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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.legal
Subject: Re: Freedom of speech and the net
Message-ID: <1266@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Nov-84 12:07:49 EST
Article-I.D.: eosp1.1266
Posted: Wed Nov 21 12:07:49 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Nov-84 06:08:03 EST
References: <201@looking.UUCP> <7@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <> <1842@nsc.UUCP> <475@amdahl.UUCP> <517@amdahl.UUCP> <393@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Reply-To: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton
Lines: 27
Xref: princeton net.news:424 net.legal:212
Summary: 

>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

This is an incorrect analogy; a company bulletin board is internal,
and does not affect the company's commerce with the outside world.
A better analogy -- suppose the company printed a newspaper with
articles by employees, and distributed it to anyone in the world
who wanted it.  They would NATURALLY exercise as much editorial control
over the content as they wished.

Regarding the internal bulletin board, I'm sure a company could
reasonably penalize employees who spent too much working time posting
messages, or who posted messages that hurt company morale.

  - Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
  {allegra, decvax!ittvax, fisher, princeton}!eosp1!robison