From: ptrei@bistromath.mitre.org (Peter Trei)
Subject: Re: Suggestions Wanted: Public Domain Erotica/Censored Material for Transcribing
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 17:12:53 GMT

In article <BvtEAv.Fo1@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>noring@netcom.com (Jon Noring) wrote in alt.censorship:

[...wants ideas on what "sensitive" or "repeatedly censored" documents
it would be nice to have online.]

>- Masonic handbooks?  These are never meant to leave the order: when a Mason
>  dies, a brother comes round to collect his manuals.  But there must be
>  stray copies around somewhere.  Probably bum-numbingly dull.

    Jack, I really don't know why you have this bee in your bonnet
about the Masons. We feel that some of the things we teach work best
if presented in a certain sequence and manner. Therefore we do our
best to keep some things from the currently uninitiated. (BTW, even if
you did get you're hands on one, the important stuff is never written
down).

>- Military training manuals?  Civilians are at least strongly discouraged
>  from owning some of these in the UK (I'm not sure of the exact legal
>  position).

    Clearly, anything which contains classified information is
off-limits. Here in the US, pretty much anything else is available - I
bought my "Improvised Munitions Handbook" at the local Army Surplus
store.

>- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the satirical text it was ripped
>  off from?

     Whats the problem? When I wanted a copy, I walked into Wordsworth
(high-end bookstore near Harvard), and ordered one. Got some funny
looks, but no one tried to stop me. To buy one off a shelf, I'd have
probably had to go to an ultra-right wing fringe bookstore, and I
didn't want to give *them* my money.

>More prosaically, what the conspiracist really needs is stuff like
>corporate and political party accounts, lists of company directors,
>editorial boards of political magazines, dates of meetings, addresses of
>cover organizations... 
>--  Jack Campin

     Jack is missing the thrust of Jon's query here. Jack wants to get
his hands on data which was never intended to be public, while Jon is
asking for books which the authors certainly wanted to be spread as
widely as possible.

     The is the general problem of private documents vs public
documents. What's a private document? I don't know for sure, but
surely these qualify:

 * MI5's list of British undercover agents in Iraq. 
 * Company X's pricing plans for the next year.
 * A barrister's notes on his defense strategy in an upcoming case.
 * Police files relating to an ongoing investigation.
 * Those dauguerrotypes Albert took of Victoria on their wedding night. :-)

    None of these documents has been registered for copyright. Yet,
there are good reasons (even if only of taste :-) why they should not
become public knowledge, at least not for a very long time.

    Another issue: How we should deal with net-access to documents
which are legal in one place, but not in another. Suppose you scanned
in "Mein Kampf", and placed it on an anonymous ftp site? This book is
illegal in Germany.

     I suspect that unwillingness to deal with this problem is a part
of Gutenbergs reluctance to deal with "controversial" material.


						Peter Trei 
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy