Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!princeton!mind!harnad From: harnad@mind.UUCP Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Abuses of the net Message-ID: <231@mind.UUCP> Date: Sun, 23-Nov-86 02:41:28 EST Article-I.D.: mind.231 Posted: Sun Nov 23 02:41:28 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 24-Nov-86 00:45:35 EST References: <225@mind.UUCP> <21023@styx.UUCP> <228@mind.UUCP> <21030@styx.UUCP> Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University Lines: 66 Summary: Who's really for freedom of speech? mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore CA asks: > Why do you think the proper level of discourse on Usenet should be the > common denominator that offends no one? This is a highly pluralistic > internetwork... A fair percentage of the material is > going to offend SOMEONE, whether because of four-letter words, > or scatology, or controversial political/religious/cultural views. > Should all these be supressed as well? The issue in this case was not mere offensiveness, but abusiveness -- ad hominem coprolalia, to be precise. I think the extract (which has by now been quoted often enough) speaks for itself. I can't help thinking that those who say it was quoted out of context must either be joking or have had their senses numbed by exposure to too much behavior of this sort. The only conceivable context that could have been filled in around the extracts I quoted that would have justified them would have been if they were themselves quotes from someone else's abuses of someone else and the Net. As to plurality and controversy, in place of an inclination to suppress it, you might say I had a certain professional interest and involvement in fostering it. Ad hominem abuse, on the other hand, I'm rather committed to combatting. > You may decide for yourself what you like to read... you DON'T > have the right to dictate to the community at large what the proper > level of taste and inoffensiveness should be in order to meet your > personal standards. That, sir, is what the Moral Majority tries to do. Who's dictating? I have neither the power nor the desire to dictate. I simply did what you profess to be defending. I aired my own reactions to what I viewed as unconscionable behavior. It has several times been gumblingly suggested by way of response that *I* am the one who ought to be taken off the Net, presumably for venturing to express my views against someone's ad hominem coprolalia. It's an odd state of affairs when people can view themselves as the righteous defenders of free speech when they they rush to the defence of someone's right to tell someone else she has "shit-for-brains" while clamouring that someone else ought to be deprived of his right to denounce it. > What sort of consequences do you mean [when you write:] >> 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. I had a few in mind. One was that those, like myself, who feel that such behavior represents a grave abuse of the Net, should make their views known, rather than, by default, encouraging people who are so inclined to act out in this way without any expectation of public consequences. I also wished to draw the case to the attention of the relevant authorities so that if (as I hoped) there were rules against such behavior, they might be enforced. [As it happens, the account in question was shut down because the individual who had posted the message was not the authorized user of the account, and that violated the rules of the system; so, as the system administrator indicated, the local matter is "moot."] Finally, I wanted to serve open notice that one person, at least, was prepared neither to contribute to the impression that one has no choice, when someone else's private anomalies are rudely forced on one in public, but to walk away from it in silence, leaving the perpetator to repeat such antisocial antics on others, nor was he prepared to be drawn into any back-and-forth round of responding in kind. -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet