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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence
Message-ID: <649@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-May-86 11:46:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.649
Posted: Wed May 21 11:46:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 24-May-86 02:39:05 EDT
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 31


In the first place, people are extrapolating my admittedly emotional
statements wildly. I was referring to political views, not publishing
people's credit histories or some such. The defense of the freedom to
publish political views is something that many of us are quite dogmatic
about, sorry, there is just no room for compromise on that issue.
Obviously I can't publish on USENET classified information and expect
to remain unscathed (although that's a reason I shun security work.)

Boy, people love to take a statement, bang it into something unreasonable
that's easy to argue with but had little to do with the original statement
and then declare themselves the winner.

As far as:

>How would you feel if I used the net to do something legal in the UK, but was
>illegal in the US?

within the political realm (which I sincerely believe is what this all
started over) I don't believe such an example exists, and if it does,
PLEASE PUBLISH IT IMMEDIATELY SO WE CAN STRIKE DOWN THE U.S. LAW,
yes, I would love it and I suspect so would many of my compatriots.

Of course, such an action requires popular support and if you decide
that your right to advertise child porno or something is a political
issue don't expect a lot of support.

I am sure advocating using USENET for civil disobedience is a not good
idea, I just think that the above challenge is empty.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University