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From: gsmith@brahms (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Abuses of the net
Message-ID: <399@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 20:37:46 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.399
Posted: Fri Nov 21 20:37:46 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 22:49:46 EST
References: <225@mind.UUCP> <21023@styx.UUCP> <228@mind.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Organization: Math Dept. UC Berkeley
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In article <228@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:

>As I suggested in a prior reply, I
>am not a vigilante or a prude or a spokeseman for the Moral Majority.
>
   You sound to me to be a bit on the prissy side, which I admit is not
necessarily the same as prudishness. I *do* think you are a net vigilante.
Your first response was to get the person who offended you removed from
the net. If I followed this logic, I should try to get you removed from
the net, since I find your attitude to be extraordinarily offensive. I
don't like censors, self-appointed or otherwise; and the person you flammed
has been posting to the net for years without any problem. Of course he
used to be the SA where he worked, so I guess as a sort of net demi-god
he was a little hard for prissy censors to remove.

>I think it's common sense that posting such material shouldn't be
>free of consequences, any more than publishing it in a newspaper or
>displaying it with a sky-writer would be. There's no reason the net
>should allow itself to become a latrine wall for the acting out of a
>few borderline personalities.


   I think your remarks about Mr. Ellis are in extremely poor taste.
Perhaps Mr. Ellis should sue you and Princeton University for libel and
character assassination. After all, posting vicious personal slander
(Mr. Ellis is not mentally unbalanced, you will be relieved to learn)
shouldn't be free of consequences, any more than publishing lies about
him in a newspaper should be.

   I think you owe Michael Ellis an apology. But I won't try to kick you
off the net until you give him one; since I believe the net is big enough
even for the self-appointed censors. I hope I am right.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
"Last week in a dream I gave a fellow my shirt buttons to differentiate
and the fellow ran away with them." -- Engels