt.censorship,soc.college
Subject: Re: Banned Computer Material 1992

I have batched 3 separate answers together...

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>From: raan@techunix.technion.ac.il (Ran Ever-Hadani)
>universal principal.  When Jews were not allowed to leave the Soviet
>Union, many Americans stood with us, demanding that gates of the
>Soviet Union be opened, even though the Bill of Right was never
>accepted by the Soviet Union.  I am pretty sure that you would not accuse
>those Americans of genocentricism.

I think comparing sitting in a work camp in the Gulag for 10 years
due to Communist supression of free speech and someone having their
copy of IRC erased from a university computer is a *very* wrong
thing to do.  One diminishes the power of a good law such as Free
Speech by applying it to every nook and cranny of life including
running computer  programs.  When the law will truly be needed, the
masses (the silent majority) will just scoff at it since its use has
been abused so often in the past.

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>From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
>
>How is a handgun like speech concerning "sex/porn/necrophilia"?

My right to bare arms is as much a right according to US law as
is free speech.

>
>How is running a program the same as speech?

My point exactly.  EFF is the one that batched together censorship
of sexual material (free speech) along with censorship of programs
on certain systems.  Keep listing those that censor various sexual
newsgroups.  But it is the perogative of every computer center to
decide what programs are or are not allowed to run on their system.

>
>Hank, you imply here that freedom of speech is solely an American concern.
>But freedom of speech has its advocates in every one of the countries
>mentioned here. Want proof? Try reading INDEX ON CENSORSHIP (a British
>publication).

There is a huge difference between having a law on the books and having
advocates in every country.

Let us turn the discussion the other way.  In Germany as well as in
Israel there are laws about the Right to Privacy.  When attempting
to establish an X.500 database here, we were told by the government
that according to law, we need a written, signed (non-electronic)
approval from each person who will be included in such a database.
There are other European countries who require consent also but
will accept it in electronic form.  This Law is based on the prinicple
that everyone has a right to privacy and that their personal information
should not end up in some public database.

But in the USA, many universities have placed their telephone books
online and have automatically created X.500 databases of their
faculty and students.  According to *our* law (and the right to
privacy has advocates in every country also) - you are in violation
of that basic tenet.  How would it look if I came out with a list of
places that created X.500 databases without user consent that
infringed on peoples human right to privacy?  Pretty stupid.

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>From: acbonin@unix.amherst.edu (Adam Bonin)
>There are certain things, however, which are not "definitions of how the world
>should work" but natural rights which people have, simply by being persons,
>regardless of the culture in which they live.  Would you deny, for example
>the necessary truth of either of the following statements to hold across all
>cultures:
>1. Persons should not be held blameworthy or responsible for acts they were
>powerless to affect.
>2. It is wrong to lay blame and punishment before making a reasoned
>determination between those persons innocent and those guilty.

Right.  But is a person innocent until proven guilty or guilty until
proven innocent?  Careful.  The answer will vary depending on which
country you are in.

>Even were it not codified into the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.N. Declaration
>of Human Rights, I would still hold that the right to free expression is a
>similar natural right of man, that we have the right to our own opinions
>by being rational beings capable of reason.

What about a person's right to privacy?  Wouldn't you consider this
a natural right of all people throughout the world?  As the above
example shows, many sites on the Internet have trampled on that
right yet no one is making lists of them.

>Furthermore, the presence of disagreement in other cultures towards these
>truths certainly does not prove that there is no truth, no right and wrong
>in this case.  The rightness and wrongness of certain principles are not
>dependent on the will of the majority, but instead rest in the nature of man.

Wrong.  It rests with the majority of each country.  If Ireland wishes
to ban abortion because the majority of the people living there wish it
to be so, even though the majority of the people in the world are in
favor of abortion, that is their *right*.  There is no such thing as
a universal truth.  The nature of man varies from place to place from
continent to continent.  In one culture one is sad when a loved one
dies while in another they are happy (because the person is now
going to heaven).  The Maoris of New Zealand stick their tongues
out to greet one another - an act any place else in the world that
is not a sign of greeting.

Just to throw some more examples out, elemetary school starts in
September, right?  Pretty basic.  In Japan it starts in April,
in Brazil in either February or March, in Thailand in May.

I see that the people who use networks are mainly from "Western"
cultures assuming that everyone in the world follows rules of
free speech, fair play, etc.  I also notice that the level of
awareness among this same group, of other cultures is fairly low.
[Who expects someone in the sciences to major in sociology or
anthropology or political science?]

The ideas of free speech and rights to privacy are foreign to certain
cultures and we must respect that, just as we are not expected to
believe that committing suicide with a bomb strapped to your chest is
the best way to get into heaven.  They have their culture and we have
our culture.  Neither is right or wrong.  Each is right in its own
country or segment of population.

Hank Nussbacher
Israel
Xref: sparky alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:2953 comp.org.eff.talk:6118 comp.admin.policy:1132 alt.censorship:7763 soc.college:4059