Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!mcnc!unc!tim From: tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney) Newsgroups: net.general Subject: Censorship: A Case History (part 4, 10 Feb 84 to 21 Feb 84) Message-ID: <7201@unc.UUCP> Date: Mon, 7-May-84 23:00:56 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.7201 Posted: Mon May 7 23:00:56 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 9-May-84 01:27:50 EDT Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill Lines: 355 From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 From: laura@utzoo Date: Fri, 10 Feb 84 02:25:29 est From: ulysses!allegra!utzoo!laura Message-Id: <8402100725.AA08371@ulysses.UUCP> Received: by ulysses.UUCP (4.12/3.7) id AA08371; Fri, 10 Feb 84 02:25:29 est To: allegra!ulysses!unc!tim Subject: no account on utcsstat Via: ulysses!allegra; 10 Feb 84 2:29-EDT Status: RO the real reason came down from management I offended somebody with an article in net.religion. Small World. Laura From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 3 Feb 84 13:19:55 EST (Fri) From: Tim Maroney Subject: meeting To: brooks@unc Cc: rts@unc Status: RO I am willing to cancel the precondition that I put on our meeting, namely that I be first supplied with the articles which were felt to be objectionable. It was my feeling that without these there would be nothing to discuss; I see now that this is not the case. Please forgive the delay this caused in the scheduling process. Would a meeting after 2:30pm on Wednesday be acceptable to you? Tim Maroney From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 3 Feb 84 17:30:08 EST (Fri) From: Tim Maroney Subject: meeting To: brooks@unc Cc: rts@unc Status: RO Thursday at 11 is acceptable. See you then. By the way, it would be helpful if you could have the articles retrieved before then, even though it isn't absolutely necessary. I do want to know what all the fuss is about. From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 9 Feb 84 13:12:17 EST (Thu) From: Tim Maroney Subject: request To: smb@ulysses Status: RO Would you be willing to discuss my behavior on the net with Dr. Brooks via phone? He does not feel that a "testimonial letter" would necessarily address the points he feels are relevant. IN essence, it would be your word that my only "crime" is holding unpopular views against second-hand accusations by faculty members that I am hurting the University's reputation. This seems to be the only chance that Dr. Brooks would change his mind, since he is more inclined to give credence to these complaints than to my claim that I am not overly obnoxious on the net. I would really appreciate it. We can set a time if you are agreeable. Tim Maroney From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 9 Feb 84 14:28:10 EST (Thu) From: Tim Maroney Subject: Re: request To: smb@ulysses Cc: brooks@unc Status: RO Thank you for agreeing to do this. I am fairly sure that Dr. Brooks does not want text of any kind, only speech. I am relaying this letter to Dr. Brooks, together with your request that the call/meeting not be before 10am; you two will have to work out a mutually agreeable schedule. Life has been pretty hectic here too, so please don't feel the need to apologize. Tim Maroney From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 15 Feb 84 19:19:12 EST (Wed) From: Tim Maroney Subject: phone call scheduling To: smb@ulysses Status: RO When would be a good time for you and Dr. Brooks to have your phone call? By the way, I've pretty much concluded that the motivation for the ban is my unconventional stands on net.religion. The reasons (don't judge until you've seen them all): (1) The ban was originally imposed as a restriction on "all personal use, such as news posting". As I discussed it, it became clear that the restriction was particularly targetted at news posting. The original form of the restriction was an obvious attempt to keep me from seeing that the ban was directed at news posting. (2) When I discussed the ban, new charges were continually created as I disproved old ones. No reason was originally given. This points to some hidden charge which is the true motivation for the restriction. Why would such a charge be hidden? (3) The ban clearly was not motivated by review of the two mild articles which were given to me as "evidence". (I haven't typed these in yet; one was my flame at Ray Jender for calling gays "faggots"; the other was an obviously tongue-in-cheek article telling people to sign their full names or burn in Hell forever; both were posted to net.flame.) The articles were posted last July, making a link to a January action very unlikely. (4) At the time of the imposition of the restriction, I was engaged in a discussion which criticized the holy books of Mason and Brooks' religion quite strongly. (5) Given the Christian worldview, religious censorship is completely consistent with moral requirements, since souls could wind up damned if the censorship is not imposed. (6) Laura Creighton was thrown off her machine at almost the same time. It later was revealed that the reason was that she had posted things to net.religion which some administrator objected to. I do not know if there is any causal relationship here (although the temporal coincidence is highly suggestive), but it does indicate that such things can and do happen to people with views like myself and Laura's. Furthermore, note the fact that Laura was not initially informed of the real reason; this suggests that a similar set of events might be happening here. I don't expect this to come up in your discussion with Dr. Brooks, but I thought you should know the only solution I've found for this puzzle. I shied away from this for a while, feeling that it was too paranoid, but I have not been able to come up with any other convincing solution. Tim Maroney From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 20 Feb 84 17:15:33 EST (Mon) From: Tim Maroney Subject: proposal To: brooks@unc Status: RO Did Steve's information help to shed light on the charges against me? If so, is there any change in your position, given this previously-unavailable information? I am willing to negotiate a compromise settlement and then drop the issue. I can reduce the fixed cost to effective nil (although I think it is there already) by spooling all postings for the wee hours of the morning and using my home terminal (which I will be able to hook up when I get paid) during times of low system load for news traffic. I have tried to make this idea similar to the measures taken to reduce game cost. Furthermore, I can promise to not reply in kind to abusive postings, and not to originate such myself (this latter is redundant anyway, since I haven't done that since my first semester here -- and that was part of the "learning process" you said you wished to extend to students via the net). I can not promise never to disagree with anyone, but I can promise never to do so in any way other than in the light of reason. I am entirely willing to place a disclaimer on my articles saying that my opinions in no way reflect the opinions of anyone other than myself. Finally, I ask that the restrictions on mail be lifted. I promise to ignore any hate mail directed at me, and not to originate any myself. Again, the latter is not any change from how I normally behave. I would be using mail to correspond with potential employers and friends, at effectively nil cost to us, and I would clearly not have any reason to become abusive. I realize that you did not know that the fixed cost could be reduced to nil; however, I can implement a simple spooler using the extremely low-cost at(1) UNIX tool. The spooler would be developed on my own time, implemented during periods of low system load, and would cause the posting to occur early in the morning (meaning that the uucp would happen then). It would be a user program that would require no system personnel installation or maintenance, since it uses normal UNIX tools. This new fact, combined with Steve's providing new evidence that I am not a particularly abusive person, changes the situation considerably, and I hope you will take these factors into account. I see no concern of yours that I have left unanswered; please advise me if this is not so, but I would appreciate your not introducing yet more new charges, as has happened before with this issue. I was surprised when you told me that the restriction was based on informal, anonymous, verbal complaints; it is clear that anyone who complains first to you about my behavior, without saying anything about it to me first, is more concerned about interfering with me than about seeing a problem rectified. An alternative is that they thought that I would not heed any such requests, which does not demonstrate any measure of objectivity toward me (or any knowledge of my character). Furthermore, such complaints are impossible for me to answer, since I have been denied the knowledge of both my accusers' identity and his charges; as such, these complaints are manifestly unfair. Any such "evidence" should be ruled out of consideration. If the "mystery complainer" wants to come out of the closet and present specific charges, that would be another matter. I wish you would not take such complaints as gospel. The earlier incident when Capt. Mason made accusations against me was motivated by anonymous and unfounded charges from Hedlund; his letter made it clear that those charges were a result of his embarrassment when I had told Kathy Yount that Hedlund had left her password in a generally readable file. That is why I told Capt. Mason that those charges were personally motivated. People's opinions about other people are often based on such narrow (and often self-serving) perspectives, as you know; this is a crime we have all been guilty of at some time or another. I strongly suspect that some similar, unknown personal animosity is at play here, or a desire to censor my writings on some particular subject, since some of my opinions are extremely unpopular. It has happened before, on both counts (although the latter was at UNC-G, not here); I wish that you would at least consent to entertain the possibility that it has happened again, rather than taking the word of someone who makes it obvious that he thinks he has a bone to pick with me, whoever that may be. If you are still determined that the "mystery complainer" deserves to be part of this, please submit the compromise proposal to them and ask them to comment on it -- if they are unwilling to consider a compromise or have only abusive comments, I would hope that you would realize what that would have said about their impartiality; otherwise, please relay their suggested revisions to me. Incidentally, if you do not wish correspondence to me to be considered public, all you have to do is write me a note to that effect. Also, if you would prefer that such lengthy mail be in hardcopy rather than electronic format, please let me know. Tim Maroney Date: 21 Feb 84 09:26:50 EST (Tue) From: Gary Bishop Subject: Re: Personal recommendation wanted To: Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Status: RO First let me say that I consider this an issue of "license" and not "free speech". I am a licensed radio amateur. As part of that license, I accept limitations on my speech and actions while using a public resouce, the radio spectrum. My right to free speech is not restricted by this; free speech applies only when all the resources I use are mine. The same applies to UNC's computers and networks. Each of us are implicitly given a license to use them; it is not a right. If I abuse my radio amateur priviliges, my license can and will be taken. This is part of the deal. If my license is taken, I am not being censured. My right to free speech has not been limited. I am being punished for my improper actions but my rights are unaffected. Likewise, persons who abuse the implicit license to use UNC's computers and networks can have the license completely removed as with Larry Bassel or only partially removed as with Maroney. It is unfortunate that we don't make the restrictions on the license clear when it is first given. It is more unfortunate that we don't make it clear that computer use is a license and not a right. It should be obvious, but it evidently isn't. I have been offended on several occasions by things that I have seen on the net that were posted by Maroney. The worst of these was an incredibly hateful and vulgar mail item that he sent to a fellow in response to being indirectly referred to as a "baby" in a discussion of a computer game. The fellow posted the mail to a news group for all the world to see. This was probably inappropriate but I might have done the same thing in response to such hateful and vulgar mail. His other postings (the few that I have seen because I don't subscibe to the useless groups in which he participates) haven't been vulgar but have been irritating because he constantly seems to be playing traffic cop, chastizing people for not using the net just like he would or for posting items to the wrong news group. My own theory is that he saw himself as a replacement for Bellovin as the "network voice of UNC". On the other hand, he hasn't made any waves recently (at least that I know of). Maybe he has grown up a little. Based on his eloquent and well thought out mail to you, I feel the ban should be lifted. Based on his immature and obnoxious personal attitude I feel it shouldn't because he will see it (and advertise it) as a victory for his brand of reason. With much personal agony, I recommend that the ban be lifted with the nature and limitations of the "license" made clear to him. I also recommend that we devise some statement to be given all personnel that outlines the nature and limitations of our license to use UNC's computing facilities. We also should consider limiting the news groups that come into our machines. There is a clear division between the groups that are useful in conducting computer science research and those that are not; the useless ones are the major forum for these offensive discussions. The uucp traffic to bring in these useless groups is a substantial burden on our machine both in cycles and disk space. From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 21 Feb 84 18:22:49 EST (Tue) From: Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Subject: Proposal To: tim@unc Status: RO Will deal with when I get back from California. From root Mon Feb 27 16:09:22 EST 1984 Date: 21 Feb 84 22:39:59 EST (Tue) From: Byron Howes (UNCCC) To: tim@unc Status: RO From: houxu!welsch@ihnp4 Received: by ihnp4.ATT.UUCP (sendmail 4.12/9-Jan-84) id AA07627; 21 Feb 84 06:58:21 CST (Tue) Date: 21 Feb 1984 7:51-EST From: ihnp4!welsch Subject: Laura Creighton's priviledges To: ihnp4!harpo!decvax!mcnc!unc!bch Message-Id: <84/02/21 0751.000@houxu> Origin: houxu Via: Mcnc; 21 Feb 84 19:38-EDT Byron Howes, After reading an article by you in net.flame I sent Laura a note and asked about her priviledges. Below is her reply. >From uucp Tue Feb 21 03:23 EST 1984 >From utzoo!laura Tue Feb 21 00:28:55 1984 remote from ihnp4 Date: 21 Feb 84 00:28:55 CST (Tue) From: ihnp4!utzoo!laura Message-Id: <8402210628.AA14465@ihnp4.ATT.UUCP> Received: by ihnp4.ATT.UUCP (sendmail 4.12/9-Jan-84) id AA14465; 21 Feb 84 00:28:55 CST (Tue) To: ihnp4!houxu!welsch Subject: Re: Haven't heard from you in ages You can tell everybody that i didn't have my privledges revoked (though the account at utcsstat got nuked) but rather that I got a whole lot of work dumped on me and I have to move it. So no fun for me until it is done. Sigh. The things we do for money. Laura ______________ Just thought I'd get to the root of the rumour. Larry Welsch houxu!welsch