Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!looking!brad From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Censorship on the USENET Message-ID: <1990Oct22.023319.9342@looking.on.ca> Date: 22 Oct 90 02:33:19 GMT References: <1990Oct21.201125.11302@ddsw1.MCS.COM> Distribution: comp Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 31 "Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own a press." This is how it has always been, and to be honest, I doubt that computer networking will change the basic principle much. It does, however, change the ground rules, since it makes ownership of a "press" ridiculously cheap. In fact, within a few years, every educated person will own something that assures communications with large groups of people. This will make the the above principle moot. In the meantime, it is true, and as such, large multi-user sites have full rights to control what is on their machines. ...... But now we get to the "however." However, I think that Universities are a very special case. The traditional role of Universities has been the fostering of communication. Universities are expected to be more tolerant of unusual speech that constitutions require governments to be. They are expected to not just tolerate, but even facilitate the communication of all sorts of ideas, from the astute to the repugnant. Libraries have the same tradition. They can't stock all books, but they take a solid stand of not removing books for moralist reasons. So by tradition, Univs. should not run around banning things, even when it is their right to do so. As long as the cost is not too hard to bear, they should do the opposite. It is their heritage. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473