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From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,talk.rumors,news.admin,news.misc
Subject: Re: USENET site admin responsibilities (was: Re: Censorship is for Wusses)
Message-ID: <4043@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 4 Sep 89 20:21:29 GMT
References: <19438@gryphon.COM>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 84

In article <19438@gryphon.COM> gmadison@pnet02.gryphon.com (George Madison) writes:
>bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>
>>I consider free speech to take precedence over privileged communication.
>>
>>A person who is barred from the net for his opinions is no different
>>from a person who is barred from the newspapers for his opinions.
>
>Intriguing you should bring this up, since it really savages your so-called
>"logic".  A newspaper is under no obligation to print ANYTHING sent to them;
>good newspapers try to stimulate rational debated, and do their best to show
>all facets of an issue.

The news itself is not opinion.  I speak of columnists.  They are hired
to speak opinion.  Are they fired when they do?  Are you impressed with
the management of the paper when that happens?

>That DOESN'T mean that they have to print the nitwit ramblings of
>anyone with access to a typewriter or word processor.  If someone can't
>get their message across in the existing papers, they are perfectly
>FREE to start their own.

He did.  He wrote and posted to the net.

On the net, everyone is his own editor.  If a person is a little loose,
I am sure that the rest of us can inform him his editorial style is not
appreciated.

Imagine what the editor of the Boston Herald would say if you said
that.  Imagine asking the Mayor to prevent him from using the streets
of Boston to drive his delivery trucks.  Imagine Ray Flynn actually
listening to you.  Imagine the enourmously successful lawsuit the
Herald would bring.

>The First Amendment talks about SPEECH -- NOT the medium.

Then the medium is irrelevant, and granting him the excess capacity of
yours and then denying him that acces simply because you disagree with
him is a violation of his freedom to speak.

>It is just as much an infringement of basic rights to demand access to
>someone ELSE'S property for you to transmit your speech as you claim
>was committed against Mr. Pruss.

Which is not what was done.  What was done was to punish the person
for using previously granted access because of his speaking.

>Or perhaps you'd like someone to come drive you off your terminal to
>spout bigoted crap onto the Net while you're trying to meet a thesis
>(or other) deadline??

If this terminal were that important and dear to me, then I would allow
not one byte of network news to cross its interfaces.  Neither the
(alleged) "bigoted crap" nor the fluid eloquence of a cogent argument
nor the intermittent hilarity of rec.humor.funny.

Otherwise, as long as I don't need the keyboard, you can post that you
think my terminal is a portal to hell, that I am satan himself, and
that my family, my friends, my coworkers, and my university are the
monkeys that brought the AIDS virus from the laboratories in Africa
where we perfected it.  I would calmly watch you do it (whilst
finishing my lunch), then I would prove you wrong.  I would not kick
you out of the chair, unless I needed the terminal to continue my
work.  If I determined that your posting took up an otherwise necessary
portion of my disk, I would wipe it clean, even if it claimed that I
was twice the man Winston Churchill or Carl Yastrzemski ever were.

It's my computer, I may manage it as a computer.  I am not right to
exploit it's network connectivity as a psychological tool to coerce
your agreement with me.

>If you object, you're a hypocrite, since that's
>the exact sort of scenario you're advocating.

If I do not object, I am doomed to enslavement of my mind by the
tyrants who accept that they may tell me what not to say.  Go reread my
response to your last comment; which of us is the hypocrite?

				--Blair
				  "'I'm losing, and it's my ball, so
				   you're a cheater, so you can't play
				   with any of us any more...'
				   Six-year-olds understand this sort
				   of thing.  Why can't you?"