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From: gl8f@astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Subject: Re: More on birthday information. (RE: Re: BBS Birthdays.)
Message-ID: <1990Jan17.155704.3271@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 17 Jan 90 15:57:04 GMT
References: <277.25B28846@legion.fidonet.org>
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Reply-To: gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Lines: 48
Ireallyam: gl8f

In article <277.25B28846@legion.fidonet.org> Steven.Furber@legion.fidonet.org (Steven Furber) writes:
>
> > You don't need to know if I was born on May 1 to know I'm over 18.
>
>No, but you do need to know what year the person was born in. If someone
>calls up my BBS and leaves me their MM-DD-YY birthday instead of a simple age,
>my BBS will know how old they are 90 days from now, 120 days from now, or 
>whenever I want to look.

All you want to know is that I am over 18. 90 days from now I will still
be over 18. You don't need to even know my birth-year.

>Your choice to not call back BBSes that ask for ages is fine-- it's a choice. 
>You may have all the right answers, but your reasoning is on par with racism. 

No no no! When you're conducting a Usenet flamewar, you're supposed to
compare people with Hitler before you compare them to racists. Please
keep such comments to email, thank you.

>Have you ever stopped to think that some of us ask your age to protect you 
>from going to jail for posting pornography in an area where someone that is 
>not 18 or older can see it?

I have been a sysop. I am well aware of this.

>Quite often these little annoyances you have to suffer once when entering
>your information into a BBS database is for your own protection. I really
>don't care what the real name is, the phone number, or where people live.
>All I care about is that they have a name to be addressed by, and an age so
>I can protect my other users-- and myself.

As I said before, I am over 18. If you want something that will stand up
in a court of law, you'd better ask me to mail you a notarized letter
or something. By your own reasoning, once I'm over 18, you have no need
to know my exact age unless you have an under-30 area or something.

Which I bet you don't.

So let's stop assuming I don't know why you might want to know my age,
and start discussion what personal information is reasonable to ask.
Name, phone number, address? Not driver's license or social security
number. Personally, I think forcing someone to reveal their true name
and gender in public on the board can be a big minus for some people's
participation. We've heard talk of lack of responsibility among "anonymous"
users, how about lack of participation of "known" users?

Greg Lindahl
gl8f@virginia.edu                                  Astrophysicists for Choice.