Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!trinity!max From: max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Usenet access: this "fascism" nonsense Message-ID: <1656@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Date: 19 Mar 88 05:11:33 GMT References: <1288@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu Reply-To: max@trinity.UUCP (Max Hauser) Distribution: na Organization: UC Berkeley Lines: 48 Summary: incidental clarification In his article , webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes: >In article <1288@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) writes: >> ... >> What is going on here? Are these authors competent adults? ... > >I can understand why, having found nothing that can seriously be >objected to in our postings, [he has] chosen to attack our person >instead. ... Not at all. That was not meant to be an attack but a serious question, prompted by the original postings (what the authors actually said: not necessarily what they think they said, which is not my concern). A question that, private mail confirms, occurred to others as well. One that has not yet been answered, by the way, least of all by the principals. >> The Usenet site in question is a private operation under the control >> of local administration. > >No system that has a phone line (or other net connection) can truly be >said to be ``under the control of local administration.'' Perhaps this is the crux of the matter. If I am wildly naive in thinking of the Usenet merely as a communication medium, rather than one that confers implicit contractual powers of use and control over its participant systems to the other participant systems, then I rely on Webber (as always :-) to point up the error of my analysis. In any event I don't agonize in anxiety over this matter since, rhetoric notwithstanding, Webber (whose comments, by the way, often strike me as insightful) has neither the purview to implement his imaginative opinions about computer-system control nor the legal authority to do so. He is welcome to try, in which case he will be cheerfully and forcefully prosecuted not only under the federal fraud-by-wire statutes (in Title 2 USC?), which prevail, when I last heard, even in New Jersey; but also under the felony statutes of this state, as the actual locus of the incursion (we've done that before at this site, successfully; and we have the FBI to help us). Assuming, naturally, that he is adult and competent. BTW, I'm still waiting for those accounts for my friends, based on the value of their postings to the rest of the net (not on mine, which was not what I said, and in any event their merit will be up to the net, not to Webber, to judge -- by his own succinct argument). The joys of the net ... MH