[[[See banned.1992 for updates - Carl 10/30/92]]]
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Banned Computer Material 1991 (end of year update)
Message-ID: <1991Dec18.181508.10501@eff.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1991 18:15:08 GMT
[[This is an major update of an article that was posted in October.
New comments are in double square brackets. - Carl]]
As part of Banned Book Week (and only a week late), here is:
Banned Computer Material 1991 (and earlier)
[The references are to issues of the Computers and Academic Freedom
News (CAF-news). Instructions on how to access back issues of CAF-news
are at the end of this note.]
Netnews articles or email that Steve Brack might wish to post from a
free student account at Ohio State University -- Last Spring, Steve
Brack meant to post a note to the alt.flame newsgroup but also
accidently posted to rec.aquaria. In part because of this note, Brack
was permanently expelled (without the chance for a formal hearing or
appeal) from OSU's Academic Computer Services (ACS) computers. Now a
University Judicial Committee hearing is deciding if Mr. Brack be
should punished some more for so-called obscenity (by which they mean
writing "fuck you" in the note). (cafv01n20, cafv01n17, cafv01n18,
cafv01n16, cafv01n15)
[[Steven Brack was dismissed, possibly because of his so-called
obscenity. He has said he may sue the University. (cafv01n35,
cafv01n39, cafv01n36, cafv01n20)]]
Email send to or from the National Center for Supercomputer
Applications (NCSA) that verbally attacks the Center or the University
of Illinois like the anonymous email, signed Saddam Hussein, sent to
some people at the NCSA -- The NCSA is a department of the University
of Illinois. To justify the methods it used to find and punish
"Saddam", the NCSA created rules that allowed searches of user email
if they suspected that the email verbally attacked the NCSA. [Follow
up: this policy is being revised.] (cafn01n03, cafv01n09).
[[...]]
Outgoing Netnews article from Purdue -- All outgoing articles from
some computer sites at Purdue where screened by a sys admin to make
sure that there was nothing "grossly wrong with them". [Follow up:
outgoing articles are no longer screened.] (cafv01n08, cafv01n03)
An article, containing source code for a program, posted to a local
newsgroup at Case Western -- The computer administrators at Case
Western deleted the article because they were afraid that someone
might read the code, learn how to make a program that would disrupt
their local network, write a program that would disrupt their local
network, run that program and disrupt their local network.
(cafv01n08)
Netnews including the so-called outrageous postings by users of the
Engineering Computing Center at the University of Kentucky --
Complaints to a dean about the so-called outrageous postings were one
reason that Netnews was dropped from a U. of Kentucky site (cafv01n25,
cafv01n23). [Follow up: Current plans call for Netnews to be restored
when more disk space becomes available.]
Computer files at Boston University that anyone finds offensive or
annoying -- The rules at Boston University prohibit a computer user
from "making accessible offensive [or] annoying ... material".
(cafv01n10)
The rec.humor.funny newsgroup -- It was banned from parts of Stanford
University and all of the University of Waterloo because some people
found some of its jokes offensive. Ironically, at the same time the
computer version of rec.humor.funny was banned from U. of Waterloo,
the yearly book version could be found in the University library.
[Follow up: Stanford and Waterloo decided that newsgroups should be
selected more like library material and rescinded their bans.]
[[...]] [[(cafv01n31,cafv01n33)]]
The alt.sex newsgroup at the University of Toledo -- [[...]]
[[see (ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/batch/oct_06_1991)]]
GIF files of naked people on mars.ee.mstate.edu -- Deleted after the
National Science Foundation received a complaint and then asked the
mars.ee.mstate.edu archivist to justify the files. Apparently the
files were available via anonymous ftp across a NSF sponsored net, but
were not stored on a NSF computer. [[...]] [[ (cafv01n31) ]]
[[ New stuff:
More than a dozen newsgroups, including alt.sex, at Western Washington
University -- They were removed from Western Washington University on
the order of one person, the Vice Provost for "information and
communication". Alt.sex remains at the University of Washington, but
other newsgroups were removed right before a negative article was
printed in the Seattle _Post_Intelligencer_. (cafv01n33, cafv01n36,
cafv01n35, cafv01n41)
An article posted by a student at the University of Illinois at
Chicago -- The student was punished for posting the article, which
offended many, to soc.women. The article was canceled. The system
admin justified the punishment saying that the article, posted to an
international unmoderated newsgroup, was not protected speech because
"it can be considered as a generalized form of sexual harassment". The
U. of Illinois has no rules on "generalized sexual harassment". The
University's rules on (regular) sexual harassment do not authorize sys
admins to judge and punish infractions. (cafv01n36,cafv01n34)
Rude articles at Iowa State University -- On-line rudeness is
prohibited at Iowa State. A student was reprimanded for posting a rude
article to the net. (This policy may be under revision). (cafv01n38)
The alt.sex.* hierarchy on PSUVM, Penn State's main general purpose
computer -- (cafv01n34)
Email or Netnews articles that "bring discredit to the University [of
Texas] or the [Computer Science] Department." (cafv01n37)
Offensive messages at the University of Newcastle -- (cafv01n39)
Email containing offensive material at James Madison University -- (cafv01n39)
Most on-line discussion of sex and drugs at Iowa State University --
Iowa State University labels all newsgroup as either "limited list",
"standard list", or "full list". This labeling is based on the name
and description of each newsgroup and not on its actual content. The
standard list excludes most discussion of sex and drugs. The plan is
that ,starting January 6, 1992, users on public access machines will
be restricted to the standard list. (See recent
alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk articles.)
Racist email at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire -- The
university formally reprimanded [a] student and placed him on
probation for the remainder of the semester. (Follow up: The student
sued in Federal district court and won. See _UWM Post v. University of
Wisconsin_ available on-line as
ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/law/uwm-post-v-u-of-wisconsin. The judge's
decision concludes:
"The founding fathers of this nation produced a remarkable document in
the Constitution but it was ratified only with the promise of the Bill
of Rights. The First Amendment is central to our concept of freedom.
The God-given "unalienable rights" that the infant nation rallied to
in the Declaration of Independence can be preserved only if their
application is rigorously analyzed.
The problems of bigotry and discrimination sought to be addressed here
are real and truly corrosive of the educational environment. But
freedom of speech is almost absolute in our land and the only
restriction the fighting words doctrine can abide is that based on the
fear of violent reaction. Content-based prohibitions such as that in
the UW Rule, however well intended, simply cannot survive the
screening which our Constitution demands."
]]
-----------------------------
Back issues of the Computer and Academic Freedom News are available
via anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org. They are in directory
pub/academic/news. Back issues are also available via email. For
information on email access send an email note to
archive-server@eff.org. Include the lines "help" and "index".
[[For example,
to get volume 1, number 39, send email to archiver-server@eff.org.
Include the line:
send caf-news cafv01n39
]]
I would love to get copies of the shorter banned notes. If you have
the joke that got rec.humor.funny banned, the NCSA email, Brack's
note, the Case Western source code, etc., please contact me.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.4352@hri.com
I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
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