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From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Freedom of speech is NOT freedom of net.
Message-ID: <151@looking.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-May-84 00:00:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: looking.151
Posted: Thu May 31 00:00:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Jun-84 11:42:35 EDT
References: <2614@ecsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont
Lines: 28

Around here, I'm known as staunchly anti-censorship and pro-freedom
of speech.  But this has nothing to do with freedom of the net.

The unc case aside, how would you feel if other people used YOUR money to
spread views you don't like.  Everybody should be able to say whatever they
like, but not with other people's money.   If somebody came up to you and
said, "excuse me sir, we would like to use your computer to make known the
Moral Majority's fight for censorship of wicked things."  Can anybody say
you don't have the right to refuse if you want to?

Now the case gets a little more complex in the case of a publicly funded
system.  But consider a government funded TV station like PBS, the CBC or
the BBC.  The employees are not allowed to just go on the air and say
whatever they like at their own discretion, are they?  Now opposing views
are allowed equal time, of course, but no more than that.  We can certainly
see that Tim took more than his fair share of the time, even with wide
margins of limits.

Now the unc case is not black and white, and we don't know any of the facts
except one report from an obviously biased source.  But can anybody say there
is an absolute right to the net?  I think not.  In fact, if we want the net
to stay alive, we have to watch out.  Already sites are pulling out due to
the volume of crap.  As soon as one big one does, that will shift the load
on to some others, eventually forcing them to go, and so on and so on.
 == one dead net.

-- 
	Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 886-7304