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From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.legal
Subject: Re: Freedom of speech and the net
Message-ID: <393@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Nov-84 16:58:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.393
Posted: Mon Nov 19 16:58:32 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Nov-84 07:15:04 EST
References: <201@looking.UUCP> <7@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <> <1842@nsc.UUCP> <475@amdahl.UUCP> <517@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <517@amdahl.UUCP> gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) writes:
>[ From a private correspondence ]
>
>>                                To the best of my knowledge there has never
>>  been a test case concerning freedom of speech on anything like USENET,
>>  and until there is, I don't see how anyone can state with certainty whether
>>  such "silencing" is legal or not.
>
>OK, I relent and agree, we cannot answer this question now.  My opinion
>is that corporations have the right control their employees' access to
>USENET as they can control any other computing resource.
>
>.....
>
>So the protection of people's right to post (if any) would be difficult
>to enforce.  I know if I owned a computer system attached to Usenet
>I would not want the government to force me to allow anyone to say anything
>they wanted with it.  It is my property, I own it, and I should be the one
>to control it.  (On the other hand, I wouldn't want my connection to
>the network severed because another site didn't like what I had to say).
>
>Constitutional issues like this are not simple matters, to be sure.
>-- 
>Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!gam

The closest analogy to the net I can see is a company bulletin board in
a hallway, which it allows employees to affix notices to.  The company
certainly has the right to decide how that bulliten board will be used
by saying "no religious messages" or "no political messages".  I
wonder, however, whether they have the right to say "only Christian
religious messages" or "only liberal political messages" are allowed.
This does not seem either reasonable or legal to me.  I would think
that they would either have to allow all messages of a given type or
none -- otherwise they are discriminating on the basis of political
opion, religious views, or whatever in the granting of priviliges to
employees.

		Ken Arnold