Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!chinet!rhonda
From: rhonda@chinet.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,alt.flame
Subject: Re: Defending Eric Mading
Message-ID: <1879@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Nov-87 17:25:47 EST
Article-I.D.: chinet.1879
Posted: Fri Nov 20 17:25:47 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Nov-87 12:24:10 EST
References: <1043@pbhyd.UUCP> <25092COK@PSUVMA> <6851@ut-ngp.UUCP> <7427@eddie.MIT.EDU> <1853@chinet.UUCP> <7439@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: rhonda@chinet.UUCP (Rhonda Scribner)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 63
Xref: utgpu news.admin:1236 news.sysadmin:401 alt.flame:574

In article <7439@eddie.MIT.EDU> ooblick@eddie.MIT.EDU (Mikki Barry) writes:
>In article <1853@chinet.UUCP> rhonda@chinet.UUCP (Rhonda Scribner) writes:
>>What is under discussion is the behavior of
>>certain people that have perpetrated vicious personal attacks, harrassment,
>>and fraud upon other people for their own jollies.  Society is NOT obligated
>>to tolerate them.  They deserve what they get if their accounts are taken away.
>
>One thing we are losing sight of here is that the net is not "the real 
>world".  Saying something nasty about somebody else here is not the
>same as harrassing them on the street, or threatening them by phone,
>or hanging around outside their house.  You do not HAVE TO read the net.

You could also say "you do not HAVE TO answer your phone" to legitimize crank
phone callers.  I can't accept that, and I doubt that you or anyone else would
either.  I say it IS the same, we're talking about a public arena.  It has
been a virtual playground for people to play around and do and say whatever
they like.  But hasn't it grown far beyond the state where it can continue
to be thought of in that way?

>You do not HAVE TO respond when someone baits you.

You also don't have to respond when someone breathes at you over the phone.
But it IS considred harrassment just the same under the law.  The same rules
apply in new environments.  Perhaps during the early years of the telephone
when rules were not clarified, people might have been able to get away with
that excuse, saying "it's just the telephone, people don't HAVE to answer it,
if I want to make obscene comments over the phone, who can stop me?"  But of
course, that changed.  We are now in a state where we can no longer say "this
is JUST the net."

>"Harrassment" and "personal attacks" on the net are a necessary evil if
>we are to keep this an open and public forum.  Those wishing to change
>it should decide who they want to have the ultimate authority to decide
>what is and is not acceptable for posting here. 

I think we have a clear discernable differentiation between censoring
controversial opinions and censoring people who engage in harrassment and
abuse.  I say we should use it, rather than succumbing to those who hide
behind the words "free speech," saying that they're being persecuted for
their controversial opinions when in reality they are being restrained from
engaging in abuses.  These things are not a "necessary evil" at all.  We
have the means and the capability to deal with them without endangering real
free speech.  What we need is the resolve to do so.  The absence of that
resolve leads to the impression that people can get away with that sort of
behavior.  A viable deterrent, a clear signal that abusers and harrassers
will not be tolerated, is a necessary step in the maturation of the net as
a public forum.  Otherwise it is just a schoolyard filled with children,
and as such it cannot survive.

>By the way, Rhonda, *I* was talking about the Eric Madding incident.  It
>seems that you are talking about something completely different.  My remarks
>are meant to be taken solely in the context of posting obnoxious material,
>not  net-fraud, which is something far more serious, but also leaves
>little recourse available to the rest of the net.

I think I made a grave error in saying that the delineation was between
"controversial" and "obnoxious."  What I probably should have said was that
the delineation was between "controversial" and "abusive," where abusive
includes the type of persistent deliberate annoying harrassment we have
been talking about.  Against the latter, whether the perpetrator is Eric
Mading, "Mark Ethan Smith," or whoever, we DO have recourse, and it needs to
be used.  
								--Rhonda