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From: kraut@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,alt.flame
Subject: Re: Defending Eric Mading
Message-ID: <6851@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Nov-87 06:19:14 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.6851
Posted: Sun Nov 15 06:19:14 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Nov-87 04:02:05 EST
References: <1043@pbhyd.UUCP> <25092COK@PSUVMA>
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 45
Summary: simple: don't post anything offensive to the sponsor of your account
Xref: mnetor news.admin:1376 news.sysadmin:451 alt.flame:583

In article <25092COK@PSUVMA>, COK@PSUVMA.BITNET (R. W. Clark, K. S. C.) writes:
> mark@pbhyd.UUCP (Mark Crescentini) writes:
> >>I cannot condone the removal of his accounts because of his postings.
> >>I think that Eric DESERVED to have his accounts removed, but I do not think
> >>that we had the right to cause them to be removed.
> My point had nothing to do with First Amendment rights.  I was talking about
> self-preservation.  I am known to have some opinions which some people might
> consider offensive.  Say someone forwarded my articles to a sysadmin who would
> find my opinions offensive.  I could be in trouble.  I think that it is a bad
> idea to set this sort of precedent.  I can imagine net.censorship starting
> in earnest sometime if people get the idea of kicking people they dislike
> off the net.
> thrown off the net, but I do not like the idea of self-appointed censors
> sweeping through my articles looking for offensive statements to forward to
> the sysadmin at my node.  I don't think anyone else should allow this sort of
> thing, either.

it's all very simple:  noone has any rights here;  we are all at the mercy of
someone else;  the sponsor of your account, the owner of your machine, the
machines up/down-stream from your machine.  Our society has simple rules:
if you offend the group, you become an outcast - the group will not want to
be associated with you nor support your doings.  if you bite the hand that
feeds you, you get your but kicked as far as the one doing the kicking can
remove it.

Your claim that noone should inform your sysadmin about articles you post
from the machine for which he has the responsibility is absurd;  he will want
to know if there are articles posted on his machine which are offending
people or which damage the reputation of his machine/site/company ....
you should be smart enough not to post anything that your sysadmin might
agree to finding offensive ...

and if a site is tolerant to a point which might offend the sysadmins of
neighboring sites, guess what:  they may decide that they have better ways
to spend their cycles than connecting to your machines.

Nothing worse than an anarchist that claims that being offensive is his
birthright which society is obligated to tolerate ...

Please note that the above remark is not meant to describe any of the authors
of the articles to which I am writing this follow-up; I know them neither
by name nor by contents of articles well enough to have an opinion about them.

-- 
kraut@ngp.utexas.edu