Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!bbn!apple!rutgers!att!chinet!patrick From: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Freedom of hate Message-ID: <8154@chinet.chi.il.us> Date: 7 Apr 89 05:53:03 GMT References: <14130@gryphon.COM> <8132@chinet.chi.il.us> <14811@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> Reply-To: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix Lines: 109 In article <14811@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes: >PSU is NOT the government. It's not? It would be the first time I have ever heard the word 'State' used in the name of a university that ws not actually operated by the state. PSU is a private corporation is it, with stockholders and such? Or maybe a sole proprietorship of someone? I think it is a part of the government. >There is no constitutionally protected right >to USENET. No, there isn't. But there is a constitutionally protected right to make speeches of your choice in places which have, by default or otherwise become a public forum. By default perhaps, students at PSU who otherwise have accounts on the computer system are entitled to participate in Usenet. >Even if such a right did exist, the constitution would only >prevent the government from restricting your access to USENET. Such a right does exist, by default, since students with computer accounts at PSU -- a government insitution -- are entitled to use Usenet. And by the constitution, the government, or its agents at PSU cannot restrict access to Usenet based on any particular speech. If there is anyone connected with Usenet *speaking only on behalf of Usenet* who places a ban on Whitehead's participation, then that is a different matter. First of all, there is no such person, and second, by virtue of there being no effective way to enforce the rules of Usenet, there is no way Usenet can get rid of Whitehead. The government banned Whitehead, but it is not the government's place to ban anyone from using Usenet. It is up to the Usenet community to do that, but we have no mechanism for it. >Portal and Chinet would still be permitted to deny access to anyone they saw >fit to. That is because they are private establishments. They can do as they please with their computers (again, as always there are exceptions). >At this very moment Portal is denying MY god-given right to >free speech by denying me access to their system. That I have never >paid them a cent shouldn't matter ... It makes all the difference in the world. You have no go-given right to use someone else's private property. For that matter (and please read this carefully) **you do not even have an automatic right to use the property of the government** however -- (here we go again!) If the government has been permitting the use of its property for public forum purposes (in this case the public forum is the tie-in to Usenet) then the government then the government can do one of three things: 1) Permit the forum to continue as it is. 2) Cancel the forum entirely, citing other uses for the resources involved. 3) Select and allow/disallow speakers in the forum using *legal* reasons for the selections; i.e. the payment of a fee by all, and Whitehead did not pay the fee; the speaker has posed a security risk to the welfare of others there. The speaker cannot reasonably expect to wave around a bomb or a gun during his speech. The electronic speaker cannot resonably assume s/he is entitled to rifle the email boxes of others; or use a fraudulent password, etc. But the government cannot use the nature of the speech as the reason for exclusion. And that was the only reason Mr. Verity killed his account: people were saying the speech was not what they wanted to hear. >Mr. Whitehead does not have the right to obligate myself or PSU to >provide a forum for his stupidity. This is NOT an ACLU issue. No >constitutional right has been infringed. No constitutional right is >even involved here. He does not have the right to obligate you. You have the right to refuse to enter into any contracts with him. PSU; i.e. the government, also has the right to refuse to enter into a contract with him; but once they do enter into a contract, they are stuck with it until they find a valid and constitutionally inoffensive way of ending the contract. When he graduates from school, or withdraws, or fails to pay his tuition or otherwise breaks some rule ** spelled out when the contract was started ** then the government can bounce him out. He is a student at PSU and is entitled to do the things other students do. If you choose to obligate yourself regards Usenet by agreeing with some other site to pass their traffic, or you obligate yourself to display some news group, then if some site is willing to originate Whitehead's messages, you are obligated to put them on your machine not from any obligation to Whitehead, but to the sites up/downstream expecting to get the feed as you got it without alterations/deletions in the interim, and/or the users expecting to see the news group intact. It is an 'ACLU issue' in the sense that they stick their noses into everything and also in the sense that a person at Penn *STATE* University, a government establishment, has been disciplined by the government on account of his speech. I hope this clears up any confusion you had on the subject. -- Patrick Townson patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu / US Mail: 60690-1570 FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956