Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!umeecs!zip!bagchi From: bagchi@eecs.umich.edu (Ranjan Bagchi) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Personal Privacy Violations Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 91 00:44:02 GMT References: <465.2786E0CF@Tqc.FidoNet.Org> <1991Jan06.180558.4405@looking.on.ca> <1991Jan06.230231.21840@hoss.unl.edu> Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu Organization: University of Michigan Lines: 54 In-Reply-To: greg@hoss.unl.edu's message of 6 Jan 91 23:02:31 GMT In article <1991Jan06.230231.21840@hoss.unl.edu> greg@hoss.unl.edu (Lig Lury Jr.) writes: >In <1991Jan06.180558.4405@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > >>This discussion has already been done extensively in comp.org.eff.talk. It >>does not belong in news.groups. > >Looks like a group I'll need to subscribe to if I am to hear more about >this. > I agree, in light of the existence of talk.libertarians... >>It is also futile, other than telling people to request deletion. You can't >>make what Lotus is doing illegal. If the information is public (not gained >>by breaking any confidences) and true, then they can publish it. Congress >>shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press and all that rot, >>remember? > >Hello, since when is information encoded electronically on a CD ROM >considered press? > Unfortunately, electronically encoded information really should be considered the same as any other kind of published media. What irking here is that we don't even have that, and things like the Neidorf case are needed to establish that electronic publishing is the same as any kind, and Lotus comes around and rocks the boat. On one hand, anything but the most specific law would be a setback to the "cause" as it were, because just as anti-trust laws were used to break up unions in the past, and anti-electronic publishing law could be turned on its head and used to hound "hackers". On the other hand, what Lotus has done strikes everybody as ethicly wrong -- its smacks of Big Brotherism, and all the privacy concerns that have been breing for the last several years. Myself I'd rather not have any laws made which boil down to the form "You can't..." We've got enough of those as it is. >>-- >>Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 >-- >/// ____ \\\ >| |/ / \ \| | greg@hoss.unl.edu >\\_( \==/ )_// Lig Lury Jr. > \__\\/ > >> -rj -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ranjan Bagchi - At Large. Well Kinda. | what kind of person bagchi@[eecs | would want to count syllables caen, | just to write haiku? math.lsa].umich.edu | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------