HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: silverm@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Jeff Silverman)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Display of nudes
Date: 13 Oct 92 04:23:21 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services, Seattle

I am the step parent of 2 adolescents.  Sometimes, the boys behave like
adolescent jerks.  Sometimes, you have to tell the adolescent jerks that they
are behaving like adolescent jerks.

I suspect, based on my own remembereances of adolscence, that I did some
pretty dumb things.  Sometimes, I figured out for myself that what I did was
dumb, and sometimes, somebody helped me figure it out.

For example, the TECO command JEFF SILVERMAN will cause a DECsystem-10
to crash.  The first time I did it, it was completely unexpected.  The fifth
time I did it, it was a dumb thing to do.  People began to tell me that 
this was a dumb thing to do.  I haven't done it since (hopefully, somebody
fixed that bug).

Jeff Silverman, Boeing Commercial Airplane.

Xref: sparky comp.admin.policy:1258 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:3104
From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: Princeton policy on From lines
Date: 7 Oct 92 04:59:56 GMT
Followup-To: comp.admin.policy
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <RSM.92Oct6163504@coral.math.arizona.edu> rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) writes:
|I just reviewed Princeton's "1992-1993 Guidelines for Use of Campus and
|Network Computing Resources", and had to chuckle at the following sentence:

|	Attempts to alter the "From" line or
|	other attribution of origin in electronic mail,
|	messages, or postings, will be considered
|	transgressions of University rules.

|I think the authors of the Guidelines meant to refer to _obfuscatory_ or
|_deceptive_ alterations of the From: line, not just any alteration!

|My personal .emacs file, a copy of which is on every machine I have an
|account on, contains the following lines:

|	 (setq gnus-user-login-name "rsm"
|	       gnus-use-generic-from "math.arizona.edu")

|For those who don't use the GNUS news reading & posting package, what these
|lines do is simple.  They set up a fixed From: line,

|	From: rsm@math.arizona.edu

|which will always appear on my postings.  No matter which NNTP server
|I post articles to (I have access to several), or what machine I post
|articles from.

|Apparently straightforward standardizations of this sort violate the
|Princeton Guidelines!  And what about all the people who append funny
|parenthetical comments to their From: lines?  Princeton sysadmins,
|please note.

What's even more amusing is that Princeton (perhaps only some machines,
perhaps having changed recently) was/were generating non RFC compliant
From: lines as well.  Namely, they were generating a bang address
(princeton!user or suchlike) instead of an "at" (eg: user@princeton.edu
or suchlike).

B news has this unfortunate tendency to discard From: lines that
look like this.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
Psroff 3.0 info: psroff-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
Ferret list: ferret-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: gt1111a@prism.gatech.EDU (Vincent Fox)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Legal/policy issues concerning news
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:13:01 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In <2782@uswnvg.uswnvg.com> gbarnet@uswnvg.com (Gary Barnette) writes:
]Issue 1:
]Does anyone know if any company has been sued over
]the contents of news articles? Some people here have
]a concern about the sexist and racist material found
]in some news groups. So concerned that all but comp.*,
]gnu.*, and news.* have been turned off until there is
]a review by our legal department.

Sounds like you have a deeper problem like fear of lawyers.
This is a common fear though and is easily worked through, just
beat them with baseball bats. After you've gone through ten or
twenty, sure you'll be tired, but it'll be a good kind of tired :-)

]Issue 2:

]Our company has a policy for plurlism and against racism and sexism. 
]Some people think that to allow sexist and racist news articles
]of this type on our systems is therefore against company policy
]and should not be allowed. Has anyone else out there run into
]the append contradiction?

News sites are always free to carry what they want. The worst stuff
though is generally in the alt groups, so a common fraidy-cat solution
is just not to carry alt's. This fear of someone being offended is 
often greatly exaggerated though. Everyone is certain that someone at
their organization would surely be offended, but as it turns out
usually no one is.  I see no contradictions really. I may be against
bigotry and want to throttle people who are bigots. But reading one of those
goofy news postings from someone who "knows" the Holocaust was a lie
doesn't offend me necessarily. It certainly doesn't make me mad at
the news guy for making it possible to read such things. 

]Please direct you opinions/answers to the general question.
]I am NOT for censorship of any kind. I'm just trying to learn 
]what others have done so that I may be better informed to deal with
]the problem. And it is a problem. We stand a chance of loosing
]our entire news feed!

Very sad. This is the point where I would be printing up resumes on the
company laser printer. USENET is not a mere perk, it's a condition
of employment. 

What little I have seen of legal opinion of it is that the original
author may be liable for content, but NOT the distribution system.
We can't sue the phone company for obscene phone calls, or the US 
Postal Service for objectionable mail. You should really talk
to the guys on comp.org.eff.talk about this sort of thing. I don't
really grok where the problem lies myself. Maybe in a lack of understanding
by people who haven't really read news much yet?

-- 
The War on Drugs is just part of the War on the US Constitution.
From: sullivan@cs.rose-hulman.edu (Fred Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Display of nudes
Date: 9 Oct 92 17:14:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: liz.SULLIVAN.92Oct9101410
Distribution: world
Organization: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
NNTP-Posting-Host: liz.cs.rose-hulman.edu
In-reply-to: kadie@eff.org's message of Fri, 9 Oct 1992 01:00:21 GMT


About a year ago, immediately after we installed a lab of color
workstations, a number of students began displaying pictures of women in
various stages of dress or undress.  The computer science faculty discussed
the situation (this is a departmental laboratory) and decided to follow, at
least for the time being, the following policy:

We do not dictate what students may or may not display on their computer
screens.  We do, however, feel free to exercise our own rights to free
speech and tell students precisely what we think of their actions.

I am personally not comfortable with attempting to set rules on this
subject.  Would we, for example, ban the display of the image of a painting
of a nude which might appear in any art gallery?  Probably not.  Many of the
images being displayed on screens in our lab were very far from art (in my
opinion), but where do you draw the line (what is the objective standard)?
Of course, this is a very difficult and probably unanswerable question.

On the other hand, I know it when I see it.  Therefore I see no problem at
all with calling a student in and telling him the following (I say him,
because my institution does not currently admit women at the undergraduate
level -- this will change in 2 years, and so far I have not felt the need
to have a conversation of this type with a female graduate student or
faculty member):

1.  Our department has no policy against display of the kind of material in
question.
2.  I am not going to tell him that he has to remove the pictures.
3.  My personal opinion is that he is acting like a adolescent jerk.
4.  He should spend some time thinking about the effect the material being
displayed might have on:
	parents of prospective students who are visiting the campus,
	female staff and faculty members who might feel that they are being
sexually harassed.
5.  He should reflect on the fact that soon he will graduate and find
himself working with, and quite possible for women, and that perhaps he
should review his attitudes towards women, if for no other reason, than out
of self interest.

A little over a year ago, I had this conversation with 4 students, and I
have not seen nudes displayed in our lab since that time.

Now you can say that although I explicitly told the students they were under
no compulsion, there was nevertheless coercion on my part.  That is no doubt
true.  However, my (admittedly limited) experience indicates that students
react much better to being told to grow up and begin to adopt a professional
attitude than they do to being told to remove pictures of nudes.

--
Fred Sullivan                           6060 Wabash Avenue
Computer Science Department             Terre Haute, IN  47803
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology     sullivan@cs.rose-hulman.edu
From: betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Enforcement, Selection, and on-the-fly policy making
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:25:03 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Boston


  There's another thing about these threads that is bothering me; the
implication that policies can't be made or modified on the fly, that
only written-in-stone policies are fair.
  I am a manager. I make policy decisions all the time, often standing
on one foot. This is what I get paid to do; someone has to make
decisions. Trying to write every small policy down can lead to the
situation where you have rule books which are hundreds of pages long
and where even the most trivial situations are covered by masses of
rules. 
  Keeping rules simple has the consequence that interpretation of the
rules falls to the management more frequently. A rule of "no
interfering with other users" leaves room for interpretation;
itemizing possible ways of interference could run into the dozens of
pages. 
  Take this plan thing. Right now we have no written rule on .plan
files, and an unwritten policy that they not be obscene and that they
not interfere with others. If we itemized this, we could run on for
pages and pages about flow control, ascii sequences, buffer overflow,
obscenity trials...and end up with a much less comfortable situation
where instead of a few extreme cases, every user was under scrutiny.
It might be "fair" in the sense that BANNING .plan files would apply
equally to all users. It might be enforceable, if I said "plan files
must contain only a subset of the following categories of information
appropriate to a telephone service....")
  But Yecccch! Who wants to live with that many rules? As it is, we've
asked three students in two years to change their .plan files, out of
about 500. Everyone is happy (at our site anyway; not everyone on the
net is pleased that we are happy.) I don't have tenure; if the
university is unhappy with my management style they could ask me to
modify it and/or they could fire me and replace me with someone else. 
  Meanwhile, I don't think we are confusing management with
"benevolent dictatorship."
--
System Administrator                  Internet: betsys@cs.umb.edu
MACS Dept, UMass/Boston               BITNET:ESCHWARTZ%UMBSKY.DNET@NS.UMB.EDU
100 Morrissy Blvd                     Staccato signals
Boston, MA 02125-3393                      of constant information....
Xref: sparky comp.admin.policy:1262 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:3109
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: Princeton policy on From lines
Date: 7 Oct 92 14:46:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: ms.1992Oct7.104657.4432
    <1992Oct7.035444.8042@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) writes:
>>I just reviewed Princeton's "1992-1993 Guidelines for Use of Campus and
>>Network Computing Resources", and had to chuckle at the following sentence:
>>
>>	Attempts to alter the "From" line or
>>	other attribution of origin in electronic mail,
>>	messages, or postings, will be considered
>>	transgressions of University rules.
>
>>My personal .emacs file, a copy of which is on every machine I have an
>>account on, contains the following lines:
>>
>>	 (setq gnus-user-login-name "rsm"
>>	       gnus-use-generic-from "math.arizona.edu")
>
>I think, under a very strict interpretation of those rules, you are not
>altering the "From:" line at all - you are creating it before it otherwise
>exists.

Hmmmm....if I was writing that particular policy, I'd say something like:

	The "From" line of electronic mail, messages, and postings
	must include the following information:

		Your name (the name under which your access has been granted)
		A valid electronic reply address for you

	While you may certainly *add* information to the From line, it 
	MUST contain YOUR valid name/address information.  Deceptive or
	evasive modification of this information is a violation of this
	policy.

With something like this, you could take care of forgers and black-holers 
(those who set From lines to "/dev/null@princeton.edu" or whatever, to 
avoid replies/accountability), while regular folks could still inject a bit
of humor/sarcasm/wit into the otherwise boring header lines......

--Wes

-- 
MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
morgan@ms.uky.edu   | Engineering  Computing |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
morgan@engr.uky.edu | University of Kentucky | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
  Mailing list for AT&T StarServer S/E  - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
From: bud@mtek.com (Bud Hovell)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Banned Computer Material 1992
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:37:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: mtek.1992Oct16.153729.11687
Reply-To: bud@mtek.com
Organization: MTEK International, Inc.


[ This came to me as email from Dave Hayes <dave@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>,
and since he invites me to reply in the forum of my choice, I'll
post his original message ahead of my reply. ]

------------------ cut ------------------------- cut --------------------

In comp.admin.policy you write:
>Also, I frankly have little patience for dealing with what some snot-
>nosed teenager whose parents have come up with tuition may have to say
>on the subject, based solely upon his belief that one slow reading of
>the Bill of Rights entitles him to thus draw sweeping conclusions
>about what *must* have been in the minds of the Founding Fathers with
>regard to his personal login privileges.

I guess literacy with the written word does not imply sensitivity
to the concerns of other humans, does it? Sometimes these "snot-nosed
teens" have very interesting and enlightening things to say. (Do I 
detect a chip...?)

It is precisely this worldview that compells me to side with Carl
and those fighting for academic freedom. Tactics do not make
any impression upon me (as I said in the post that you'll probably 
miss) other than the strategic mindset of the tactician. 

As a sys admin of 10+ years, I have become increasingly aware that
there is a marked correlation betwen the amount of experience of a
sys admin and the tolerance and understanding with respect to policy 
that is presented. Usually the elder sys admins are much more patient
and thus have a lot more control over their network as a result.

>I'll also caution any other posters that we expire news after only
>three days (the reality of limited disc-space), and I will probably
>miss postings that show up here before next Sunday.

That's exactly why I mailed this to you. Feel free to respond in any forum
you deem appropriate. 
-- 
Dave Hayes - Network & Communications Engineering - JPL / NASA - Pasadena CA
dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov       dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov         ...usc!elroy!dxh

Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
From: S_TITZ@iravcl.ira.uka.de (Olaf Titz)
Subject: Re: Enforcement, Selection, and on-the-fly policy making
Organization: Fachschaft Informatik, Uni Karlsruhe
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 14:09:45 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.23

In <BETSYS.92Oct8122503@ra.cs.umb.edu> betsys@cs.umb.edu writes:

>    There's another thing about these threads that is bothering me; the
>  implication that policies can't be made or modified on the fly, that
>  only written-in-stone policies are fair.

I agree, but you have to consider the limits of on-the-fly decisions,
however. I assume you would not justify the ad-hoc taking out of
entire services with this reason. (I suspect you wouldn't *do* that in
the first place.)

>...
>    Keeping rules simple has the consequence that interpretation of the
>  rules falls to the management more frequently. A rule of "no
>  interfering with other users" leaves room for interpretation;

It even leaves room for discussion between managers and users...

>...
>    But Yecccch! Who wants to live with that many rules? As it is, we've
>  asked three students in two years to change their .plan files, out of
>  about 500. Everyone is happy (at our site anyway; not everyone on the

And you have settled with them? You seem to have exactly the thing
many sites lack most: a good climate of the management-user
relationship.

>...
>    Meanwhile, I don't think we are confusing management with
>  "benevolent dictatorship."

Makes me happy to read that there are still people that reasonable. I
fully agree.

MfG,
        Olaf
-- 
    o     Olaf Titz - comp.sc.student - univ of karlsruhe - germany
 _ /<_    s_titz@iravcl.ira.uka.de - uknf@dkauni2.bitnet - praetorius@irc
(_)>(_)   +49-721-60439 - did i forget something?
He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. - Shakespeare, Caesar
From: phardie@nastar.uucp (Pete Hardie)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Display of nudes
Date: 15 Oct 92 14:19:17 GMT
Organization: Digital Transmission Systems, Duluth, GA.

In article <10633@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> gjn@cs.uq.oz.au writes:
>I personally don't view such pictures for various reasons, and can see why
>others would be offended by the act.

I cannot see how others can be offended by *my* viewing of anything.  If *they*
view it, *they* might be offended, which is their privilege.

>All I need to do is tell someone that such and such a gif is a not a good one
>to be stored, because if it offends someone, they would complain, and the
>management would ask for all gifs to be removed (they don't view them - and
>we are always pushed for disk space).

So, if I understand you, the mere presence of a GIF of nude people is de facto
offensive, on the systems you administer?

>As for people having gifs in their home directories, when the disk get full
>I go "find(1)ing" for anything that resembles core files, databases and gifs
>(among other things). If I find gifs I tell them to put them in the system
>area (subject to my opinion of whether they may be offensive) or offline them.

This seems more reasonable - removal of large files based solely on utility
and size.  I do question the (legalistic) wisdom of using your opinion as
the criterion of offensiveness - someone else might be very bluenosed and
take offense at a Sports Illustrated GIF.

Also, if there is NOT a disk space shortage, do users get to keep any GIFs
they desire in their local directories?

-- 
Pete Hardie:  phardie@nastar  (voice) (404) 497-0101
Digital Transmission Systems, Inc., Duluth GA
Member, DTS Dart Team           |  cat * | egrep -v "signature virus|infection" 
Position:  Goalie               |
From: dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Legal/policy issues concerning news
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:33:10 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Columbia University, Dept. of Biological Sciences.

In article <2782@uswnvg.uswnvg.com> gbarnet@uswnvg.com (Gary Barnette) writes:
>
[asking about legal problems with offensive sexist and racist material
in news]

>Our company has a policy for plurlism and against racism and sexism. 
>Some people think that to allow sexist and racist news articles
>of this type on our systems is therefore against company policy
>and should not be allowed. Has anyone else out there run into
>the append contradiction?
>
[...]

>I am NOT for censorship of any kind. I'm just trying to learn 
>what others have done so that I may be better informed to deal with
>the problem.

   I think that if you are considering banning an entire method of
communication because someone _may_ be offended by some small individual
unit, then you have worse problems than racism and sexism.
  
   Given that your company is a private organization, and not an academic
institution, you are free to do what you will without complaint from
outsiders. There isn't a free speech issue or an academic freedom issue.

   I can't imagine any legal problems comming from getting news. Certainly
it would be absurd to suggest that sexist remarks in alt.feminism could
create a hostile work environment, or some such thing.

   From your article, you suggest that there has already been complaints.
What are they about? What groups in particular?

   Personally, I will look for news access as a perk in whatever jobs I 
try to get. And I certainly wouldn't want the 'company' to go out of it's
way to protect me from such evils as sexism or free expression.

DanZ

-- 
    "I think it is a little premature to attribute the failures of American
     foriegn policy to Carl Kadie."
                                                     -Mike Godwin
This article for entertainment purposes only.
From: johnboyd@ocdis01.UUCP (John Boyd)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: OpScan sheet - sale to students
Keywords: optical scanning sale
Date: 6 Oct 92 21:27:04 GMT
Organization: Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma

In article <Oct.5.18.57.15.1992.8484@athos.rutgers.edu> pirmann@athos.rutgers.edu (David Pirmann) writes:
>
>Are you kidding me?  Make the students PAY to take their exams?

A number of the universities/junior colleges around here have been doing
this for some time, and the trend appears to be continuing.  It seems the
only thing higher about the education is the price...
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy