Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!intercon!news
From: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: NEW FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE COMPUTER-BASED COMMUNICATIONS POLICIES
Message-ID: <269CB9F4.4E05@intercon.com>
Date: 12 Jul 90 17:57:08 GMT
References: <5122@fernwood.mpk.ca.us> <1421@pta.oz.au>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA
Lines: 41

In article <1421@pta.oz.au>, major@pta.oz.au (Major) writes:
> geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us (Geoff Goodfellow) writes:
> 
> >[Mitch Kapor asked me to post the following]
> >NEW FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE COMPUTER-BASED COMMUNICATIONS
> >POLICIES
> 
> If Mitch is so concerned to protect freedom of 'communication in
> the electronic age' poerhaps he could start by pressing on his
> company (Lotus) to stop sueing enveryone who thinks that 'P' is
> a good command for 'Print you spreadsheet'.
> 
> The man's hypocracy is astounding!
> 
> Major
> major@pta.oz.au

Interesting you should mention that.  He made mention of that very thing
at the press conference I attended in Washington.  I don't have the
exact quote but, he basically said that he found it interesting that some
people in the industry think that certain litigation is good until it gets
turned against them or someone they "like".  It seems that when someone whom
we don't like (like Hackers or some company we don't like) is being sued
it is ok, and nobody stops to think of what effect this is going to have
on law in general.  His example being that in general people in the industry
felt that Paperback Software getting sued by Lotus was good, and didn't bother
to help Paperback out.  Now that Borland is getting sued they feel that this
is bad, but now Lotus has 200 pages of court opinion supporting them, which
makes their case much stronger.  His idea, it seems, is to help out those
cases where there is a "wrong" being commited that has far ranging implications.
Hence the help to the so called Hackers.  He made special mention that EFF
is not a "Hacker Defense Fund" but rather putting their money up to help
out those cases where obvious wrong is being done, such as the SS abuse of
the constitutional rights of Steve Jackson in their search of Steve Jackson
Games.

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