Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Changes to the monthly postings
Keywords: rec.humor.funny policy change
Message-ID: <374@twwells.uucp>
Date: 5 Feb 89 23:54:12 GMT
References: <2706@looking.UUCP> <2844@epimass.EPI.COM> <1448@vsi1.COM> <371@twwells.uucp> <12223@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells)
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In article <12223@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes:
: In article <371@twwells.uucp> bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
: >Do y'all know the purpose of that bullshit?  It is not to prevent
: >anyone from reading the newsgroup, it is to cover his ass in the
: >event that some JEDR comes along and tries to sue him or censor the
: >newsgroup.
:
: Huh?  Censorship is censorship.  Preventing one person or one thousand
: is no different.  The effect of Brad's policy change is that some sites
: ENTIRE COLLECTION OF USER'S won't be able to receive r.h.funny.  This
: is more like revenge than censorship.

Oh yes. Censorship is censorship. And what Brad is doing is not
censorship. STOP USING WORKS AS PEJORATIVES WHEN THEY HAVE REAL,
IMPORTANT MEANINGS!!!!!!

In order that an act be censorship, there are two tests that it must
meet:

    1) The would be censor must either use or threaten to use force
       against the would be publisher.

    2) The would be censor *can not* be the author or publisher,
       exercising his legitimate rights.

Both of these are necessary so that "censorship" is a useful concept.
The first distinguishes censorship from not wanting to publish,
deciding not to publish because a friend asked, wishing that
something were not published, etc. The second is necessary to
distinguish censorship from exercising one's rights to one's work.

Brad's actions meet the first test but fail the second.  Note that
Brad is not attempting to control the distribution of the jokes, but
the distribution of the compilation of the jokes. Since he created
the compilation, he is not censoring it. Consider that there is
nothing at all preventing the authors of those jokes from posting them
over on rec.humor, to see just how ludicrous calling Brad's actions
censorship is.

: >Because of him saying what he does, there are two legal possibilities:
: >if the offended party hasn't obtained his permission he gets thrown
: >out of court. If he has, then he has agreed to the bullshit, and gets
: >thrown out of court. End of problem.
:
: First, he can publish a notice at the beginning of every article that
: the information contained might be offensive.  Second, he can rotate
: every questionable joke article.  Since the reader must take an explicit
: action to read the article, he would be considered to have accepted the
: risk.  To make it slightly more airtight, each rotated article could
: have a special decoding string prepended to it that the user must type
: in to decode the article.  Or ...

He already does these kinds of things. But it didn't stop JEDR, and
it won't stop future JEDRs. Those types invent reasons to be
offended.  And then go and try to use the courts to enforce their
prudery.  THAT IS CENSORSHIP!

---
Bill
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