Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!hoptoad!ptsfa!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!rutgers!mit-eddie!oaf From: oaf@mit-eddie.UUCP Newsgroups: alt.flame Subject: Who "grants permission" Message-ID: <7135@eddie.MIT.EDU> Date: Sat, 10-Oct-87 23:35:32 EDT Article-I.D.: eddie.7135 Posted: Sat Oct 10 23:35:32 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Oct-87 01:08:57 EDT References: <8710030730.AA26085@garnet.berkeley.edu> <3137@hoptoad.uucp> Reply-To: oaf@eddie.MIT.EDU (you oafish oaf) Organization: MIT communal cemetery Lines: 132 Summary: Simply opening the question reveals a deeply flawed mind > I gave permission for my letters to the postmaster to be posted. > I did not give permission for the articles which Matthew wrote to > be posted, and because of their harrassing nature, I would prefer > that they not be. [Tim Maroney] ------------------------------ Sir, The articles which Matthew posted are public domain. Hence they may be re-posted by interested parties. For more information, read net.announce.newusers. You are not in a position to proscribe that re-posting. You are not in a position to proscribe anything. If you think something should not be permitted to be posted, you may take your case before a judge and request that she issue a restraining order. Please note that the usual reason for such restraining orders is imminent danger, either to personal life and limb or to the successful working of just- ice (e.g. Gag orders in cases of ongoing trials). You should be pre- pared to demonstrate to the judge either that such a reason applies or that there is a new reason why such postings must be subject to prior restraint. If you try that, interesting things may happen. To start with, you will have to explain the workings of USENET to the judge. There may be people interesting in demonstrating to the judge that you don't know what you're talking about, and should not be accepted as an authority on the net or its workings. So you should be prepared to overcome their case with the logic (and empiric correctness) of your own. You will have to make a credible case that you do in fact know whereof you speak. My suspicion is that such qualificatons are difficult to come by, unless you are the author of significant parts of network software, and either directly or indirectly a significant financial underwriter of USENET. Perhaps you can get around the latter requirement by demonstrating that you hold a position in upper management (authorized to expend sums of money comparable to USENET costs) in a company or organization which is active on the net. Presumably you are such a person, right? Second, you will have to explain why something _already_ in the public record may not be retransmitted. There are issues of fairness here, namely that part of the readership has these archives in their files, and part does not. Hence, Mr. Smith need merely refer to arti- cle numbers to let the informed population page through the collected flames of Mr. Wiener against you, while the uninformed have no way of accessing the information; unless they request info from friends at the more richly endowed sites. Be prepared to prove to the judge that maintaining such unfair distribution of information is so important that it transcends peo- ple's free speech prerogatives. Third, you should be prepared to demonstrate the specific damage that retransmissions of Mr. Wiener's postings will do you. We are not talking about the original articles, but the incremental harm due to their re-publication. That should be interesting. In my humble opinion, the Maroney Archives, volumes , do not contain materials which constitute "harassment." They are certainly unfavorable reviews of your intellect, psychology, and character. But they cannot be considered harassment in the manner of obscene phone calls or chanting (or rock-throwing) demonstrators at political speeches. Nobody is forced to read them, not even you. Nobody is interrupted or disabled from reading your messages by their existence. Their existence is passive - people only read or believe them at their own convenience. That is certainly a strange form of harassment. For example, you could trivially avoid all trouble from Mr. Wiener, and perhaps Mr. (G.W.) Smith, and even from me, merely by not reading news. Notice that I didn't specify not WRITING news, merely by not reading it. I conclude that your use of the word "harassing" is willful and incorrect, since you must voluntarily place yourself in a position to feel its effects. I have read several thousand lines of discussions between Messrs. Smith, Wiener, and Maroney. I have had perhaps a thousand lines of personal discussions (on other issues) with the first two, as well as reading maybe ten thousand lines of all parties' postings on various subjects over the past several years. At this point, I am starting to draw preliminary conclusions. In particular, Mr. Wiener's postings were snotty, superior, snide, and insulting. They were also interesting, witty, insightful, and quite often correct (by my lights). Mr. Smith's postings were less proli- fice, but typically of a similar cast. I think both parties are in- telligent, honest enough to refrain from foisting off a deliberately untrue picture of the world, and willing to credit their audience with enough brains to make reasonable analyses of their writings. Their postings could not be considered harassment in the legal sense. Mr. Maroney, your evaluation of them as such are completely wide of the mark, and display a dismal failure to understand what consti- tutes harassment and what constitutes free speech. I think, Mr. Maroney, you are fundamentally broken. I think the class of discussion that has gone on on this newsgroup is sad, in the same way that a person running down the street, dressed in rags, rais- ing his fist at nobody in particular and engaging in an incoherent, screaming argument with unseen voices, is sad. I neither know nor much care why Mr. Wiener's "account" (as if he had only one) was taken away, since I presume his main job is to do math, not USENET. I feel much sorrier for you, Mr. Maroney. You seem to display such pitiful paranoia in public postings It's too bad this kind of stuff takes up all the time, all the money, all the bandwidth. Common decency would have us turn away from such sad displays of psychological incontinence. Then again, I just posted a 110 line flame on the subject myself. Rather clearly, I am in no position to claim continence, of any varie- ty. In a way, though, the preceding references to psychological incon- tinence are a deliberate and filthy lie on my part. Just as New York City cops sometimes dress in rags and pretend to be passed out on the sidewalk, the better to discover first-hand who is mugging the drunks in their precinct, Mr. Maroney is displaying the falsity of any claim that Americans (who read USENET) understand what free speech is all about. This is the cheap local version of the Bork confirmation hear- ings, where people's fundamental beliefs on what it means to live in a free (or ostensibly free) society are tested against real-live ob- noxious challenges. Damn damn damn, but we sure fall short. Me too. I thank you, Tim, for bringing out the fascistic or merely termi- nally confused opinions of many people on that issue. I don't like what I see, but it's important to see it, like reading "1984," or watching clips of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, or reading about Klansmen or even Richard Nixon and his enemies lists. I only wish it didn't cause you such obvious and such deep agony. -- Oded A. Feingold 36 Columbia Rd., Medford, Mass. 02155 {allegra|ihnp4!mit-eddie}!mit-vax!oaf OAF@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU 617-395-8895