Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: smith@cos.com (Steve Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Control of Information
Message-ID: <1467@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Jan 88 01:16:09 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA
Lines: 63
Approved: taylor@hplabs


In article <1301@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> news@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (News Subsystem ) writes:

|Recently I read that a supplier of corporate information (Dun & Bradstreet 
|I think) which supplies information to DIALOG and related commercial 
|databases, had submitted a list of people who were to be denied access 
|to that database, on the grounds that those people's interests were
|in conflict with the corporations listed.  This list includes all
|representatives of unions, union librarians, the ACLU librarians and 
|other organizations as well as individuals who D&B thought should not have 
|access.  The information in question is the same information that is freely 
|available to other businesses and individuals who subscribe, and includes 
|such things as year end reports, credit reports, sales, directory-type 
|information, financial information, corporate holdings, etc.  This is the 
|same information that I could call up on-line if I was thinking of buying 
|shares in a company.  The number of companies is not small (over 3 million).
|
|My question is this:
|
|     -  What do you think of this distribution of the equivalent of a
|	blacklist for information subscribers?
|
|      - What are the implications of such an action for future information
|	networks? (Especially in regard to the discussions in this group about
|	the control of/access to information and its effects on society)
|
|I am troubled by this action, as it would seem to set a precedent for
|controlling "public access" information, so that certain groups (ie. 
|unions) would be unable to gain access to information that they might 
|otherwise obtain.  Yet the database services are private commercial 
|enterprises, so they may well share the right to serve whoever they 
|please.  What do you all think?  (And if you know it, I would appreciate 
|the reference.  If I can find it I will post it to this group)
|
|Mark Ritchie

One of the things that a single proprietorship or partnership gives up
when it becomes a corporation is financial privacy.  Matters like
corporate holdings and financial reports are matters of public record.
If this is the kind of stuff that is in the data base, then D&B is
simply being petty.

If it contains more sensitive information, then there is nothing keeping
a union from contracting with Joe Blow, Consultant to feed them whatever
data they want.  Any company that lets anything really sensitive into a
semi-public data base is being idiotic.

I suspect that the reason that the companies involved are worried is
that they *pay* to have that information listed.  Its prime purpose,
from their viewpoint, is to make the company look as healthy as
possible, to attract investors.  Those numbers are probably *not* the
ones they use in negotiating with their unions, which presumably show
the company at death's door.

"Journalistic integrety" does not seem to carry through into the
"information age".  From the data base proprietors like D&B, it's "all
the news you pay us to print".

-- 
                           __
 -- Steve          /      /  \      /         "Truth is stranger than
S. G. Smith      I \ O    |  _    O \ I        fiction because fiction
smith@cos.com      /      \__/      /          has to make sense."