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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 01:37:40 EDT
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl Kadie)
Message-Id: <9104160537.AA02094@eff.org>
To: caf-batch@eff.org
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom (batch version)
Status: RO
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 10:16:59 1991
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Cc: "Flo Veel" , davecb@nexus.yorku.ca
Subject: Re: Who's disk is it anyway (was re digest vs direct)
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 08:00:36 EDT
Sender: davecb@nexus.yorku.ca
Status: R
MCNAB_PD@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU (XCACORP) writes:
| >I have been told, however, that Computing Services is running out of storage
| >space, and that - if necessary - news/AARnet access will be the first to go.
| >
"Thomas E. Kunselman" replies:
| How was it determined that news/AARnet is the major disk hogs at your
| university? [...]
| Who exactly made this determination at your institution? How was it decided
| that news was the least useful service on the system? Any other programs,
| data that is outdated? Were any of the users asked about what they would
| prefer to keep, x, y or news has to go, which would you least like to have.
Very likely no-one: you've just prompted me to draft a ``what do you
think is important'' message to the departmental computer coordinators, asking
what applications they think are important. (Oops!)
News is a bit of a special case: the space and processing time used double
every two years, and the transport costs are non-trivial. Mind you, big
listservs are worse.
The Ontario universities' network is already asking people to use news instead of (large) mailing-lists
and taking care to minimize news transport costs: this implies that we're in for
more than a disk-space crunch!
--dave
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 11:09:14 1991
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Sender: rsk@juniper.circ.upenn.edu (Rick Kulawiec)
Posted-Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:01:38 EDT
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup " (was DIGEST VS DIRECT)
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:01:38 EDT
Organization: Cardiothoracic Imaging Research Center, Hospital of UPenn
X-Queued-Mail: 661messages
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: R
>Suppose disk space really is scarce and users have quotas as to the
>amount of disk they may use (say 3 Meg). Then, in my opinion, users
>should be able to say: "I'd like to allocate 1/2 Meg to newsgroup ."
>
>This lets the sysadmin off the hook. He or she no longer has to decide
>what is good for the users.
This is a great idea in theory, but doesn't work well in practice. Here's why:
Unix systems divide the physical disk into 8 logical partitions, noted
"A" through "H". Filesystems such as /usr or /usr/spool or /usera
exist inside one partition. While partitions can overlap, filesystems
can't. The upshot of this, plus a few of the conventions of the Unix
world (e.g. partition "B" is almost always used for swap space, partition
"C" is almost always used to span the entire disk) means that a typical
filesystem layout might look something like this:
_________________
| A / (root partition), say 16 Mbytes
|
| B swap space, say 32 Mbytes
C
| D /usr (most programs), say 128 Mbytes
| _________
| | E /usr/spool (mail,news,etc.), say 128 Mbytes
| G
| |_______F,H /users (user directories), say 128 Mbytes
|
|________________
This layout shows a one-disk system where the "G" partition overlaps
the E and F partitions, and the F and H partitions are the same -- this
is reasonably typical.
Okay, here's the problem with letting users "donate" their space to
the purpose of holding spooled news. The users' space is in /users,
on the F partition; spooled news lives in /usr/spool, on the E partition.
There's no way to make blocks in the F partition available in E partition...
*unless* the disk is repartitioned, a task which requires taking the system
down, completely dumping the contents of all the affected partitions,
and then restoring those contents.
All of which can be done if someone really wants to do it...but it's
a decidedly non-trivial task. It also raises other possible problems...
say, for example, /usr/spool is boosted to 160 Mbytes, lowering /users
to 96 Mbytes. Suppose then that the users need more room for some sort
of project, and it's no longer there. This puts the systems administrator
in the position of having to try to explain to users doing "real" work,
e.g. research, homework, etc., that there is insufficient room because
the space is currently occupied by Usenet news. From experience, I can
tell you that this particular explanation tends to be badly received. ;-)
Here's a suggestion you might make to your systems folks -- I've seen
this work in other places, and it's a solution that seems to make everyone
equally unhappy, which might indicate that it's a reasonable compromise.
Ask the systems folks to dedicate one disk to news, say something in the
300-400 Mbyte range. If necessary, the disk can be shared by multiple
departments (or, as is done here at UPenn, the entire university) in
order to lower the cost of funding it. Since academic prices for disks
in this capacity range are around $1700, this shouldn't be too hard...
and if you look around enough, somebody probably has one laying around
that you can enlist for the purpose. Now you've separated the issue
of "space for users" from "space for news".
Use that disk for news, and set the expiration period such that the
disk doesn't fill up. Consider using the appropriate flags on expire(8)
such that it ignores explicitly-specified expiration dates, which tend
to be grossly misused by a lot of folks on Usenet. When the volume of news
goes up, as it will, shorten the expiration time. Currently news volume,
if you carry *everything* that UUnet does, is about 100 Mbytes/week....so
if you have a 350 Mbyte drive and set the expiration time to 2 weeks, you
should be able to live comfortably on that disk for a while.
---Rsk
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 11:09:15 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:32:38 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: mailfilter
Cc: brown@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu
Status: R
I found a "Bug" in the shell script mail filter that I wrote, and I added
some comments.
Later.
Dan Brown
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# Mailfilt, a mail filter written by Dan Brown
# This script should be called from a .forward file. m2mbox is a program
# that is used to lock a file, and append to it.
# Questions, comments to:
# brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
# This shell script is copyright 1991.
# Permission granted for use, as long as the original credits and comments
# are included.
# Creates temporary file, for presant message.
TMPFILE=tmp.$PID
# Dumps message to file, and grabs From lines.
TMP=`tee $TMPFILE | grep From`
echo $TMP
# Checks to see that it has only one field. This filters all but the first
# From line, which is specifically the sender.
TMP=`echo $TMP| awk '{print $2}'`
# Says hello.
echo Greetings $TMP
# Chooses appropriate mailbox, and m2mboxes the tmp file into it.
# more mailboxes can be added by adding more elifs.
if [ $TMP = 'comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org' ] ; then
cat $TMPFILE |/usr/local/bin/m2mbox /usr/homes/brown/mbox.caf
elif [ $TMP = 'brown@usenet' ] ; then
cat $TMPFILE |/usr/local/bin/m2mbox /usr/homes/brown/mbox.tst
else
cat $TMPFILE |/usr/local/bin/m2mbox /usr/homes/brown/mbox
fi
# Remove TMP file
rm $TMPFILE
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 12:13:34 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 11:01:56 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: one more filter fix
Status: R
Some systems will require a semi colon ";" after the echo statements.
Both echo statements can be removed. They are for debugging.
Later.
Dan
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 13:31:44 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: petersja@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson)
Subject: delete
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:25:37 MDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL8]
Status: R
delete comp-academic-freedom-talk
James Lee Peterson
Computer Science
511A USC X7137
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 13:32:20 1991
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 10:09:11 -0700
Sender: George William Herbert
Subject: Re: caf-talk: Interactive *and* Batch
Status: R
francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu says:
>Don't forget that setting up a newsgroup needs a vote.
Someone is holding such a vote _right now_ 8-) . I forget the exact
group name and where to mail votes to, but read news.groups for details...
-george william herbert
gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 13:36:41 1991
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 13:12:48 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space" (another topic shift)
References: <9104151401.AA06751@juniper.circ.upenn.edu>
Status: R
> Suppose then that the users need more room for some sort
>of project, and it's no longer there. This puts the systems administrator
>in the position of having to try to explain to users doing "real" work,
>e.g. research, homework, etc., that there is insufficient room because
>the space is currently occupied by Usenet news. From experience, I can
>tell you that this particular explanation tends to be badly received. ;-)
It looks like we should generalize the discussion. Why should you be
able to read notes or play games if I could use the disk space and CPU
time to advance my thesis research? (Indeed, why should the University
spend money on Homecoming when that money could be used to advance
my thesis research?)
Here at U. of Illinois any student may get a free student account.
The student is given a quota of disk space and CPU time. The student
can use that quota however he or she wishes.
Does anyone have experience with such a system? It is perceived as
fair?
- Carl
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 16:09:56 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 13:43:17 +0600
Sender: sheehan@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space" (another topic shift)
Status: R
Carl Kadie writes:
>Here at U. of Illinois any student may get a free student account.
>The student is given a quota of disk space and CPU time. The student
>can use that quota however he or she wishes.
At Indiana University we have a similar system for disk space for all
users. [There is no limit on CPU use. We're a liberal arts university --
maybe that explains why there aren't too many demands on our CPU resources
by individual students. The exception, recreational game playing, is
prohibited (by a policy set up by our advisory committee!) and while hard
to enforce, we have a few times asked students to refrain from gobbling up
CPU doing that. It hasn't been a problem with faculty or staff users.]
If a user needs more disk space for a project there's a simple procedure
for asking for more. It can be done via e-mail -- takes less than a day in
most cases. In addition, there is a BIG disk set aside as a "Cinderella"
device, that can be used for temporary storage of data sets or whatever.
The files stored there vanish at midnight of the day AFTER they are
created. All users have access to the Cinderella disk.
Our "baseline" allocations are determined by a faculty committee, with a
lot of input from the computer center staff. I'm sure there are different
ways of allocating resources, and institutions with greater demand or fewer
resources than ours must have some interesting approaches.
We're moving to a new accounting scheme next year and are coincidentally
going through the worldwide university budget crunch, so we're going to
have to develop some new ways of allocating computing resources and
accounting for their use at the departmental (not individual) level. If
anyone out there has good ideas about how to do this fairly and with
minimal impact on academic freedom I'd REALLY like to hear from you! If you
have any example of BAD ways to allocate resources, please pass those
along, too.
Thanks.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mark Sheehan, Technical Communications Administrator |
|-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------|
| University Computing Services | BITNET: sheehan@iubacs |
| Indiana University | Internet: sheehan@ucs.indiana.edu |
| Bloomington, Indiana USA 47405 | Telephone: (812) 855-0913 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 16:09:56 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 14:03:17 EDT
Sender: brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe)
Subject: the newsgroup vote
Status: R
The vote George Herbert referred to is my proposal for the creation of
the comp.admin.policy newsgroup. At his suggestion, I'm passing this on to
you folks. Hopefully it won't be too redundant (after being posted to
comp.org.eff.talk), and will be of interest.
-- cut --
Subject: CFV: comp.admin.policy
This is a formal Call for Votes for the creation of the unmoderated
group comp.admin.policy. Its purpose is to provide a forum for the
discussion of site administration policy, including but not limited
to:
- email privacy (the administration and implementation of it)
- account contracts .. what should be in them?
- acceptable use policy for networks, schools, companies, etc
- what constitutes abuse of a user's account
- policy on breakins, attempted breakins, etc
- the ethics and issues involved in the restriction/freedom
of accounts
- the chain of command..who does what at your site?
It is intended to centralize the scattered conversations concerning
these topics that appear in many other groups, to hopefully create a
base of knowledge on site administration policy.
To register your vote, do the following:
- if you're in favor of creating the group, write to
policy-yes@cs.widener.edu (on the Internet)
{backbone}!widener!policy-yes (for UUCP)
- if you're against creating the group, write to
policy-no@cs.widener.edu (on the Internet)
{backbone}!widener!policy-no (for UUCP)
The subject and body of the message don't matter.
The voting period will be open from Monday, April 8, until Monday, May 6.
-- cut --
--
Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
"Does this person look relaxed to you? Well, it's actually an
experiment of Contour's new 565-E chair!"
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 19:05:06 1991
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Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 18:49:05 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space" (another topic shift)
Status: RO
At Case, things have been changing alot recently. We don't really have too
much trouble with disk space. There is usually plenty of it.
Cpu time isn't a real problem either. There are enough workstations on
campus... Getting a free one is a pain sometimes though.
Troubles here stem from more of who has say-so over what goes on the
campus net.
The problems are more from the fact that there are no concrete rules (though
they are in the making) and there are a few people who try to abuse public
privilages. These same people seem to be appearing over and over again too.
Each time they have something else to do to push their limits, and sys-admins
patience.
Where should the line be? When should it be ok for the system admins to
"turn them off" ie, limit net access? Or should it at all? There are
arguements both ways.
later.
Dan
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Mon Apr 15 22:08:55 1991
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Sender: abb3w@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (Arthur Bernard Byrne)
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1991 21:39:44 EDT
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.2 7/11/90)
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space" (another topic shift)
Status: RO
Here's a silly idea. How about a variriant on the classic
system used in Athens: the Ostrakon. (Please ignore spelling
mistakes.) If someone was seen as becoming too much of a threat
to the state, someone would write his name on a pot fragment (an
"ostrakon" in classic Greek), and throw it into a bin to be
counted. If enough votes accumulated, the person was sent into
exile for a period of 10 years and their properties were held in
stasis to wait for his/her return. Now, with net access, 10 yrs
is a bit long. on the order of 10 days should suffice for a
warning. Multiple voting "bins" could be available for different
periods of exile. This way, the power would be distributed amoung
those generally annoyed, and not just those In Power. Of corse, I
don't think this will prevent someone from being temporarily
exiled for failure to be "PC", but it makes it harder. A
committee works less swiftly than a single person, doubly so if
not even formally organized.
$0.02
Arthur B. Byrne
abb3w@fulton.seas.virginia.edu
AB^2
From kadie Wed Apr 17 00:52:51 1991
To: cafb-mail
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom (batch version)
Status: R
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 10:31:38 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup "
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 23:46:11 CDT
Sender: louisg
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL4]
>
> Suppose disk space really is scarce and users have quotas as to the
> amount of disk they may use (say 3 Meg). Then, in my opinion, users
> should be able to say: "I'd like to allocate 1/2 Meg to newsgroup ."
>
> This lets the sysadmin off the hook. He or she no longer has to decide
> what is good for the users.
>
>
>
Yes, but then you have say 5 users each allocating 1/2 meg to comp.org.eff.talk
for a total of 2.5 megs for that group as opposed to 1/2 meg for everyone.
The best solution would be to get more disk space. If the users really really
want news, then get up a collection or something and the institution pays
half and the users pay half. A good sized 1,000+ meg hard drive costs a
couple of thousand, so if you have like 1000 users, and they kick in $5
each, you could get it no prob.
This way the space for news is guaranteed since the users own the space.
Now processor consumption is a different story, but that is usually less of
a problem since the amount of processor time used to read news is minimal
compared to say doing an iterative function.
Louis
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
! "As above, so below; as below, so above" -- The Kybalion !
! "I don't trust him; he has dark hair" -- My girlfriend's mother !
! "So I'm stupid; what's your point?" -- Me !
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
! Louis J. Giliberto, Jr. ! The above is NOT to be reproduced in part !
! louisg@vpnet.chi.il.us ! or in whole without PRIOR consent of me !
! ! (except to flame me in USENET or E-Mail). !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 12:42:36 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 12:06:36 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup "
You example is riddiculus. 1000 users??? a 1000 meg drive is going to
hardly be a drop in the bucket for that many people. Not to mention the
fact that you are going to be dying for processor time.
Anyway... to direct this back towards the Real topic of this news group,
suppose that you have limited disk space, and have no methods for aquiring
more disk space, how does an administrator decided what to get rid of, and
how to limit space?
on how well you know the administrator, or who you know that has more say
of what goes on... someone like the administrators boss.
Dan
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 14:06:14 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 11:02:58 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup "
It may be appropriate at some time to begin a technical discussion of
what types and amounts of resources are required to provide news to N
users. However, I think that there are basic issues that should be
addressed first.
Libraries have been dealing with a similar problem for many years. No
university library that I know of has a budget that would allow it to
purchase every book requested let alone every book published. The
association that librarians belong to has a policy that addresses
this. Would anyone care to see if they can find a copy of this that
is on line? I think that the best starting point for this discussion
is this policy. We then should examine it thoughtfully and determine
whether actual differences in the technology (books v. computers)
require any changes to the policy. In any case, I don't think that
news feeds are a very significant problem for academic freedom.
I have to admit that I am more concerned with academic freedom for
faculty than for students. I belive that there are two problems with
computers and freedom. Anyone who reads org.eff.talk knows about the
general problems with computers being used to limit everybodies
freedom. These are important issues, but I think that in this forum
we should focus on whether computers are being used to limit those
specific freedoms encompassed by academic freedom.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 14:06:15 1991
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 13:39:08 EDT
Sender: Steven.S.Brack@osu.edu
Cc: brack@ewf.eng.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup "
Now Ohio State's main newsreading system, MAGNUS, gives undergrad users only
1/2 Meg of disk space (grads/faculty get 1 Meg).
This raises two questions: (1) With disk space so limited, our nearly-full
newsfeed (missing a few alt.*'s) is a
considerable user of disk space. Should we
spool a group no one reads? One person reads?
My point: how do we draw the line between a
group that's useful, & a waste of disk space?
(2) Why do certain groups get more disk space than
others? This machine is not used for any task
other than news & mail. Why should grad
students get more space than undergrads? I'm
sure there's a reason, but I can't find it.
===========================================================================
Steven S. Brack Steven.S.Brack@osu.edu | I don't speak for OSU.
BitNet: Steven.S.Brack%osu.edu@ohstvmsa.bitnet | (Bill Miller just can't
(Denied posting @ The Ohio State University) | understand that.)
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 14:37:12 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: William W. Arnold
Subject: Re: "Not enough disk space for newsgroup "
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 14:16:44 EDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org writes ---
> You example is riddiculus. 1000 users??? a 1000 meg drive is going to
> hardly be a drop in the bucket for that many people. Not to mention the
> fact that you are going to be dying for processor time.
>
rediculous by what standards. our system has approx 2500 users
with a /person partition of 976 meg
and 30 meg in /tmp
I'de love to get an extra 1000 meg, And then double my disk quota.
Of course we only have about 100 people on at once, and we're pushing the
limits of the system. (new computer for the fall semester, at last)
/------------------------------\ /----------------------------------\
| William W. Arnold | Is the universe an accident, |
| has8wwa@cabell.vcu.edu | a mistake, or did someone |
| warnold@gnu.ai.mit.edu | do it to us on purpose? |
| someone.else@someplace.else | --ME-- |
\------------------------------/ \----------------------------------/
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 14:37:12 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 14:05:03 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: Library Policy
Dudley Irish writes:
The association that librarians belong to has a policy that addresses
this. Would anyone care to see if they can find a copy of this that
is on line?
I'm enclosing a copy of the US and Canadian library policies. (A list
of similar documents are available via anonymous ftp from eff.org in
file academic/README)
=====
[Joint statement by: the American Library Association and Association
of American Publishers. Adopted May 1953]
FREEDOM TO READ STATEMENT
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously
under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the
country are working to remove books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label
"controversial" books, to distribute lists of "objectionable" books or authors,
and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our
national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and
suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption
of morals. We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as librarians and
publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the public
interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
We are deeply concerned about these attempts at suppression. Most
such attempts rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that
the ordinary citizen, by exercising his critical judgment, will accept the
good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private, assume that they
should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow citizens.
We trust Americans to recognize propaganda, and to reject it. We do not
believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. We do not
believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order
to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe
they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.
We are aware, of course, that books are not alone in being subjected to
efforts at suppression. We are aware that these efforts are related to a
larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, films,
radio and television. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The
shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger
voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy.
Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of uneasy
change and pervading fear. Especially when so many of our apprehensions are
directed against an ideology, the expression of a dissident idea becomes a
thing feared in itself, and we tend to move against it as against a hostile
deed, with suppression.
And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of
social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure
strain. Freedom keeps open the path o novel and creative solutions, and
enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every
enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society
and leaves it the less able to deal with stress.
Now as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of
freedom. They are almost the only means for making generally available ideas
or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. They
are the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come
the original contributions to social growth. They are essential to the extended
discussion which serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge
and ideas into organized collections.
We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a
free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures towards
conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and
expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every
American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate,
in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and
librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to
read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of
offerings.
The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith
in free will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential
rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.
We therefore affirm these propositions:
1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make
available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those which are
unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.
Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The
bearer of every new thought is a rebel until his idea is refined and tested.
Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless
suppression of any concept which challenges the established orthodoxy. The power
of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom
of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely
to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the
democratic process Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing
and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like
these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.
2. Publishers, librarians and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea
or presentation contained in the books they make available. It would conflict
with the public interest for them to establish their own political moral or
aesthetic views as a standard for determining what books should be published
or circulated.
Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to
make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the
increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the
patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and
consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single
librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one man can
read should be confined to what another thinks proper.
3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to
determine the acceptability of a book on the basis of the personal history or
political affiliations of the author.
A book should be judged as a book. No art or literature can flourish if
it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators.
No society of free men can flourish which draws up lists of writers to whom it
will not listen, whatever they may have to say.
4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others,
to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to
inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.
To some, much of modern literature is shocking. But is not much of life
itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from
dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to
prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will
be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically
for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged
simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet
prepared. In these matters taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can
machinery be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting
the freedom of others.
5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any
book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the book or author as subversive
or dangerous.
The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups
with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen. It
presupposes that each individual must be directed in making up his mind about
the ideas he examines. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking
for them.
6. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of
the people's freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by
individuals or groups seeking to impose their on standards or tastes upon the
community at large.
It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the
political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will
occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free
society each individual is free to determine for himself what he wishes to read,
and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely
associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands,
and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a
democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the
accepted and the inoffensive.
7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full
meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity
of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility
bookmen can demonstrate that the answer to a bad book is a good one, the
answer to a bad idea is a good one.
The freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivial;
it is frustrated when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for his purpose. What
is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of
opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said.
Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down,
and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of their freedom
and integrity, and the enlargement of their service to society, requires of all
bookmen the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest
of their support.
We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations.
We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of books. We do so because we
believe that they are good, possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy
of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these
propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that
are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the
comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that
what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the
suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a
dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
Joint statement by:
American Library Association
Association of American Publishers
Adopted May, 1953.
------------------
Library Bill of Rights
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for
information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide
their services.
1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest,
information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library
serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background,
or views of those contributing to their creation.
2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all
points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be
proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their
responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned
with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
5. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged
because of origin, age, background, or views.
6. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to
the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable
basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups
requesting their use.
Adopted June 18, 1948.
Amended February 2, 1961, June 27, 1967, and January 23, 1980,
by the ALA Council.
=======
Path: ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!davecb
Sender: davecb@yunexus.YorkU.CA (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: liability of allowing news reading
Message-ID: <18842@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
Date: 10 Dec 90 20:51:55 GMT
References: <1990Dec10.175530.23753@cs.wayne.edu> <1990Dec10.193339.5349@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: York U. Computing Services
Lines: 49
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>However, being a university, you probably also have firm policy commitments
>to freedom of speech, which may limit the effects of the rules you mention.
>It can be argued that discrimination and harassment are acts against people,
>and words are not acts unless they are targeted at specific people. Of
>course, there are people who see "sexual harassment" in almost anything...
Most universities already have an agreed policy, usually set up by
their library. The CLA (Canadian Library Association) policy is:
Canadian Library Association
Statement on Intellectual Freedom
All persons in canada have the fundamental right, as embodied in the
nation's Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to
have access to all expressions of knowledge, creativity and intellectual
activity, and to express their thoughts publicly. This right to
intellectual freedom, under the law, is essential to the health and
development of Canadian society.
Libraries have a basic responsibility for the development and
maintenance of intellectual freedom.
It is the responsibility of libraries to guarantee and facilitate access
to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those
which some some elements of society may consider to be unconventional,
unpopular or unacceptable. To this end, libraries shall acquire and make
available the widest variety of materials.
It is the responsibility of libraries to guarantee the right of free
expression by making available all the library's public facilities and
services to all individuals and groups which need them.
Libraries should resist all efforts to limit the exercise of these
responsibilities while recognizing the right of criticism by individuals and
groups.
Both employees and employers in libraries have a duty, in addition to
their institutional responsibilities, to uphold these principles.
Adopted 1974, amended 1983 and 1985.
--dave
--
David Collier-Brown, | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA, ...!yunexus!davecb or
72 Abitibi Ave., | {toronto area...}lethe!dave or just
Willowdale, Ontario, | postmaster@{nexus.}yorku.ca
CANADA. 416-223-8968 | work phone (416) 736-5257 x 22075
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 16:40:16 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe)
Subject: Disk space
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 15:38:26 EDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Steven Brack wrote:
> Now Ohio State's main newsreading system, MAGNUS, gives undergrad users only
> 1/2 Meg of disk space (grads/faculty get 1 Meg).
(Quick note .. let's avoid dragging the news.admin muck to here, please.)
500k is the default I use here, too. I've yet to have more than one
or two people a semester ask me to up it for them. (And by then I'm
more than willing to because the mere fact that they understand the
concept of a quota shows me that they've already gone beyond 50% of
the other users, so I've got confidence they'll put it to reasonably
good use.) Admittedly this can be wrong, but it's generally worked
out.
> This raises two questions: (1) With disk space so limited, our nearly-full
> newsfeed (missing a few alt.*'s) is a
> considerable user of disk space. Should we
> spool a group no one reads? One person reads?
> My point: how do we draw the line between a
> group that's useful, & a waste of disk space?
Perhaps a really fast expire (1-2 days) on groups a local arbitron
shows that no one reads would be advisable, but that's up to the
sysadmins in question -- it's their disk (practically, if not
physically), and they can do what they want with it.
> (2) Why do certain groups get more disk space than
> others? This machine is not used for any task
> other than news & mail. Why should grad
> students get more space than undergrads? I'm
> sure there's a reason, but I can't find it.
Because the number of grad students that do projects that require
1Mb or more usually *far* out-distances the number of undergrads.
Probably the next-highest users, at least among undergrads, would be
people working on senior projects. There are undergrads that need
more space, and they should ask the sysadmin for the space,
explaining why they need it. Keeping a low quota helps avoid 40
people all downloading the latest cool version of MUD or Galatic
Bloodshed to compile and try out.
Just my $.02.
--
Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
"Does this person look relaxed to you? Well, it's actually an
experiment of Contour's new 565-E chair!"
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 20:09:14 1991
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Organization: Degrading Chaos, unincorporated
Subject: Disk usage
Status: RO
If you can NSF mount the manual pages, that will free up some space since
manual pages are heavily used on a rare basis. In practice, as long as the
system administrator keeps a 'public binaries' directory available and
gets people to dump their stuff there, most people shouldn't ever need
over about 200K, especially for a strictly news/mail machine. Those who
are using it to program will of course use 500K or more.
For narrowing down groups, there are two ways (not necessarily exclusive)
I have seen used..
Snoop around root directories from root and compile a list of groups
that a user is subscribed to.
Have people send you lists and compile them. Along the same lines,
delete anything that isn't read often and keep it on a list of "available
by request" groups that is easily accessible and everyone knows about.
Actually, on a Unix box, the average user for just mail/news should
have around 100K, peaking around 200K. Maybe higher for those large
comp.source files, from what I remember.
You could delete the source code directories, /usr/public, /usr/games,
and several other /usr directories. You can also go through the commands
directories and get rid of commands that aren't used on a regular basis,
such as any compilers, as, ld, dbx, and the printer daemons if they aren't
being used. Generally, anything that you can't conceive of being used during
mail or news reading operations, general system maintenance, etc. Except
for removing the compilers and their attendant libraries, this whole process
will only net you about 500K, so it's best to just remove really big things
like the manuals (if you can) or at least thin down the manuals, the compilers
and their libraries, and any large space-takers in /usr, such as public
or games.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Tue Apr 16 21:03:03 1991
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Subject: Disk usage
Status: RO
PECAMPBE%mtus5.cts.mtu.edu@vm1.nodak.edu writes:
>For narrowing down groups, there are two ways (not necessarily exclusive)
>I have seen used..
[...]
> Have people send you lists and compile them. Along the same lines,
>delete anything that isn't read often and keep it on a list of "available
>by request" groups that is easily accessible and everyone knows about.
Perhaps you could even rig the newsreader software to list them as
available, but just give the "please tell the sysadmin" message when
somebody tries to read them.
/============================================================================\
| Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.|
| Department of Mathematics |=============================================|
| University of Chicago | What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9? |
| francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu | --Ultimate Question |
\============================================================================/
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 00:42:25 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 22:13:05 -0500
Sender: "Carl M. Kadie"
Subject: FYI: "Electronic mail message may be bylaws violation"
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 12:01:22 PDT
Sender: "Peter G. Neumann"
Subject: "Electronic mail message may be bylaws violation"
The Stanford Daily on 15 April 1991 had a front page article by Howard Libit,
staff writer, on Nawwar Kasrawi, a Stanford senate associate and election
candidate who on 14 April sent EMail to over 2000 students urging them to
support the People's Platform Council of Presidents `Stand and Deliver` slate,
senate candidates, and special fee requests. Academic Information Resources,
which operates the campus computer system, froze his account soon afterwards,
because the messages were clogging the system. There is debate over whether he
violated election bylaws governing the use of EMail in elections, whether the
disk space used exceeded AIR policies, and whether the fair-market value of the
mailing would exceed the campaign spending limits. It seems to me as an
uninformed observer that the existing guidelines did not adequately anticipate
all of the potential (mis)uses, creative and otherwise. The article listed
various unrelated problems, and did not indicate whether this election would be
conducted on-line as was the case in a recent election, noted here in RISKS...
PGN
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 00:42:50 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: molenda@s1.msi.umn.edu
Subject: Re: Disk usage
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 22:12:48 CDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
> system administrator keeps a 'public binaries' directory available and
> gets people to dump their stuff there, most people shouldn't ever need
> over about 200K, especially for a strictly news/mail machine. Those who
> are using it to program will of course use 500K or more.
Can folks actually get by developing software at 500k? I know myself,
being a system administrator and having a lot of files sitting in my
home directory, sit at around 30 megs or so. Admittedly, this is a bit
high, but at this research institute we give a default of a 10 meg
quota limit for normal users...
> Snoop around root directories from root and compile a list of groups
> that a user is subscribed to.
> Have people send you lists and compile them. Along the same lines,
> delete anything that isn't read often and keep it on a list of "available
> by request" groups that is easily accessible and everyone knows about.
There is a program to do this. I think it's called like Dynafeed or
somesuch thing. Used primarily for small UUCP sites. It negotiates
with your feed site; when a user signs up for a group that no one was
previously subscribed to, the dynafeed thing tells your upstream
site(s) to also send that group (and I think it sends 1 or 2 days of
back traffic to give the users a little history). Neat idea. Alas,
with a few hundred users, it may end up that at least one person is
subscribed to most of the groups... (educated guess; I don't have
any numbers to back this up or anything).
> Actually, on a Unix box, the average user for just mail/news should
> have around 100K, peaking around 200K. Maybe higher for those large
> comp.source files, from what I remember.
My mail files, for all incoming and outgoing mail since about mid-1989
is currently sitting at 11.5 megs (and most is compressed!). Again,
I'm not the average case, but there's folks out there like me. (I
really should put all that stuff off to tape one of these days...)
anyway, my 2 cents.
-jason
--
Jason Molenda, Tech Support, Iris & News Admin, Minnesota Supercomputer Inst
molenda@msi.umn.edu || "You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish."
From kadie Thu Apr 18 01:28:20 1991
To: cafb-mail
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom (batch version)
Status: R
There were a huge number of notes today. The most interesting,
in my opinion where details of the Case Western incident
from both sides and a discussion of student academic freedom
in contrast with faculty academic freedom.
- Carl
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 00:42:50 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path:
Sender: molenda@s1.msi.umn.edu
Subject: Re: Disk usage
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 22:12:48 CDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: R
> system administrator keeps a 'public binaries' directory available and
> gets people to dump their stuff there, most people shouldn't ever need
> over about 200K, especially for a strictly news/mail machine. Those who
> are using it to program will of course use 500K or more.
Can folks actually get by developing software at 500k? I know myself,
being a system administrator and having a lot of files sitting in my
home directory, sit at around 30 megs or so. Admittedly, this is a bit
high, but at this research institute we give a default of a 10 meg
quota limit for normal users...
> Snoop around root directories from root and compile a list of groups
> that a user is subscribed to.
> Have people send you lists and compile them. Along the same lines,
> delete anything that isn't read often and keep it on a list of "available
> by request" groups that is easily accessible and everyone knows about.
There is a program to do this. I think it's called like Dynafeed or
somesuch thing. Used primarily for small UUCP sites. It negotiates
with your feed site; when a user signs up for a group that no one was
previously subscribed to, the dynafeed thing tells your upstream
site(s) to also send that group (and I think it sends 1 or 2 days of
back traffic to give the users a little history). Neat idea. Alas,
with a few hundred users, it may end up that at least one person is
subscribed to most of the groups... (educated guess; I don't have
any numbers to back this up or anything).
> Actually, on a Unix box, the average user for just mail/news should
> have around 100K, peaking around 200K. Maybe higher for those large
> comp.source files, from what I remember.
My mail files, for all incoming and outgoing mail since about mid-1989
is currently sitting at 11.5 megs (and most is compressed!). Again,
I'm not the average case, but there's folks out there like me. (I
really should put all that stuff off to tape one of these days...)
anyway, my 2 cents.
-jason
--
Jason Molenda, Tech Support, Iris & News Admin, Minnesota Supercomputer Inst
molenda@msi.umn.edu || "You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish."
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:18 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
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Return-Path:
Subject: Re: Disk usage
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:17:30 -0500
Sender: goehring@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
Status: R
>> If you can NSF mount the manual pages, that will free up some space since
>> manual pages are heavily used on a rare basis.
really? i pull up man pages rather often when programming; i haven't
memorized the names and arguments for each and every call in libc yet.
we do remote mount /usr/man here, and it's extremely annoying to get
NFS disk waits when you try to read a man page when the host machine
is down.
>> In practice, as long as the system administrator keeps a 'public
>> binaries' directory available and gets people to dump their stuff
>> there
problem with public binary directories is you have to go through them
and remove trash. a good number of users discover that this is a
great way to hide stuff where their quota doesn't reach.
purdue had to institute quotas on /tmp and /usr/tmp because students
were putting multimegabytes in /tmp or /usr/tmp and using at jobs to
touch them every 6 hours or so, which kept the tmp trimmer from
removing them.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:09:05 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: More on Library Policy
Status: R
I went out to dinner with a friend of mine who is a librarian and I
asked her what librarians are supposed to do when they can't afford
all the books that people want. She is looking in the ALA Yearbook
and Handbook to see if there is an official policy, but she made some
comments that I found interesting.
First, she told me about the class she took on how to select books.
To summarize, librarian's are expected to exercise scholarly judgment
in selecting which books they will purchase striving all the while to
maintain the widest range and the highest quality. This sounds like
bad news for some of the people on this list. Libraries have been
doing this for hundreds of years and nobody holds that it violates
anybody's academic freedom. At most you could question the criteria
used by the sys admin in selecting the groups that are dropped[1]. In
fact it occurred to me that we should hand the whole news feed issue
over to the libraries. Is anybody out there at an institution at
which the library provides a news feed?
Second, she reminded me the way that libraries have been handling this
problem for many years, inter-library loans. No single institution
can get all the books requested so they attempt to coordinate their
purchases with other institutions within the city or state. Then when
someone requests a book that they don't have they should be able to
locate it at another library and borrow it. In the case of news, this
seems to offer a very clean and very acceptable solution. At my
University, we have a number of machines that carry news. With some
coordination, we should be able to arrange for all the news groups to
be represented somewhere and we should be able to cooperate enough to
allow users to borrow this news feed via NNTP. In fact this seems
like such a good idea that I am amazed that it hasn't been implemented
yet. Does anybody know of a news reader that is designed to use NNTP
to access multiple servers?
All of this pretty much confirms my belief that the news feed issue is
not really one that affects academic freedom very much. I hope that
soon we can move on to issues that do affect academic freedom rather
that discussing disk quotas. I am afraid that my impression so far is
that many of the contributors to this list really have a very limited
experience with academic freedom and its history. Perhaps someone can
sugest a reading list. Most of my knowledge comes from my wife having
served on our University's Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee[2]
not from anything I have read. Perhaps someone on the list is
familiar with a suitable publication from AAUP.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
-------------------------
[1] I can think of a situation which is probably more common that it
should be where the sys admin who is a computer type accepts the whole
comp feed while rejecting the biol feed. This would be a problem if
some of the users were actually wanted the biol feed. However, the
problem isn't in not taking the biol feed, but in the way the decision
was made.
[2] If you are having serious problems relating to academic freedom, I
would strongly sugest that you find out who the chair of your academic
freedom committee is and talk the problem over with that person. The
AFT committee is the body which hears complaints concerning academic
freedom. So if you really want to charge that your academic freedom
has been violated, then this is the body that will hear the complaint.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Return-Path: <@VM1.NoDak.EDU:PECAMPBE@mtus5.cts.mtu.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 10:50:39 EST
Sender: PECAMPBE%mtus5.cts.mtu.edu@VM1.NoDak.EDU
Organization: Degrading Chaos, unincorporated
Subject: re: disk usage
Status: R
Err, I said that most users rarely use man pages, but pull use them heavily
at times. This is an NFS fault, because it should somehow mark areas that
are about to be used. I pull up man pages a lot when programming myself, but
in this case, there shouldn't be anything going on in a machine just for
mail and news, right?
As far as a public binaries directory goes, you could make a special
incoming directory and have someone look over the material before adding
it to the main directories, so no hiding here other than coding some
back doors into the code.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Subject: Re: Disk usage
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:25:34 -0500
Sender: goehring@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
Status: R
>> Can folks actually get by developing software at 500k? I know myself,
>> being a system administrator and having a lot of files sitting in my
>> home directory, sit at around 30 megs or so. Admittedly, this is a bit
>> high, but at this research institute we give a default of a 10 meg
>> quota limit for normal users...
i do volunteer programming for the computing center here. i have a
350k account, and i do almost all of my work in either /tmp or the
shared volunteer account (which is 10M).
it is nearly impossible to develop software of any size without using
at least a few megabytes.
>> > Actually, on a Unix box, the average user for just mail/news should
>> > have around 100K, peaking around 200K. Maybe higher for those large
>> > comp.source files, from what I remember.
>>
>> My mail files, for all incoming and outgoing mail since about mid-1989
>> is currently sitting at 11.5 megs (and most is compressed!). Again,
>> I'm not the average case, but there's folks out there like me. (I
>> really should put all that stuff off to tape one of these days...)
i have 332K of mail in my account right now. that's since April 10; i
spool off old mail to tape every ten days. i don't receive
particularily extraordinary amounts of mail, either.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:20 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
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Return-Path: <@po5.andrew.cmu.edu:js9b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 11:58:22 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: "Jon C. Slenk"
Subject: Re: Library / Publisher / Book seller Purposes
Beak: is Not
Status: R
--
In the message entitled "Library Policy"
"We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility
to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the
readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings."
--
I just wanted to make/hilight a quick point...
If I am a book store owner, I should have the right to stock whatever I
wish to. If I am a library owner, I should have the right to stock
whatever I wish to. If I am a publisher, I should have the right to print
whatever I wish to.
While I agree that diversity is crucial to the survival and growth of our
society, and that censorship is a heinous crime, I do *not* wish to see us
suddenly considering freedom to be so important that we refrain from being
*individuals.*
Personally, I believe that the way freedom and diversity should exist is
via a capitalist, free market approach to life. This means that if I wish
to start a publishing company that only sells children's books that deal
solely with learning arithmetic, I should be able to so restrict my
endeavours. There is no reason that I should have to also publish gay
pornogrophy or Marx and Engels. Now, if someone *else* comes along and
says, "Hey, I want to publish pulp science fiction," then they should be
able to. In this way, the free market allows the various beliefs to be
expressed, and allows "consumers" to obtain anything they want.
So, in a nut shell, I don't believe that it is correct that it is anyone's
responsibility to go out and make sure all views are available to the
reading public.
-Jon / js9b+@andrew.cmu.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:20 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 11:57:26 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: More on Library Policy
Status: R
Just some more information. It is the policy of most libraries to
accept donated magazines subscription. This is why the residents of
this area can easily read the John Birch Society magazine or the
American Atheists magazine. (The library picks up the cost of
cataloging and storage.)
Also note, some newsgroups do require a subscription fee, for example,
clari.feature.mike_royko.
Ironically, the University of Waterloo bans the rec.humor.funny
newsgroup, but their library owns copies of the year-end book.
- Carl
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 12:15:20 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 08:14:06 pdt
Sender: schell@llandru.eecs.ucdavis.edu (Stephan V. Schell)
Subject: Re: FYI: "Electronic mail message may be bylaws violation"
Status: R
This mass emailing of political materials disturbs me. I get enough
USnail that is junk without having to wade through the prodigious
amounts of junk email that could be generated by truly computerized
mailing operations. A significant difference is that the former does
cost the mailer money, whereas the latter might not (but even if it did,
there is no system for distributing email fees collected by a commercial
service (CompuServe or whatever?) to all of the Usenet and internet systems
that such email could propagate to and through). The point I'm trying
to lead to here is that the academic freedom we enjoy through our essentially
free email access (at least those of us on internet) would be compromised
by mass emailings of a commercial or political (or religious) nature.
I think that there are existing policies regarding the use of Usenet and
internet for these activities, but I am wondering how effective they
will be as the boundaries between academic and commercial networks blur
and as the number of nonacademic users increases.
Steve
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:04:26 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:07 EDT
Sender: NETTLEMAN@zodiac.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: sanctioned snooping
Status: R
The word "snooping" also caught my attention. Seems incongruous
at best.
The analogy with library policy has also been of some interest.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:04:26 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Return-Path: <@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:STANKULI@UWF.BITNET>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 11:07:23 CST
Sender: stan kulikowski ii
Subject: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
i just started reading this group, but i assume a case study concerning
electronic freedom is in order?
a couple years ago i was on the faculty at purdue, doing some research which
involved extensive use of the computer services. they had a censor who
screened all outgoing usenet news feeds and abruptly pulled anything off the
nets that he did not like. i had several submissions pulled because of some
tedious local constraints on form and content. the last one he yanked because
he thought i had posted it to the wrong group... he felt the content belonged
on comp.legal or some such, rather than the group that i read everyday.
well, i was friends with an engineering graduate student. he could be
described as ultraliberal and a touch paraniod. he was a curious mix-- active
member of a palestinian rights group, homophobic, and a naval reserve officer.
he had an account in one of the engineering systems with a GUI interface. he
said he felt that the system operators were always monitoring his accounts
which he felt was an invasion of his personal security. anyway, way down in
his heirarchical file structure he created an empty folder entitled 'KILL BUSH
KILL QUAYLE'. just an empty folder, nothing in it. shortly after he had done
this, he told me he had to see if they were watching him.
well, a couple weeks later, he came home one day to find the secret service
ransacking his apartment. to be honest, his apartment was one of the messiest
i have ever seen, so it did not look much different afterward. the ss guys
asked him a lot of questions, especially one of them asked if he was writing
any computer games. they took some notes and left. then the FBI started
phoning him, requesting appointments which he refused. the local lafayette
police department started showing up on his doorstep to let him know they were
watching.
i do not know if his account ever got frozen or pulled, but i know he was
getting warnings from the system people on the amount of proprietary macintosh
software he was storing there-- about 18 meg as i recall. some of it was due
to CAD software he was betatesting.
i don't know what generalizations should come from this experience. the
system people were obviously monitoring his file structures. whether this is a
routine process, like system backup, or something special tagged to certain
users-- i do not know. when i left purdue, i was glad to get out from under
the noticeable censorship of news group postings. i'd bet this message would
have been yanked if i had sent it from there. i met some system people there
who were genuinely helpful, but there were others who were pretty heavy-handed
in their sense of user control.
okay, that is your case study. where lies the right and wrong?
stan
. stankuli@UWF.bitnet
===
| | close your eyes, my darling, or three of them at least
--- -- old venusian lullaby
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:04:26 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 09:35:37 PDT
Sender: stevens@Csa2.LBL.Gov (Dave F. Stevens)
Subject: sanctioned snooping
Status: R
Snoop around root directories from root and compile a list of groups
that a user is subscribed to.
...I am afraid that my impression so far is
that many of the contributors to this list really have a very limited
experience with academic freedom and its history.
I, too, find it odd that in a list presumably concerned with academic
freedom no hackles are raised by the idea of Establishment snooping
around directories.
D. F. Stevens
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:04:27 1991
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 11:44:30 -0600
Sender: scott@hsvaic.boeing.com
Subject: Re: Library / Publisher / Book seller Purposes
Status: R
Jon writes:
>>In the message entitled "Library Policy"
>>
>>"We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility
>>to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the
>>readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings."
>>
>>--
>
>I just wanted to make/hilight a quick point...
>
>If I am a book store owner, I should have the right to stock whatever I
>wish to. If I am a library owner, I should have the right to stock
>whatever I wish to. If I am a publisher, I should have the right to print
>whatever I wish to.
...
>So, in a nut shell, I don't believe that it is correct that it is anyone's
>responsibility to go out and make sure all views are available to the
>reading public.
Jon,
While I agree with most of your points, it seems to me you are missing a
critical point:
Libraries (as used in the context of this discussion) are created and
financed by the reading public (and non-reading for that matter) by their
taxes. Thus, the public (the state in most of these cases) owns the
library.
The person(s) in charge of procuring materials for the libraries are NOT
the owners, but rather are selected to represent the public by their choice
of materials.
It can thus be argued that libraries DO have the "responsibility to go out
and make sure all views are available to the reading public". Because
presumably all those views were originally held by members of that public.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
VOICENET:Scott Hinckley |USnail:110 Pine Ridge Road #608 Huntsville Al35801
ATTNET : (205)461-2073 ^^^^^ as in as slow as a
Internet:scott@hsvaic.boeing.com
UUCP:..!uunet!uw-beaver!bcsaic!hsvaic!scott
DISCLAIMER: All contained herein are my opinions, they do not represent the
opinions or feelings of Boeing or its management.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:18:48 1991
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:55:32 CDT
Sender: francis%zaphod@gargoyle.uchicago.edu
Subject: sanctioned snooping
Status: R
> Snoop around root directories from root and compile a list of groups
> that a user is subscribed to.
>I, too, find it odd that in a list presumably concerned with academic
>freedom no hackles are raised by the idea of Establishment snooping
>around directories.
I think the idea was to make it anonymous--from the way I read the
description, it sounded like the snooping program wouldn't pay
attention to *whom* it found subscribed to given groups, just which
ones were in use.
This doesn't violate privacy, and is information the sysadmin has a
legitimate use for (i.e., minimizing unnecessary disk overhead).
It could possibly be abused, if the program were set to hunt down
people subscribed to, for example, alt.sex, and record their names for
blackmail purposes--but that's not what was suggested. (And most
sysadmins who objected to alt.sex would just kill it instead, no?)
It doesn't limit freedom to kill groups that nobody wants--provided,
of course, that they're still available on request.
/============================================================================\
| Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.|
| Department of Mathematics |=============================================|
| University of Chicago | Earth: Love it or leave it. |
| francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu | |
\============================================================================/
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 14:18:48 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: rsk@juniper.circ.upenn.edu (Rick Kulawiec)
Posted-Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:40:41 EDT
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:40:41 EDT
Organization: Cardiothoracic Imaging Research Center, Hospital of UPenn
X-Queued-Mail: 585messages
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Status: R
> a couple years ago i was on the faculty at purdue, doing some research which
>involved extensive use of the computer services. they had a censor who
>screened all outgoing usenet news feeds and abruptly pulled anything off the
>nets that he did not like. i had several submissions pulled because of some
>tedious local constraints on form and content. the last one he yanked because
>he thought i had posted it to the wrong group... he felt the content belonged
>on comp.legal or some such, rather than the group that i read everyday.
Well, this should be interesting. :-)
I was the person who was the news administrator described above, but
I have a different view of the situation.
First off, I never removed an article because I "did not like" it. If I
had done so, I would have been far too busy to any real work.
I did, however, for a time, monitor all outbound articles from our site,
and pulled those which grossly failed to conform to the guidelines for
news usage posted to news.announce.newusers. Those guidelines were
(1) reposted locally (2) available in a directory on every machine that
handled news (3) referred to in the user's guide for the site (4) summarized
in a "local" style guide that augmented them with a few "local usage"
conventions and (5) referred to by the "Pnews" program, used by most users
to post news. In other words, those guidelines were widely publicized,
as was what would happen if they weren't followed.
Why was this done? It was done because the site in question had
thousands of users, many of whom posted news, and some of those
folks posted articles to highly inappropriate groups (based on the
group charters in the article "List of Active Newsgroups", which is
posted monthly), or they overquoted previous articles, or did other
things which are considered antisocial on Usenet. This in turn resulted
in a great deal of mail being sent to the news administrator (me)
complaining about these problems. So, after about a year and a half
of trying to simply educate people w/o taking any action,
I started keeping an eye on what went out in order to try and reduce
the number of complaints that I had to deal with.
I'll point out here that this represents a context-based restriction,
not a content-based restriction. Simply put, I couldn't care less what
anyone had to say, as long as they said it in the right place (Usenet
newsgroup).
Secondly, any article which was removed from the outbound queue was returned
to the author with an explanation of why it was deleted, and usually
(if I had time) suggestions on what needed to be done to it in order
to make it acceptable to the rest of Usenet, and a pointer to the
"netiquette" rules, so that they could acquaint themselves with them.
Now, if it had been my intention to "censor" folks, I certainly wouldn't
have told them what I was doing. I would have simply caused the article
to vanish at all sites *except* the one we were at, and the user would
probably have never noticed what happened. I probably would not have
let articles that were critical of me or my site get through, either.
Thirdly, there came a time when the use of Usenet news
at the site came under critical scrutiny by some highly-placed folks
at Purdue. If it had been my intention to silence anyone (everyone),
I certainly wouldn't have defended it as vocally as I did. It would
have been far easier to remain silent, or to take the side of those
who wished to remove all or part of Usenet news.
---Rsk
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 14:23:25 EDT
Sender: The Zen-Master Sphinx
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
Waitaminnit...
So academic freedom is only at issue when FACULTY are being screwed with?
How bout us STUDENTS!?!?!?!?
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+
º THE ZEN-MASTER SPHINX º SPEAK SOFTLY, DRIVE A SHERMAN TANK, º
º ST101293@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU º LAUGH HARD, IT'S A LONG WAY TO THE BANK! º
º ST101293@BROWNVM.BITNET º -THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS º
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+
º YOU MADE MY DAY, NOW YOU HAVE TO SLEEP IN IT -THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS º
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
º JUST REMEMBER, NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE -BUCKAROO BANZAI º
+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+
º DEATH TO XEDIT! º DEATH TO XEDIT! º DEATH TO XEDIT! º DEATH TO XEDIT! º
+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
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Subject: Re: news auditing at purdue (was kill bush kill quayle)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:18:53 -0500
Sender: goehring@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
Status: R
i was at purdue in the time in question. i have had a few articles
canceled by rsk; he even came down and gave me a little talk about it
(which surprised the hell out of me... i'm sitting here reading news
when this big guy walks up behind me and says he wants to talk to me
for a bit). i think it would help a lot of usenetters to have
somebody whap them over the head when they do something stupid (like
post a 8-line sig, which as i recall was my major crime). i actually
went off and read the etiquette files, and then over the next year or
so discovered that nobody paid any real attention to them.
knowing that the funding.gods were considering yanking out news helps
to explain things somewhat.
so far as i know nobody in the computing center has ever had an
article silently eaten, however. i can't speak for ecn, which has
been rumored to be a bit draconian (i have heard that there are people
there who will cancel postings that originate from the remote posting
services at ucbvax with an ecn source address on the grounds that they
must be forgeries, although i can't confirm such rumors).
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:19 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:06:07 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
I am afraid that the tenor of my submissions to this list are going to
make me sound like some kind of Net Cop, but ...
I feel very strongly that academic freedom is critical to society and
I think that it is a failing of colleges and universities that people
are graduating without knowing what academic freedom is and
understanding how important it is. In my opinion, Stan Kilikowski's
submission doesn't address academic freedom.
To summarize he reported two types of abuses. The first was the
censoring of postings, the second was the apparent reporting of the
presence of a filename to the SS. Let us assume that both of these
things did in fact happen, would they constitute a violation of
academic freedom? I would say no.
It is my understanding that for the action of a school's
administration to constitute a violation of a faculty member's[1]
academic freedom it must either interfere unfairly with that faculty
member's ability to do their research or it must unfairly deny them
tenure, promotion, or a pay increase. As you can see, academic
freedom goes beyond the rights described in the Bill of Rights, but
only to protect the faculty's research. Unless the postings were part
of someone's research it doesn't fit the bill. As for snooping around
in file systems, part of the contract which grants faculty academic
freedom is that the research will be conducted publicly, following
applicable regulations, and subject to peer review. To gain academic
freedom faculty must conduct their research in public. Therefore, a
simple violation of someone's privacy may be a violation of their
rights, but not of their academic freedom.
I have been challenged via email to list the computer related academic
freedom issues that I think are important. I must admit, that I can't
think of any. The reason that I subscribed to this list was to hear
of any so that I could relate them to faculty here in order to be
prepared to fight for academic freedom[2]. I am still listening and I
am still concerned that there are ways that computers are being used
to limit academic freedom, but I haven't read any examples yet. This
is why I am afraid that I will start to sound like a Net Cop. I seem
to be constantly saying, "No that isn't academic freedom." I assure
you all that I am very liberal, very progressive, and very committed
to all kinds of freedoms. However, in this mailing list I would like
to see some genuine examples of computers being used to limit academic
freedom.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
----------------------------
[1] For the benefit of recent members of this list, I stated in an
earlier posting that I was more concerned with and new more about
academic freedom for faculty rather than students.
[2] Here at the University of Utah we are part of a proud tradition.
The University has actually been censured because of violations of
academic freedom. Do you know if your institution has ever been
censured?
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:20 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 14:29:57 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
Impressive story about censorship... glad that I am not paraniod (or am ?)
In regards to your comment about your posting being censored, I think that
that is one of the real positive things about having this discussion in a
mailing list format. It is harder (not impossible however) to censor it.
Which raises a question about censorship of e-mail. It is a federal crime
for anyone to mess with us mail in any manner, if it isn't their own. While
admittedly, us mail, and email are two very different things, and postmasters
generally aren't employees of the "postal service," isn't there a good bit
of privacy that should be set for email? Please don't mention this question
to Sears, IBM, or the Prodigy folks... :->
I have heard of situations where system administrators have read email. I
am personnally real comfortable with it either way. I don't like the thought
of someone going through my mail, but on the other hand, as a system admin,
of sorts myself, I know that in some cases, it is a good way to find abuse
of the system, for example, unauthorized use, and use by unidentified or
misidentified (ie saying you are someone you are not) persons.
This brings up the question about security of things like SMTP. I know for
a fact that it is REALLY easy to "fake" an email message or a usenet post.
But I degress.
Where should the line be?
Dan Brown
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:21 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:19:31 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: AAUP membership.
Status: R
Ignorance is offensive whether spoken, written or emailed.
Patricia Hanna
For those of you interested, non-professors can join the American
Association of University Professors as citizen members. For more
information write to:
AAUP
Suite 500
1012 14th St, NW
Washington DC 20005
This is the body that is largely responsible for protecting academic
freedom in the United States. This is the organization that censures
institutions that violate academic freedom. They also have guidelines
which most institutions affirm. It wouldn't hurt to write to them and
get some information.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:21 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 14:47:36 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: research??
Status: R
In an incident recently, a student was "censored" on a local newsgroup.
He had created a program that the administration found objectionable for
the reason that it comprimised network security, was easily modifiable
and could potentialy be used disruptably, sans authentication.
He claims that his academic freedoms were violated on the grounds that he
was doing research, and developing a new method of network communication,
and he wanted people to "test" his program. His major is incidentally not
computer related.
How santioned does research have to be considered under the academic freedom
catagory? How much say should a network administrator have over what goes
across the network?
I personally don't like censorship, but you may notice that this post has
a bit of a "net cop" bend to it. I was partly on the admin side of this issue,
and took a good bit of flack supporting the admin position. This incident
was only one of several incidents involving the particular student and alleged
abuse of the facilities.
So I ask again, Where should the line be drawn?
Dan Brown
brown@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:24 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 15:23:14 GMT-0500
Sender: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (David J. Farber)
Posted-Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 15:23:14 GMT-0500
Subject: you have it wrong -- Dudley Irish post ing on academic freedom
Status: R
Academic freedom is not just part of a contract but a hard fought right that is
based on tradition. It is very very easy to loose. it is designed to create an
environment that not only protects ones research but the right to interpret the
world in ways that might not be looked on with glee by the current establishment.
If you want to see what happens when fear on the part of the administration limits
such freedom , look and see what happened in the John Mccarthy days.
Yes it also applies to research but much more often the limitations are attempted
to be applied to point of view.
I strongly feel by thew way that rights you dont exercise are lost. Academics are
given tenure and rights so they can take strong occasionally not popular views.
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 12:06:07 MDT
> Sender: Dudley Irish
> Subject: kill bush kill quayle
>
> .....
>
> It is my understanding that for the action of a school's
> administration to constitute a violation of a faculty
> member's[1] academic freedom it must either interfere
> unfairly with that faculty member's ability to do their
> research or it must unfairly deny them tenure,
> promotion, or a pay increase. As you can see, academic
> freedom goes beyond the rights described in the Bill of
> Rights, but only to protect the faculty's research.
> Unless the postings were part of someone's research it
> doesn't fit the bill. As for snooping around in file
> systems, part of the contract which grants faculty
> academic freedom is that the research will be conducted
> publicly, following applicable regulations, and
> subject to peer review. To gain academic freedom faculty
> must conduct their research in public. Therefore, a
> simple violation of someone's privacy may be a violation
> of their rights, but not of their academic freedom.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:25 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:41:33 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: research??
Status: R
I just finished talking to a professor who has been on our
University's Academic Freedom and Tenure committee for a number of
years and for the last two years has chaired the committee. I mention
all this to let you know that she is dedicated to protecting academic
freedom and quite knowledgeable about the AAUP guidelines and our
University's regulations. I asked her about academic freedom and
students.
Her view of accepted usage and AAUP guidelines was that unlike for
faculty academic freedom for students does not grant any freedoms not
already described in the Bill of Rights. She said that it was clear
that student organizations were free to invite any speaker that they
wanted to hear and that in a class room within the parameters of the
class a students work must be judged on its merits not on its
agreement with the professor's opinions. These rights are ones that
we hold that an individual has, period. What academic freedom means
to a student is that in becoming a student they do not give up any
rights that they already have. There is a burden on the university to
provide an environment in which a student can pursue free studies but
this is not part of academic freedom.
To address Dan Brown's specific case, my reading is that the student
has no academic freedom protection of his or her research. Until that
student receives an faculty appointment the student's research is not
protected. Clearly the university is not required to support the
research of anybody who comes along, likewise, students are not at the
university to do research but to learn. Obviously, the issue becomes
more complex for PhD candidates but even in that case the candidate's
adviser has a great deal of control over what research is done.
My stand on this incident as described would be that the student had
no right to use the university's equipment to publish his "research",
that his academic freedoms had not been violated, and that the Student
Behavior Committee should consider expelling him.
However, we are not starting to discussion issues related to
electronic publication and censorship which are not strictly related
to academic freedom.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:25 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 15:41:07 EDT
Sender: Ben Fried
Subject: Re: AAUP membership.
Status: R
I believe that it's actually called the American Association of University
Professionals.
Ben
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 16:50:27 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 14:11:59 MDT
Sender: Dudley Irish
Subject: you have it wrong -- Dudley Irish post ing on academic freedom
Status: R
Academic freedom is most emphatically part of a contract. It is part
of the contract of almost every faculty member in the United States.
It is not an inalienable right like the rights described in the Bill
of Rights. In fact, professors at religious schools can be held to
requirements that would get a public school censured. Academic
freedom is not free speech. It is completely separate. It is not a
right to privacy. It is completely separate. It does almost
exclusively apply to research. It is a very special freedom that only
make sense in an academic setting.
It is the freedom to research any topic in a professor's field (a
clear limitation) and to hold any views on that topic. A professor
can not be punished in anyway for holding a view that does not agree
with the rest of the professors in their department or the
institution's administration. It is not some blanket protection that
grants a professor carte blanc to do anything they want.
It is a mis-application of the term to apply it to some of the
situations that I have seen it applied to. If you want to argue that
people have a right to publish harmful programs then you can and I
will agree with you for the most part. However, this is not academic
freedom.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu
Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 17:31:28 1991
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 16:24:57 EDT
Sender: Ben Fried
Subject: AAUP
Status: R
It's been pointed out to me that I'm mistaken - the P in AAUP stands for
Professors, not Professionals. Sorry for the confusion.
Ben
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 18:12:56 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 17:22:13 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: Academic Freedom For Students -- the very idea
Status: R
The AAUP, the largest supporter of academic freedom for faculty, also
recognizes academic freedom from students. These rights go beyond
constitutional rights (but do not as far as faculty rights). For your
reading pleasure, here is the AAUP statement.
[From AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 1977 Edition]
Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms
of Students
In June, 1967, a joint committee, comprised of representatives from
the American Association of University Professors, U. S. National
Student Association, Association of American College, National
Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and National
Association of Woman Deans and Counselors, met in Washington, D.C.,
and drafted the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students
published below.
Since its formulation, the Joint Statement has been endorsed by each
of its five national sponsors, as well as by a number of other
professional bodies. The Association's Council approved the Statement
in October, 1967, and the Fifty-fourth Annual Meeting endorsed it as
Association policy.
Preamble
Academic institutions exist for the transmission of knowledge, the
pursuit of truth, the development of students, and the general
well-being of society. Free inquiry and free expression are
indispensable to the attainment of these goals its members of the
academic community, students should be encouraged to develop the
capacity for critical judgment and to engage in a sustained and
independent search for truth. Institutional procedures for achieving
these purposes may vary from campus to campus, but the minimal
standards of academic freedom of students outlined below are essential
to any community of scholars.
Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of
academic freedom. The freedom to learn depends upon appropriate
opportunities and conditions in the classroom, on the campus, and in
the larger community Students should exercise their freedom with
responsibility.
The responsibility to secure and o respect general conditions
conducive to the freedom to learn is shared by all members of the
academic community. Each college and university has a duty to develop
policies and procedures which provide and safeguard this freedom. Such
policies a procedures should be developed at each institution within
the framework of general standards and with the broadest possible
participation of the members of the academic community. The purpose of
this statement is to enumerate the essential provisions for student
freedom to learn.
1. Freedom of Access to Higher Education
The admissions policies of each college and university are a matter
of institutional choice provided that each college and university
makes clear the characteristics and expectations of students which it
considers relevant to success in the institution's program. While
church-related institutions may give admission preference to students
of their own persuasion, such a preference should be clearly and
publicly stated. Under no circumstances should a student be barred
>from admission of a particular institution on the basis of race. Thus,
within the limits of its facilities, each college and university
should be open to all students who are qualified according to is
admission standards. The facilities and services of a college should
be open to all of its enrolled students, and institutions should use
their influence to secure equal access for all students to public
facilities in the local community.
II. In the Classroom
The professor in the classroom and in conference should encourage
free discussion, inquiry, and expression Student performance should be
evaluated solely on an academic basis, not on opinions or conduct in
matters unrelated to academic standards.
A. Protection of Freedom of Expression
Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or
views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about
matters of opinion, but they are responsible for learning the content
of any course of study for which they are enrolled.
B. Protection against Improper Academic Evaluation
Students should have protection through orderly procedures against
prejudiced or capricious academic evaluation. At the same time, they
are responsible for maintaining standards of academic performance
established for each course in which they are enrolled.
C. Protection against Improper Disclosure
Information about student views, beliefs, and political associations
which professors acquire in the course of their work as instructors,
advisers, and counselors should be considered confidential. Protection
against improper disclosure is a serious professional obligation.
Judgments of ability and character may be provided under appropriate
circumstances, normally with the knowledge or consent of the student.
III. Student Records
Institutions should have a carefully considered policy as to the
information which should be part of a student's permanent educational
record and as to the conditions of its disclosure. To minimize the
risk of improper disclosure, academic and disciplinary record should
be separate, and the conditions of access to each should be set forth
in an explicit policy statement. Transcripts of academic records
should contain only information about academic status. Information
>from disciplinary or counseling files should not be available to
unauthorized persons on campus, or to any person off campus without
the express consent of the student involved except under legal
compulsion or in cases where the safety of persons or property is
involved. No records should be kept which reflect the political
activities or beliefs of students. Provisions should also be made for
periodic routine destruction of nonconcurrent disciplinary records.
Administrative staff and faculty members should respect confidential
information about students which they acquire in the course of their
work.
IV. Student Affairs
In student affairs, certain standards must be maintained if the
freedom of students is to be preserved.
A. Freedom of Association
Students bring to the campus a variety of interests previously
acquired and develop many new interests as members of the academic
community. They should be free to organize and join associations to
promote their common interests.
1. The membership, policies, and actions of a student organization
usually will be determined by vote of only those persons who hold bona
fide membership in the college or university community.
2. Affiliation with an extramural organization should not of itself
disqualify a student organization from institutional recognition.
3. If campus advisers are required, each organization should be free
to choose its own adviser, and institutional recognition should not be
withheld or withdrawn solely because of the inability of a student
organization to secure an advisor. Campus advisers may advise
organizations in the exercise of responsibility, but they should not
have the authority to control the policy of such organizations.
4. Student organizations may be required to submit a statement of
purpose, criteria for membership, rules of procedures, and a current
list of officers. They should not be required to submit a membership
list as a condition of institutional recognition.
5. Campus organizations, including those affiliated with an
extramural organization, should be open to all students without
respect to race, creed, or national origin, except for religious
qualifications which may be required by organizations whose aims are
primarily sectarian.
B. Freedom of Inquiry and Expression
1. Students and student organizations should be free to examine and
discuss all questions of interest to them, and to express opinions
publicly and privately. They should always be free to support causes
by orderly means which do not disrupt the regular and essential
operation of the institution. At the same time, it should be made
clear to the academic and the larger community that in their public
expressions or demonstrations students or student organizations speak
only for themselves.
2. Students should be allowed to invite and to hear any person of
their own choosing. Those routine procedures required by an
institution before a guest speaker is invited to appear on campus
should be designed only to insure that there is orderly scheduling of
facilities and adequate preparation for the event, and that the
occasion is conducted in a manner appropriate to an academic
community. The institutional control of campus facilities should not
be used as a device of censorship. It should be made clear to the
academic and larger community that sponsorship of guest speakers does
not necessarily imply approval or endorsement of the views expressed,
either by the sponsoring group or the institution.
C. Student Participation in Institutional Government
As constituents of the academic community, students should be
free, individually and collectively, to express their views on issues
of institutional policy and on matters of general interest to the
student body. The student body should have clearly defined means to
participate in the formulation and application of institutional policy
affecting academic and student affairs. The role of the student
government and both its general and specific responsibilities should
be made explicit. and the actions of the student government within the
areas of its jurisdiction should be reviewed only through orderly and
prescribed procedures.
D. Student Publications
Student publications and the student press are a valuable aid in
establishing and maintaining an atmosphere of free and responsible
discussion and of intellectual exploration on the campus. They are a
means of bringing student concerns to the attention of the faculty and
the institutional authorities and of formulating student opinion on
various issues on the campus and in the world at large.
Whenever possible the student newspaper should be an
independent corporation financially and legally separate
>from the university. Where financial and legal autonomy
is not possible, the institution, as the publisher of student
publications, may have to bear the legal responsibility for
The contents of the publications. In the delegation of
editorial responsibility to students, the institution must
provide sufficient editorial freedom and financial autonomy
for the student publications to maintain their integrity of
purpose as vehicles for free inquiry and free expression
in an academic community.
Institutional authorities, in consultation with students and
faculty, have a responsibility to provide written clarification of the
role of the student publications, the standards to be used in their
evaluation, and the limitations on external control of their
operation. At the same time, the editorial freedom of student editors
and managers entails corollary responsibilities to be governed by the
canons of responsible journalism, such as the avoidance of libel,
indecency, undocumented allegations, attacks on personal integrity,
and the techniques of harassment and innuendo. As safeguards for the
editorial freedom of student publications the following provisions are
necessary.
1. The student press should be free of censorship and advance
approval of copy, and its editors and managers should be free to
develop their own editorial policies and news coverage.
2. Editors and managers of student publications should be protected
>from arbitrary suspension and removal because of student, faculty,
administrative, or public disapproval of editorial policy or content.
Only for proper and stated causes should editors and managers be
subject to removal and then by orderly and prescribed procedures. The
agency responsible for the appointment of editors and managers should
be the agency responsible for their removal.
3. All university published and financed student publications should
explicitly state on the editorial page that the opinions there
expressed are not necessarily those of the college, university, or
student body.
V. Off-Campus Freedom of Students
A. Exercise of Rights of Citizenship
College and university students are both citizens and members of the
academic community. As citizens, students should enjoy the same
freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and right of petition that other
citizens enjoy and, as members of the academic community, they are
subject to the obligations which accrue to them by virtue of this
membership. Faculty members and administrative officials should insure
that institutional powers are not employed to inhibit such
intellectual and personal development of students as is often promoted
by their exercise of the rights of citizenship both on and off campus.
B. Institutional Authority and Civil Penalties
Activities of students may upon occasion result in violation of law.
In such cases, institutional officials should be prepared to apprise
students of sources of legal counsel and may offer other assistance.
Students who violate the law may incur penalties prescribed by civil
authorities, but institutional authority should never be used merely
to duplicate the function of general laws. Only where the institutions
interests as an academic community are distinct and clearly involved
should the special authority of the institution be asserted. The
student who incidentally violates institutional regulations in the
course of his off-campus activity, such as those relating to class
attendance, should be subject to no greater penalty than would
normally be imposed. Institutional action should be independent of
community pressure.
VI. Procedural Standards in Disciplinary
Proceedings
In developing responsible student conduct, disciplinary
proceedings play a role substantially secondary to
example, counseling, guidance, and admonition. At the same
time, educational institutions have a duty and the
corollary disciplinary powers to protect their educational
purpose through the setting of standards of scholarship and
conduct for the students who attend them and through
the regulation of the use of institutional facilities. In the
exceptional circumstances when the preferred means fail
to resolve problems of student conduct, proper procedural
safeguards should be observed to protect the student from
the unfair imposition of serious penalties.
The administration of discipline should guarantee procedural
fairness to an accused student. Practices in disciplinary cases may
vary in formality with the gravity of the offense and the sanctions
which may be applied. They should also take into account the presence
or absence of an honor code, and the degree to which the institutional
officials have direct acquaintance with student life in general and
with the involved student and the circumstances of the case in
particular. The jurisdictions of faculty or student judicial bodies,
the disciplinary
responsibilities of institutional officials and the regular
disciplinary procedures, including the student's right to
appeal a decision, should be clearly formulated and
communicated in advance. Minor penalties may be assessed
informally under prescribed procedures.
In all situations, procedural fair play requires that the student be
informed of the nature of the charges against him, that he be given a
fair opportunity to refute them, that the institution not be arbitrary
in its actions, and that there be provision for appeal of a decision.
The following are recommended as proper safeguards in such proceedings
when there are no honor codes offering comparable guarantees.
A. Standards of Conduct Expected of Students
The institution has an obligation to clarify those standards of
behavior which it considers essential to its educational mission and
its community life. These general behavioral expectations and the
resultant specific regulations should represent a reasonable
regulation of student conduct, but the student should be as free as
possible from imposed limitations that have no direct relevance to his
education. Offenses should be as clearly defined as possible and
interpreted in a manner consistent with the aforementioned principles
of relevance and reasonableness. Disciplinary proceedings should be
instituted only for violations of standards of conduct formulated with
significant student participation and published in advance through
such means as a student handbook or a generally available body of
institutional regulations.
B. Investigation of Student Conduct
1. Except under extreme emergency circumstances, premises occupied
by students and the personal possessions of students should not be
searched unless appropriate authorization has been obtained. For
premises such as residence halls controlled by the institution, an
appropriate and responsible authority should be designated to whom
application should be made before a search is conducted. The
application should specify the reasons for he search and the objects
or information sought. The student should be present, if possible,
during the search. For premises not controlled by the institution,
the ordinary requirements for lawful search should be followed.
2. Students detected or arrested in the course of serious violations
of institutional regulations, or infractions of ordinary law, should
be informed of their rights. No form of harassment should be used by
institutional representatives to coerce admissions of guilt or
information about conduct of other suspected persons.
C. Status of Student Pending Final Action
Pending action on the charges, the status of a student
should not be altered, or his right to be present on the
campus and to attend classes suspended, except for
reasons relating to his physical or emotional safety and
wellbeing, or for reasons relating to the safety and well-being
of students, faculty, or university property.
D. Hearing Committee Procedures
When the misconduct may result in serious penalties and if the
student questions the fairness of disciplinary action taken against
him, he should be granted, on request, the privilege of a hearing
before a regularly constituted hearing committee. The following
suggested hearing committee procedures satisfy the requirements of
procedural due process in situations requiring a high degree of
formality.
1. The hearing committee should include faculty members or students,
or, if regularly included or requested by the accused, both faculty
and student members. No member of the hearing committee who is
otherwise interested in the particular case should sit in judgment
during the proceeding.
2. The student should be informed, in writing of the reasons for the
proposed disciplinary action with sufficient particularity, and in
sufficient time, to insure opportunity to prepare for the hearing.
3. The student appearing before the hearing committee should have the
right to be assisted in his defense by an adviser of his choice.
4. The burden of proof should rest upon the officials bringing the
charge.
5. The student should be given an opportunity to testify and to
present evidence and witnesses. He should have an opportunity to hear
and question adverse witnesses. In no case should the committee
consider statements against him unless he has been advised of their
content and of the names of those who made them, and unless he has
been given an opportunity to rebut unfavorable inferences which might
otherwise be drawn.
6. All matters upon which the decision may be based must be
introduced into evidence at the proceeding before the hearing
committee. The decision should be based solely upon such matters.
Improperly acquired evidence should not be admitted.
7. In the absence of a transcript, there should be both a digest and
a verbatim record, such as a tape recording, of the hearing.
8. The decision of the hearing committee should be final, subject
only to the student's right of appeal to the president or ultimately
to the governing board of the institution.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 18:12:56 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 16:14:01 CDT
Sender: JDB1145@ZEUS.TAMU.EDU (Addicted to MUD)
Subject: RE: AAUP
Status: R
P{lease take me off the mailing list. Too much mail for me to deal with.
John D. Burke
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 21:34:15 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: junger@cwru.cwru.edu
Date: 17 Apr 91 20:43:00 EST
Subject: What really happened at CWRU
Cc: junger@cwru.cwru.edu
Status: R
Dan Brown has raised--in a rather
misleading way--a case involving the censorship by the local network
administrators of the work product of a law student here at Case Western
Reserve University.
One of the most misleading features of Dan Brown's message is,
of course, the explicit assumption that research has to be "sanctioned"
before it fits into the "academic freedom category." Since all
education begins with self-education--and too often ends there--it seems
clear to me that all members of the academic community, whether
students or faculty or those holding research appointments, are entitled
at the minimum to study whatever they deem to be relevant to their
interests--and to publish the results of such studies--without being
subject to censorship and harassement by employees of the university (or
other academic institution) who are neither students nor the holders of
academic appointments. It is the individual scholars who must select
their area of research, not the department of buildings and grounds nor
the managers of the local network.
I do not believe that anyone within the academic community would
seriously question those conclusions in a case that did not involve
computers. When computers are involved, however, the fact that most
faculty members--quite understandably--neither understand nor use such
devices, leaves the typical user (who almost always will be a student)
at the mercy of those who are supposed to support the use of this new
technology. Certainly that is the case at Case Western Reserve
University, where all the undergraduate dorms are connected by optical
cables to the Internet, but no faculty offices--except oddly enouugh
those in the law school--have yet been so connected.
I am thus horrified at, but not surprised by, the position taken
by Dudley Irish--dirish@math.utah.edu, Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing, Department of Mathematics, University
of Utah--to the effect that "the student had no right to use the
university's equipment to publish his `research', that his academic
freedoms had not been violated, and that the Student Behavior Committee
should consider expelling him."
I fear that someone with Dudley Irish's obvious dislike of
students would come to such a nasty conclusion even if he knew the facts
of the case. On the other hand, those who are concerned with academic
freedom may find what actually happened quite instructive, if rather
discouraging.
Although Case Western Reserve University has installed a
high-speed optical fiber network for use by the students (and will be
making it available to the faculty in the future) and has supplied
telnet and ftp programs, there is very little use that can be made of
that system, other than conducting non-Boolean searches in the library
catalog and reading and posting messages to the news lists maintained on
a public bulletin board called Freenet.
On that bulletin board there is a local news list called
CWRU.INS.GENERAL (INS stands for Information Network Services). One of
our law students--a student whose major, as Dan Brown correctly says,
law students not having majors, "is incidentally not computer
related,"--this law student, who was not taking the course in computers
and the law only because I did not offer it this year, repeatedly posted
messages on this local news list asking INS for information about the
way that the TCP/IP programs and the packet drivers worked, and how they
were configured, etc. As those who are aware of the ways of systems
administrators might suspect, no information was forthcoming. The
student then wrote a simple "chat" program in 8086 assembly language
that demonstrating how one can cause the packet drivers supplied by INS
to send and receive messages, and he posted the source code--but not the
executable program--on CWRU.INS.
Shortly thereafter the following message appeared on CWRU.INS
over the name of one of the system managers:
We have removed a posting by "cjs" of a program that allows one to
send raw Ethernet packets. We suggest that users NOT attempt to use
this or any similar program to send raw packets on the network. We
remind users that any disruption of the network through the use of
such programs, intentional or not, is considered a violation of the
University's ethics policy. Anyone found violating that policy will
be brought up on charges to the appropriate University office. Such
activity will result in disciplinary action up to and including
dismissal from the institution.
Though there is, of course, no ethics policy forbidding "any disruption
of the network through the use of such programs, intentional or not," no
one is arguing that INS lacks the authority to forbid the use--as
opposed to the posting of the source code--of a program on the networks
that they administer. On the other hand, it is debatable--and it was
extensively debated--whether the program itself (as opposed to the
source code) "could potentialy be used disruptably" as Dan Brown claims.
(Some claimed that it could, but the responsible people at INS never
really made such a claim.) The important fact is that the more serious
claim that the program somehow "comprimised network security" is true
only if one believes that network security is secured only by making
_public information_ about the system unavailable to its users.
The actual reason for the removal of the program is made clear
in a message from the systems manager responsible for the censorship to
the student who wrote the program. This explanation was later posted on
CWRU.INS, so Dan Brown can hardly claim that he did not know the facts.
Here's that explanation, which starts with a quotation from a request
made by the student:
>I'd like to post a copy of my chat program so people can see what
>we are all talking about.
>
>Is this OK?
>
>cjs
>
>p.s. you're invited to follow it with a post explaining which
>sections you feel are bad programming (I'll of course respond
>explaining why you're >not correct :->); this will help students
>begin to understand how to program the network and what INS
>considers good programming practice.
No. It is not ok. Here is the reason why it is not ok.
The reason we do not want your program posted is that we feel it creates a
potential threat to the operation and administration of the network. As
you have stated, local area networks have many failings with respect to
security. Their security partly depends on the obscurity of certain
aspects of their design and implementation. Your program essentially
provides everyone with the tools by which they can create significant
problems for us to effectively manage the network. Showing people how to
remove or change the source address on the Ethernet packet is the largest
threat. While we would still be able to track down the source, the job
would be significantly more difficult involving significantly more human
and equipment resources than would otherwise be necessary. Another threat
is the fact that naive users may modify this program in ways that would
adversely affect operation of the network without being aware of it, again
requiring human and equipment resources to track the problem down. While
you provide the tools that allow them to interact with the network at its
lowest layers, you do not provide them with the wisdom to do so correctly.
You might argue that people can find this information anyway if they make
an effort. I would say that part of what provides security is the fact
that people must make such an effort to find out this information. Those
who might intentionally cause problems or even those who would naively
cause problems might not ever become aware of the means by which to cause
problems because of the effort required to find these tools and to know
what they can do. You remove that effort by directly providing them with
the tools to manipulate the network at its lowest layers.
You might argue that you could, and perhaps would, offer to change the
program to include the source address on the Ethernet packet. I would
counter that while making that change would improve the operation of your
program with respect to our concerns, it would still give users the tools
to cause operational problems and it still has other problems which I
discuss below.
(Several paragraphs follow that have been deleted. They seem quite
reasonable--if slightly worry-warty--and do not, in my opinion, raise
any questions relating to academic freedom.)
The idea that a student's work would be removed from a public
bulletin board maintained by the University, not because it was posted
on the wrong board, but because that work contained publicly available
information, strikes me as an egregious violation of academic freedom.
"Security by obscurity" may be a reasonable goal in the world of
commerce where information is hoarded as a valuable trade secret; but
the goal of the academic community is to make information available, not
to obscure it.
For those who do not care about students, I should add that this
act of censorship by the network administrators also infringes the
academic freedom of at least one faculty member. I shall be teaching a
course in computer law next year; in that course I intend for us to
study issues of computer security, which will mean that my students will
be learning exactly the sort of information that our censors wish to
obscure. I will obviously not be able to use a bulletin board on the
network for class assignments and discussion, knowing as I do that the
students' work--and perhaps mine--will be "removed" if it is deemed too
informative.
Peter D. Junger
Professor of Law
Case Western Reserve University Law School
internet: JUNGER@CWRU.CWRU.EDU
bitnet: JUNGER@CWRU
------
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 21:34:15 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Sender: sobiloff@stolaf.edu (Chrome Cboy)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 19:04:58 WET DST
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.2 7/11/90)
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
[In the message entitled "Re: kill bush kill quayle", on Apr 17,
comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org writes:]
>Which raises a question about censorship of e-mail. It is a federal crime
>for anyone to mess with us mail in any manner, if it isn't their own. While
>admittedly, us mail, and email are two very different things, and postmasters
>generally aren't employees of the "postal service," isn't there a good bit
>of privacy that should be set for email? Please don't mention this question
>to Sears, IBM, or the Prodigy folks... :->
It is my understanding that the federal electronic mail privacy laws state
that mail that remains on site is not protected, but that if it ventures
off-site it *is* protected. Similar rules apply to received mail. A
warrant is necessary to read mail that is protected. FYI...
--
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|//////////////////////////////////////////
| Blake Sobiloff, Saint Olaf College | "A white, hetereosexual male who's |
| sobiloff@stolaf.edu | politically incorrect and proud of it." |
/////////////////////////////////////|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 22:23:03 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 21:03:46 CDT
Sender: m00se
Cc:
Subject:
Status: R
please take me off the list.
it's overwhelming my mailbox.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 23:09:34 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Return-Path: <@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu:D01DAYXX@SUVM.BITNET>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 22:36:56 EST
Sender: Donald Day
Status: R
Can anyone tell someone who's new at the newsnet routine (i.e., me) how
a ftp file transfer works? In other words, how can I upload a file that's
mentioned on the net to my account on my host machine? Doesn't that
require compatible comm software (e.g., Kermit)?
-- Donald Day, Syracuse University
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Wed Apr 17 23:20:08 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 23:01:54 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: CWRU CJS
Status: R
Peter D. Junger JUNGER@CWRU.BITNET states:
--
One of the most misleading features of Dan Brown's message is,
of course, the explicit assumption that research has to be "sanctioned"
before it fits into the "academic freedom category."
--
In previous posts to this mail list, it was stated that santioning
of some sort is neccessary to be covered under the protection.
This makes sence. It gives the university that the person is
associated with some sory of control over it's resources, and
also it's liability.
--
Since all education begins with self-education--and too often ends
there.
--
Only in the event that the education system has failed in some manner,
Professor Junger...
--
-it seems
clear to me that all members of the academic community, whether
students or faculty or those holding research appointments, are entitled
at the minimum to study whatever they deem to be relevant to their
interests--and to publish the results of such studies--without being
subject to censorship and harassement by employees of the university (or
other academic institution) who are neither students nor the holders of
academic appointments. It is the individual scholars who must select
their area of research, not the department of buildings and grounds nor
the managers of the local network.
--
Yes, they have the right to choose what to study, and research, and to
publish their findings. However the institution where they do their studies
has the right to reject these findings and research if they deem them
inapprpriate. For example, if Case had a publishing house, I am sure that
any book that was submitted for publishing would be subject to reviews of
sorts. Also, the institution has the right to restrict which students use
which resources. For example, I, as a computer engineer cannot do research in
the Law Schools Library. Further, as noted, I am a student, and an employee of
INS, so are many of the other people that work there. Many others have
graduated from Case Western. Get your facts straight.
--
The case in question was a judgement call on the part of the network admin.
Perhaps if CJS had posted where he had found his information, and a summary
of his information, rather than specific source code, his post would not
have been removed.
Later.
Dan
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 01:14:17 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
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Sender: sobiloff@stolaf.edu (Chrome Cboy)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 23:42:05 WET DST
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.1.2 7/11/90)
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Status: R
[In the message entitled "CWRU CJS", on Apr 17,
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu writes:]
>In previous posts to this mail list, it was stated that santioning
>of some sort is neccessary to be covered under the protection.
>This makes sence. It gives the university that the person is
>associated with some sory of control over it's resources, and
>also it's liability.
Isn't the simple act of admitting an individual for the purposes of study
at an institution an implicit grant of "sanction"? Also, where did this
idea of being sanctioned as separate from being a student or faculty member
come from--the idea that faculty research is covered by academic freedom
whereas student research isn't?
Here at St. Olaf we have a number of undergraduates (including myself) who
do research. It is generally performed under the guidance of a faculty
member, but that does not limit the subject content of the research. Are
we an exception?
>Since all education begins with self-education--and too often ends
>there.
>--
>
>Only in the event that the education system has failed in some manner,
>Professor Junger...
Feh, hardly! St. Olaf doesn't teach coursed in Macintosh programming. Does
this mean that the educational system has failed? Certainly not! (Unless,
of course, you're an evangelist from Apple :-) No one gains much benefit
>from formal education unless they have an interest in the material. If the
interest is strong enough it most certainly will include work that goes
beyond the bounds of what can be done in the classroom. Academic freedom
supposedly gives you this freedom to go beyond the average.
--
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|//////////////////////////////////////////
| Blake Sobiloff, Saint Olaf College | "A white, hetereosexual male who's |
| sobiloff@stolaf.edu | politically incorrect and proud of it." |
/////////////////////////////////////|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
From kadie Fri Apr 19 00:50:38 1991
To: cafb-mail
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom (batch version)
Status: R
Today's topics:
Subject: Just because a company is paying...
Subject: Re: SysAdmin == concierge
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Subject: cancellation of subscription
Subject: SysAdmin == concierge
Subject: cancellation of subscription
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Subject: focus
Subject: Re: Just because a company is paying...
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
------
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 16:54:41 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path: stu@rsch.oclc.org
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 15:08:51 EDT
Sender: stu@rsch.oclc.org (Stu Weibel)
Subject: Just because a company is paying...
Status: R
> Just because a company is paying for the computing resources doesn't
> mean that the users of that system give up their rights to privacy.
I am not sure this is as straight forward an issue as it might appear
on the surface.
A computer system is an asset made available to me by my employer to
accomplish my work. It seems reasonable that corporate policy should
dictate in some important way how this resource can be used.
Especially since my behavior on a network reflects upon my employer,
just as it does if I am speaking at a conference, for example.
My employer has a right to know what I say as their public
representative, and since corporate policy (in most cases, I presume)
prohibits private use of corporate assets such as computer systems,
are they not entitled to know what I "say" through the medium of this
asset?
Stuart Weibel
Senior Research Scientist
OCLC Office of Research
stu@rsch.oclc.org
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 16:54:41 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Subject: Re: SysAdmin == concierge
<9104181352.AA20967@ nextserver.cs.stthomas.edu>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:56:17 EDT
Sender: "Manavendra K. Thakur"
Status: R
>>>>> On Thu, 18 Apr 91 08:52:47 CDT, Max Tardiveau said:
> As a system administrator, I consider my role to be comparable in
> many ways to that of a concierge.
[...]
> If the police asks me to monitor one of my residents, I will do so,
> if my conscience says it is OK. For instance, if the police asks me
> to check one person's mail, or to listen in on that person's
> telephone conversations, I will do so, but only because I trust the
> police enough to think that they must have good reasons to ask me to
> do such a thing.
I agree with most of what you said, with the exception of this
business of "I trust the police enough to think". Well, I don't trust
the police enough to think. All too often the police officers (be
they local police or FBI or Secret Service or whatever) think that
they can initimidate managers of buildings and computers and financial
institutions etc into condoning or actively taking part in
surveillance over one of their clients.
This is simply unethical and unacceptable. Just as I would not allow
a law-enforcement official to enter my own house without a proper
search warrant, as a system administrator I would refuse any "request"
for monitoring or surveillance without a properly-authorized court
order that clearly and specifically described the areas and persons to
be monitored. I would also insist that I retain the ability to delete
any information about third persons that was inadvertently collected.
And I would insist that I be able to delete this extraneous
information *before* any collected information is turned over to to
the law enforcement officials.
Finally, I would note that enforcing such privacy rights is not only a
matter of principle. It also is a means of protecting myself.
Imagine, to continue Max's analogy, that the police ask a concierge to
spy on a client. And then it turns out that the police had mistaken
the client for someone else. Both the police and you would be liable
for one hell of a invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, not to mention the
attendant bad publicity and potential loss of business. In an
academic environment, such an incident might even trigger an
investigation of your institutions's practices.
> How a system administrator can feel s/he is entitled to read his/her
> "residents" mail, and snoop in their appartment, that is beyond me.
> I am shocked that anyone can take this kind of abuse and not raise
> hell about it.
I agree. I think such an attitude applies not only in the academic
world but in the business world and that world at large as well. Just
because a company is paying for the computing resources doesn't mean
that the users of that system give up their rights to privacy.
Manavendra K. Thakur Internet: thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu
Systems Manager, High Energy Division BITNET: thakur@cfa.BITNET
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for DECNET: CFA::thakur
Astrophysics UUCP: ...!uunet!mit-eddie!thakur
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 16:54:41 1991
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 08:52:47 CDT
Sender: root@nextserver.cs.stthomas.edu (Max Tardiveau)
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Status: R
As a system administrator, I consider my role to be comparable in
many ways to that of a concierge. I make sure my "residents" are
happy and have all they need. I deliver their mail, but I don't read
it. If a letter comes in and the address is unreadable, I may decide
to open it to figure out who it is addressed to, or to send it back
to its sender without opening it by respect for privacy.
If the police asks me to monitor one of my residents, I will do so,
if my conscience says it is OK. For instance, if the police asks me
to check one person's mail, or to listen in on that person's
telephone conversations, I will do so, but only because I trust the
police enough to think that they must have good reasons to ask me to
do such a thing.
If a resident asks me to do so, I will clean their appartment every
week. Obviously, as a housekeeper, my professional conscience tells
me that what I see in the appartment, I keep for myself. If I see a
pornographic magazine on the coffee table, I am not going to destroy
it. If the resident has a collection of sado-masochistic gear, I will
pretend, as much as possible, that I don't see it and don't know
about it. Only if I see a crime in the appartment will I break my
silence. By letting me in their appartment, the residents give me a
good deal of trust. I will not break that trust for anything but some
_very_ serious reason.
If I walk past an appartment whose resident I know is on vacation,
and I hear noise, then I will use my master key to enter and check
things out. Once again, anything I see during this intrusion on my
part, I will forget as soon as I close the door.
How a system administrator can feel s/he is entitled to read his/her
"residents" mail, and snoop in their appartment, that is beyond me.
I am shocked that anyone can take this kind of abuse and not raise
hell about it.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Max Tardiveau Department of Computer Science
University of St.Thomas St.Paul, MN 55105
Internet : m9tardiv@cs.stthomas.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------
"I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure."
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 16:54:42 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 16:05:27 -0400
Sender: gt8145a@prism.gatech.edu (FADEL,AYMAN HOSSAM)
Subject: cancellation of subscription
Status: R
please take me off the mailing list. i'm sorry for posting this,
but i had lost the maintainer's address.
ayman
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 17:36:28 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 16:48:48 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: SysAdmin == concierge
<9104181352.AA20967@ nextserver.cs.stthomas.edu>
Status: R
If you want your computer policy be consistent with your
University's general privacy policy, you should think
twice before becoming a police informant.
Consider University policy with respect to dorm rooms. When can the
resident hall staff (the "concierges") search a dorm room or allow the
police into the room? The policy here at U. of I. is that staff can
enter a dorm room 1) after giving 24 hour notice [to look for, for
example, an oversize refrigerater], or 2) with the police if the
police have a search warrent or are executing an arrest warrent, or 3)
in an emergency, or 4) for routine maintaince [I hope # 4 is not too
much of a loophole].
I like these rules. I especially like that whatever searching
is done, is done in the open. I think this provides a safeguard
against routine "fishing expeditions".
Finally, please don't consider the support of such privacy
protections as slam against *you*. You sound like a great
sysadmin, but would trust all *other* sysadmins to use
good judgement?
- Carl
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 17:36:28 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 16:51:30 EDT
Sender: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: cancellation of subscription
Status: R
If you would like to receive one big note about once a day (rather
than lots of little notes), send email to listserv@eff.org. The note
should include this line.
add comp-academic-freedom-batch
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Thu Apr 18 17:52:29 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 13:59:42 PDT
Sender: "Eric C. Pan"
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Status: R
Dan Brown(?) stated :
Also, the institution has the right to restrict which students use
which resources. For example, I, as a computer engineer cannot do research in
the Law Schools Library. Further, as noted, I am a student, and an employee of
INS, so are many of the other people that work there. Many others have
graduated from Case Western. Get your facts straight.
--------------------------------------------------------
I would certainly argue otherwise with respect to two of your points
1) You claim institution has the right to restrict which students use
Which resources by citing an example with your school.
2) You attempt to correlate the fact that you are a student to the
claim that you care about student's academic freedom.
WRT 1) I would certainly not agree that just because your school has some
confusion about the right of students to use library, it is the RIGHT THING for
schools to limit resources....
[personally, if my school limit my access to the library, I would raise hell
until the president come to apologize to me! Or if you wish, change school]
Justifing by raising example certainly does not prove anything. Otherwise
we can all use Prodigy ( as in the Sears IBM venture ) to justify censor e-mail.
WRT 2) I KNOW from personal experience ( I have known about 10 PRIMARY system
managers, including myself, i.e. not your consultant on duty at computer lab )
that Student system managers can be the worst people WRT student's rights.
Several faculties and myself had been discussing a certain system managers
paranoia WRT computing rights, he was from our school. By your argument, he
would be sympathetic to students, but no, unfortunately, there is such thing
as insecurity due to lack of ability. And therefore, he clams down at every
thing ...... so no, just because you are a student, I don't believe you
understand student's right wrt computer access and academic freedom.
later, Eric
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Fri Apr 19 00:38:31 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path:
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 14:41:24 PDT
Sender: stevens@Csa2.LBL.Gov (Dave F. Stevens)
Subject: focus
Status: R
Some issues:
1. Is academic freedom a fundamental right
(granted by constitutional or common law) or a
contractural right (granted and possibly limited by
contract)?
It seems clear that it must be the latter, for as
has been pointed out there are sectarian schools that
limit discussion in certain areas, and there have been
times in this country when even the great public
universities did not allow free discussion in certain
areas.
2. Is the contract explicit or implicit?
Yes. And the implicit terms are the ones that
cause the most difficulty, for your understanding may
not be the same as mine.
3. What rights are included in academic
freedom?
The rights to seek knowledge, do research,
and publish results have been mentioned. Are they
the only ones?
4. What do these rights entail? What do
they NOT entail?
For example, despite what some of the
contributions to this discussion seem to imply, the
right of a professor or student to publish does NOT
require the University to be the publisher. The right
of a professor or student to do research of choice does
NOT require the University to support that research.
It may, in the case of a tenured professor, force the
University to allow the research to go on so long as
the researcher can find the support somewhere. The
right of a student to seek knowledge does NOT require
the University to provide a course in the area in
question, or even to order the necessary books or other
helpful material.
The right to seek knowledge also does not
include the right to examine another person's work
without that person's permission. And therefore does
not include the right to prowl any network. (We
finally come to computers.) The right to do research
may include the right to investigate the robustness of
systems and networks. The right to publish may
include the right to distribute material over a
network, but such publication is subject to constraints
imposed by the owner of the network. (Not
everything can be sent through the mail.)
5. What responsibilities are implied by the
rights included in academic freedom?
The right to do research implies the
responsibility to conduct that research in a way that
will not harm society. Investigations of system and
network robustness do not convey the right to destroy
other people's systems and networks. Investigations
of system and network security do not convey the
right to breach the security of anyone's else's system
or network. Loosing a network virus is an offense of
the same nature as loosing any other plague on
society, whether it be a deadly disease, or a damned
nuisance such as the starlings in New England, snails
in California, or rabbits in Australia.
The right to publish may entail a
responsibility to limit the distribution of one's work
to those who have expressed an interest. Thus it may
not include the right to bombard the entire net with
junk mail, propaganda, or even actual research
results. It certainly does not include the right to
swamp a network, and hence deny network services to
others.
6. How are constraints and responsibilities to
be enforced?
"Enforced" is a bad word to use, but if users
will not govern themselves there is little alternative.
One hopes that custom or law will catch up with this
problem soon, but in the meantime we must make our
own policies, which will depend in some measure on
the requirements imposed on us by system owners.
(Some owners, for example, restrict the use of their
systems to "authorized" activities, and require the
system operators to enforce that restriction.) What
restrictions are reasonable? What sort of monitoring
activities are acceptable? Under what circumstances?
What notice constitutes "due process"? What
disciplinary/
preventive/protective actions are acceptable?
It is in this context, I think, that Dan Brown
asked "Where do we draw the line?"
I suggest that the drawing of absolute lines is
not a good approach. This discussion has already
given ample evidence of the distressing current
American tendency to seek legalistic and formulaic
"solutions" to fuzzy problems. The problems we are
trying to address here are fuzzy indeedA, and call for
judgement rather than rigid rules. The latter err on
both sides, leaving loopholes for destructive behavior
on the one hand and unnecessarily restricting some
legitimate explorations on the other. So we should
establish some admittedly fuzzy guidelines for
acceptable behavior and judge every alleged
violation on the basis of its individual circumstances,
weighing intention, actual harm, potential harm,
precautions observed, precautions ignored or evaded,
value created, rights exercised or violated, precedent,
and anything else that might enable us to make wise,
as distinct from bureaucratically justifiable, decisions.
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Fri Apr 19 00:38:31 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path:
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1991 16:31:19 +0600
Sender: sheehan@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: Just because a company is paying...
Status: R
Stuart Weibel leads us through the following:
>
>> Just because a company is paying for the computing resources doesn't
>> mean that the users of that system give up their rights to privacy.
>
>I am not sure this is as straight forward an issue as it might appear
>on the surface.
>
>A computer system is an asset made available to me by my employer to
>accomplish my work. It seems reasonable that corporate policy should
>dictate in some important way how this resource can be used.
This is in the context of a public university, not a corporation, but for
those of you who are computing in that environment:
I asked the Indiana University legal counsel office about this a couple
years ago. The attorney I spoke with told me, in effect, that any
information stored on university-owned media (computer center mainframe
disks, floppy disks bought with departmental money, etc.) is University
property. That, he said, was the LAW. The POLICY, however, was to treat
most such information as belonging to the operator of the computer or
pencil or whatever that created it, at least for purposes of "privacy." For
purposes of copyright, patent, etc., it's a little more complex, but not
much more.
So...our computer use policy ("Computer Users' Privileges and
Responsibilities") states as our default assumption that anything stored on
a minicomputer user's account or a private PC's hard disk is to be treated
as if it were the user's private property. A search warrant would probably
cause us to violate that privacy. And there might be other needs internal
to the university that could cause our Dean to authorize us to do so.
(Internal investigations, by governing bodies, into allegations of
misconduct, for example.)
To blow this whole "gentlepersons agreement" apart, though, there's an
interesting state law that considers most of what the university produces
to be "public records" that are open to public scrutiny (if the public can
figure out the right channels to go through to request them). There are
exceptions for exams, diaries and the like, research in progress, and
material being used in deliberations of most sorts. But access to most of
what *I* do from day to day could be requested and would have to be
granted, I think.
Kinda breezy out here, eh?!
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mark Sheehan, Technical Communications Administrator |
|-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------|
| University Computing Services | BITNET: sheehan@iubacs |
| Indiana University | Internet: sheehan@ucs.indiana.edu |
| Bloomington, Indiana USA 47405 | Telephone: (812) 855-0913 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Fri Apr 19 00:38:32 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path:
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 18:31:31 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Status: R
I am sorry to have brought this little war out in public. INS, who I work
for, and The Law School have been kinda going back and forth on a few things,
much of it to do with abuse of the system, and what is and isn't reasonable
for system managers to do. Neither side has yet seen eye to eye. Perhaps
the incident mentioned was a bad example, but it was one that is close to
home at the moment, and I was asked for specifics, after one of my original
posts.
I don't neccessarily claim that an institutions resources should be restricted
>from the students at that institution. The law school library example was
in regards to a comment that Dr. Junger had made. I was trying to say to him
something of the order of "people who live in glass houses..."
The comment about my being a student was also in regards to a comment that
Junger had made, claiming that since none of the administrators where
"academics", no one would have any bearing on decided what is and isn't
correct. I am not sure if he knows who is what up here. I didn't state
specifically that I would neccessarily know what is correct. The fact that
he is a law school prof doesnt' mean that he knows everything about the law.
Thanks for your input. I will try in the future to make my posts clearer.
I do not want to misrepresent my position.
Dan
brown@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
>From comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Fri Apr 19 00:38:32 1991
From: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Reply-To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
To: comp-academic-freedom-talk
Return-Path:
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 18:21:33 -0400
Sender: Dan Brown
Subject: Re: CWRU CJS
Status: R
I would like to say, before my stand on things here gets any more misconstrued,
that I do support academic freedom for students and faculty.
I do not support abusive use of university property
I do support the university wishing to supress people who are trying to
abuse university property.
I do not support a student who uses the excuse of academic freedom to cry
foul when the university removes a posting to a system that belongs to the
university, that gives out specific information that can be used to the
detrement of the university, and it's property.
I do not support the censorship that has happened at Prodigy. They made a
big mistake. I included it as a joke, demonstrating what not to do.
I feel that people on a system should have the right to use it as they will,
as long as they abide by the rules outlined by the administrators of the
system. I feel that system administrators should have the right to do what
they need to, short of violating peoples privacy, in order to maintain their
system and the security of that system. For that matter, the other users of
the system have the right to use the system, and have their work be secure.
If security of the system, and continued "Up time" neccesatate removal of
information from that system, than so be it. The system administrators should
have the right to use their judgement about what constitutes a hazzard.
All of this is especially poinant when the system in question is a networked
system that is connected to many others.
A point of interest... has anyone ever tried to get information from a
public library about the operation of the phone system? It for the most part
isn't there.
From kadie Sat Apr 20 17:13:41 1991
To: cafb-mail
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom mailing list (batch edition)
Status: R
Computers and Academic Freedom mailing list (batch edition)
Sat Apr 20 17:13:32 EDT 1991
In this issue:
Is a new list needed? Will anyone do anything about it?
Definition needed
New Position for Dudley Irish
re: new list needed? too soon
Just because a organization is paying...
Libraries, Academic Freedom
Re: Just because a organization is paying...
RE: research??
Re: kill bush kill quayle
What REALLY is academic freedom?
A (pedantic) analysis of CAF issues raised
The addresses for the list are now:
comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org - for contributions to the list
or caf-talk@eff.org
listserv@eff.org - for automated additions/deletions
(send email with the line "help" for details.)
caf-talk-request@eff.org - for administrivia
-------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 01:06:57 EDT
From: kadie (Carl Kadie)
Subject: Is a new list needed? Will anyone do anything about it?
I think there may be a need for a mailing list just for discussions
of academic freedom of faculty (with no special emphasis on computers
or students).
But someone (not me) needs to organize it.
If you might be interested in setting up such a list, send email
to kadie@eff.org. I'll distribute your note to everyone else
who expresses such an interest.
When (if?) the new list is created, it will, of course be announced
on this list.
- Carl
-------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 22:12:44 -0900
From: "Dean Gottehrer"
Subject: Definition needed
Does anyone out there have a copy of the AAUP statement on academic freedom
for faculty? Our discussions would be much more informed if we had all had a
chance to read that statement. It will answer many of the questions that have
been booted around on speculation or even misinformation.
One of the most important aspects of academic freedom is that it gives faculty
job protection against those who would fire faculty for what we dare to think,
write, publish or teach. That protection comes in the form of tenure. Once
you have it, about the only thing you can be fired for is cause and that
reduces down quickly to crimes of moral turpitude.
Academic freedom is basically a social value. Society agrees that the job
security of those who teach its youth must be protected so they can seek truth
and knowledge wherever they may wander unfettered by the worry of offending
those who disagree to the point of seeking to fire them for what they think,
etc. Academic freedom for faculty does not exist without tenure. That made
it difficult to translate into a right for students. When I was active in
the student movement, more years ago than I would ever care to remember, the
way we sought to capture academic freedom for students was in declarations of
student rights. In those days the foremost such declaration was from the
University of Chicago. I remember running it in the student newspaper I
edited.
You surrender nothing to get academic freedom. It is a contractual right at
institutions that recognize it. AAUP was the leader in articulating a
definition of academic freedom and in censuring those schools of higher
education that violate it. AAUP still has a list of universities and colleges
that are censured and it discourages faculty from working for those
institutions until they make changes that will protect their faculty's
academic freedom and they are removed from the list.
I hope someone has a more recent copy of the AAUP statement handier than mine
(which is packed away in one of about 40 book boxes) so that we can have an
informed foundation on which to build a discussion about academic freedom and
then expand into the impact it has on computers in higher education and vice
versa.
I am greatly enjoying the discussion so far but would like to see it more
informed with the good definition of academic freedom AAUP has developed over
the decades.
Dean Gottehrer
Anchorage, Alaska
-------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 10:08:14 MDT
From: Dudley Irish
Subject: New Position for Dudley Irish
Before I begin the body of this posting I want to clear up an
impression that people have formed from some of the comments I have
posted. I do not believe that a faculty member sacrifices any of
their rights in order to get academic freedom. In fact the meaning of
inalienable, as in our inalienable rights, is that they can not be
given away. To paraphrase Webster's they cannot be "alienated,
surrendered, or transferred."
This posting is really about the special case of an institution
pulling a posting from a student. The question that I will address is
whether this violates that student's academic freedom as outlined by
the joint statement published by AAUP and posted to this list by Carl
Kadie. My conclusions upon reading the AAUP statement and
considering the implications are quite different from my original
views on the subject. Please read the following with an open, yet
critical, mind.
Here is the case that I will consider. A student posts a message, the
network or system administrator objects to the content of the message
and removes it from the system. The actual content of the message
does not matter insofar as it does not pose a "clear and present
danger". The usefulness, or lack thereof, of the network or system
doesn't matter. The student's major doesn't matter. Bear in mind
that when there is a clear and present danger the Supreme Court has
ruled that the government can censor a publication by prior constraint,
at least this is what I learned in civics.
I have read the joint statement several times and in my opinion the
only sections that apply are the section on Student Affairs (IV) and
the section on Procedure Standards in Disciplinary Proceedings (VI).
If you have not read these sections, please read them before
continuing. If you think that another section applies, please make
your views known.
STUDENT AFFAIRS
The section on Student Affairs has several subsections. I will give
the title of each section followed by my comments on how it applies to
this case and in general.
A. Freedom of Association
The freedom of association outlined in the statement does not seem to
apply to this case. Though I think that it would apply to a group of
students that wished to form a BBS on campus or who wished to create a
association that "met" via an existing BBS.
B. Freedom of Inquiry and Expression
This section asserts that students "should be free to examine and
discuss all questions of interest to them, and to express opinions
publicly and privately." If the institution has a BBS the use of
which is not explicitly limited to course work then I believe it
should be treated as a public forum and thus discussion should be
allowed publicly via newsgroups or their analog and privately via
email or similar communications.
Note that a student's support of a cause must be "by orderly means
which do not disrupt the regular and essential operation of the
institution." As people have pointed out viruses, worms, and many
other security violations do interfere with the operation of an
institution and as such are not protected by this statement.
"At the same time, it should be made clear to the academic and the
larger community that in their public expressions or demonstrations
students or student organizations speak only for themselves." This is
the biggest problem for institutions because people seem to react much
differently to comments that are "immortalized" on spinning magnetic
media than to grubby students yelling in the the quad. To most of us
it is clear that postings that originate from a node to not represent
the views of whoever owns that node, but I believe the relevant system
administrators should mandate the inclusion of such a disclaimer in
every posting.
As for the remainder of this section, I think that it could be used to
create a strong argument in favor of students being allowed to have
any news feed that they want. Clearly, "The institutional control of
campus facilities should not be used as a device of censorship."
However, I will leave that important discussion to a different
posting.
C. Student Participation in Institutional Government
I don't believe that this section bears on the topic at hand.
D. Student Publications
This may be the most interesting section. I think that it might be
very worthwhile for students to petition the AAUP to change this
section to include a BBS system. I believe that a BBS system that
meets the criteria stated above should be treated in the same way that
a student newspaper is treated. However, this will require a great
deal of thought and I am not prepared at this time to carefully
itemize the details of how such a student owned and operated BBS
system should be constituted and operated. This is another topic that
I think we should address in this forum.
DISCIPLINARY PROCEEDINGS
Here is the area in which I believe that student freedoms are most
routinely abused by existing systems. This is probably because
computers and BBS's are new, not readily understood by faculty and
administrators, and that there is a reluctance to grant them equal
status with forms of expression that have existed for hundreds of
years.
I will not go through this section part by part, but I strongly urge
all system administrators to read this section and to make sure that
their procedures do not violate it. Even more importantly, I urge any
student who has be the subject of some disciplinary action to go to
the appropriate body on their campus with this section in hand and
demand fair treatment.
I also think that we should discuss this section in more detail and
perhaps we should draft some guidelines for administrators of student
systems that we can publish more widely. Perhaps we should even
sugest that an RFC be created addressing procedural standards to be
applied in cases of alleged misconduct on student computer systems.
IN CONCLUSION
I am put in the unfortunate position of having to recant an earlier
position. (I realize that many people believe that this is a
violation of net etiquette. :-)
My new position on this issue is that if a student BBS is created to
allow students to exchange email and to read news and the use of the
system is not explicitly limited to doing course work then the system
administrator does not have the right to remove a student's posting.
However, this is a very bad situation. We need to begin a movement to
create student owned and operated BBS's for student use along the same
lines as student newspapers. In this forum we should consider how
these BBS's should be constituted and operated. Also every student on
this list should begin to work for such a system at their university
and every staff member should do what ever they can to help those
students. If anybody at the University of Utah is reading this list
and agrees, please contact me and I will be happy to work with you.
Dudley Irish / dirish@math.utah.edu / Manager Computer Operations
Center for Scientific Computing, Dept of Mathematics, University of Utah
The views expressed in this message do not reflect the views of the
Dept of Mathematics, the University of Utah, or the State of Utah.
-------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 11:07:32 CST
From: stan kulikowski ii
Subject: re: new list needed? too soon
it seems obvious that the conversation has split into two threads, but this
should be expected and it is premature to suggest that the group should be
divided into separate discussions. first, we have the more formal types who
are asking about definitions of academic freedom. much of this is not
directly applied to computing, except by metaphorical reasoning. let them go
about this. they are contributing very well to the goals of an eventual
concensus. secondly, we have the computer jockeys with descriptions of how
things operate at various places. why should they not supply anectdotal
examples and swap stories? many legal issues have to do with reasoning by case
example and precident. we will need a supply of these when each of us comes to
an understanding of how the general applies to the specifics.
surely us software development types recognize the value of having both
top-down and bottom-up processes perculating during problem specification.
contribute to the threads which catch your interest, but be patient and avoid
putting down the others. in a discussion group like this you should know how
or learn to follow the Subject: lines well enough to navigate your own course
through conversations.
i have some viewpoints on academic freedom as common law (higher than
contractual) and how it must extend to students as well as faculty. i also
have a tangible example of how network censorship did interfere with the
progress of a research project. i will try to get back with these under
separate covers, reasonably soon.
stan
. stankuli@UWF.bitnet
===
| | close your eyes, my darling, or three of them at least
--- -- old venusian lullaby
-------------------
From: Bruce Howard
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 13:23 EDT
Subject: Just because a organization is paying...
Sender: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: stu@rsch.oclc.org
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 15:08:51 EDT
Subject: Just because a organization is paying...
Status: R
> Just because a organization is paying for the computing resources doesn't
> mean that the users of that system give up their rights to privacy.
I am not sure this is as straight forward an issue as it might appear
on the surface.
A computer system is an asset made available to me by my employer to
accomplish my work. It seems reasonable that corporate policy should
dictate in some important way how this resource can be used.
Especially since my behavior on a network reflects upon my employer,
just as it does if I am speaking at a conference, for example.
My employer has a right to know what I say as their public
representative, and since corporate policy (in most cases, I presume)
prohibits private use of corporate assets such as computer systems,
are they not entitled to know what I "say" through the medium of this
asset?
Stuart Weibel
Senior Research Scientist
OCLC Office of Research
stu@rsch.oclc.org
the technology is already making simple policies and simple analogies to
existing policies inappropriate. consider the andrew file system (afs)
in which authority over the file system is distinguished from authority
over the local machine resources accessing the file system.
the andrew file system is a distributed global file system made up of
afs cells. each afs cell is an aggregation of file servers under a
common administrative authority that collectively present a portion of
the global afs file system to the world. at any given time, a user on
an afs client machine may be accessing files stored in any number of
different afs cells. for efficiency, information from files is often
cached in the local file system of the user's workstation.
suppose a user on an afs workstation at your organization is suspected
of misusing organization resources. does the fact that he is suspected
of doing his crimes from a organization-owned resource give you
(substitute "the organization" for "you" as appropriate) the authority
to start snooping at the traffic between his workstation and my cell?
what if the user happen's to store his mail (organization and
non-organization-related intermingled shamelessly) in my cell -- does
that give you the authority? what if that traffic contains private
information that i have authorized only to the user and not to anyone,
figuratively, looking over his shoulder? does the organization have a
right to move beyond eavesdropping and misuse the user's authentication
token (afs service ticket) to examine files stored in that users
account in my afs cell?
when pondering these questions, consider that an afs service ticket is
a key and company security doesn't have the legal right to search the
user's home simply because they were able, for example, to make a copy
of his house keys while he was exercising in the executive washroom.
misusing that user's service ticket against services offered in my cell
because of a supposed violation in your own still constitutes breaking
and entering into my cell. i authorized that user, not you or your
companies security team, to authenticate in my cell and access its
services.
another related thought: whether for reasons of tradition or lack of
policy, it is a fact that at many sites no clear distinction has been
drawn between private and "business"-related mail. many mail readers
leave a trail of .forward files as they move from job to job so that
their mail eventually forwards to the current place where they are
reading mail and they carry with them the expectation that that mail is
their own. given this common expectation, organizations should
establish clear and widely published policies stating the degree of
privacy your organization allows for information stored on
organization-controlled resources.
my druthers and personal feeling as to what is "right" is that
organizations should take the effort to preserve privacy even where no
legal obligation to do so exists. i think it pays off in worker
satisfaction and conveys a sense of professional respect to the worker
which will be returned in kind.
bruce
-------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 16:51:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jon C. Slenk"
Subject: Libraries, Academic Freedom
Re: my previous message. I did not include libraries because
I agree that the basic idea behind "public library" is something
that allows as wide a cross section of information / views
to be represented as possible. What I was talking about were
such things as book stores and publishing companies.
Anyhow...
Someone asked some questions about what academic freedom
implies in the way of rights (sorry, no quotes - I don't
have a "real" mailer running right now). I would like to ask,
how does academic freedom get guaranteed in the first place?
When someone decides to create a university, are they required
(by law) to guarantee academic freedom (a term the person
I mentioned above is presumably trying to get defined)? If they
are, then I can go on to discussions of why this requirement
is good or bad, or on to discussions of what academic freedom
implies.
However, I don't believe that schools (well, I don't know
about public schools, but at least universities) *are* required
to guarantee academic freedom. Basically, a private institution
is a buisness venture: if they don't make money they
will go under. So, if they are a buisness venture, they should
be looking out for themselves. If they put a lot of money
into computing systems and let their students get onto the nets,
then I believe it is okay morally for them to say, "Hey, that
letter can't go out!" and yank it.
Even though this may not be a nice thing, it is still within
their rights to do it. There is a difference between what
you are within your rights doing and what people like about
what you do.
So my question is (I guess :-}) how should schools and
academic freedom be linked? I would like to concentrate
on private schools rather than public ones (which make
my skin crawl, anyhow) but any comments are very welcome.
Ta ta,
-Jon.
js9b+@andrew.cmu.edu
-------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 91 15:54:27 EDT
From: stu@rsch.oclc.org (Stu Weibel)
Subject: Re: Just because a organization is paying...
Bruce Howard writes:
> organizations should establish clear and widely published policies
> stating the degree of privacy your organization allows for information
> stored on organization-controlled resources.
Be careful what you ask for, lest it come true... there is an unhappy
trend in corporate America for legal departments to lay down policies
that are maximally restrictive so as to minimize their litigation
vulnerability. The logical extension of this mindset is to simply say
that no external communication is permissable without corporate
authorization.
What you appeal to in your statement might be couched in terms of the
"enlightened self-interest" of our social contracts; I agree this idea is
fundamental to the vitality and creativity of our culture. My own
experience is that when legal protectionism comes into conflict with "a
sense of professional respect to the worker," the former invariably
prevails.
Stuart Weibel
-------------------
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1991 14:13:12 GMT
From: MCNAB_PD@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU (XCACORP)
Subject: RE: research??
Dan,
You mention a student writting a program which compromised the security of the
net! My first reaction to that would be that then it is also possible for the
program to compromise the security of peoples accounts (might be drawing a
long bow here though). Surely then, does this not interfere with their
academic freedoms?
One of the biggest issues which will have to be dealt with in this discussion
group will be whether it is justifiable for the interests of many (i.e. the
other account users) to take priority over the interests of few (in this case
the student you referred to).
To use another example, say the student concerned was writing a research
virus/worm, which he wanted to study and document in an effort to increase
UNIX security. Should he be able to do so on a system where hundreds, if not
thousands of users may be "infected" should it go wrong?
A stand alone system is a practical (if not short term) answer, but I just
thought i'd pose the question!
Mark
-------------------
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1991 14:07:05 GMT
From: MCNAB_PD@DARWIN.NTU.EDU.AU (XCACORP)
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
An interesting point was made in the posting by D. Brown. What does
constitute the real difference between land mail (or otherwise) and E-mail?
Under Australian (and I assume US) legislation, it is a crime to interfere
with mail that is not your own (query, I think you lose ownership once you
actually post the mail itself i.e. you cannot force the post office to deliver
the mail to you!). Further, the post office is not responsible under legislationfor any mail which it delivers (i.e bomb-parcels, threats, blackmail etc).
However, there is considerable doubt as to whether system administrators should
be liable for mailings which are posted under their systems. Clearly, they
should not be held responsible for any mail which could not _reasonably_ have
been detected. The difference in their case for that mentioned above is simply
that a Sys. Administrator can scan mailing on a network system without actually
"physically" interfering with the mailing itself.
I would suggest that a simple (?) program could be written which scans outgoing
mail for certain key words (i.e. kill, president, drugs, prostitution),
without the need for human interference. Thus, a majority of mailings could
be allowed through without any interruption, and only a minimal few being
flagged for checking.
But again, such a system would not be faultless! What if someone uses the
words which are checked for legitimately? Who sets the list of words to
be checked for? Can anyone be placed above this system? Who regulates what
happens once a mail message is flagged for further consideration?
My opinions are only in their formative stages, and I openly invite replies/
criticisms.
Mark
-------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 10:57 EST
From: SIMPSON%BARRYU.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: What REALLY is academic freedom?
X-Vms-Cc: SIMPSON
I've been on this list for the past few days, and I must say I find the
comments on it to be interesting. I've heard these descriptions of
academic freedom before, of course, but I've also had descriptions from
the legal system. Since the term is a legal one, how many of the people
talking about academic freedom are lawyers and/or legal students, and how
thoroughly have they researched the term? I'm fairly well versed in the
concept of academic freedom, but I don't consider myself the last word on
the subject.
By the way, in discussions of academic freedom with attorneys and judges
I've heard the AAUP's definition(s) discussed but never praised as being
either comprehensive or accurate. Has anyone else considered that the
concept has sides that aren't being considered here?
Tim Simpson
Department of Communication
Barry University
Bitnet: SIMPSON@BARRYU
-------------------
Subject: A (pedantic) analysis of CAF issues raised
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 09:47:25 -0500
From: Kurt M Ackermann
In recent postings, Mr Irish has raised a few important issues and has clearly
thought a great deal about these issues. His attempts to clarify and define the
terms of debate are just what we need to get this discussion rolling-- he has
repeatedly written, and I think correctly, that the issues raised in this group
have been largely tangential to questions of academic freedom.
Please bear with me as I excerpt and comment on two of his recent postings:
------------
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 13:41:33 MDT
Message-Id: <9104171941.AA15381@math.utah.edu>
Subject: research??
------------
> [The Chair of the University of Utah's Academic Freedom and Tenure
> Committee's] view of accepted usage and AAUP guidelines was that unlike
> for faculty[,] academic freedom for students does not grant any freedoms
> not already described in the Bill of Rights. She said that it was clear
> that student organizations were free to invite any speaker that they
> wanted to hear and that in a class room within the parameters of the
> class a students work must be judged on its merits not on its agreement
> with the professor's opinions. These rights are ones that we hold that
> an individual has, period. What academic freedom means to a student is
> that in becoming a student they do not give up any rights that they
> already have. There is a burden on the university to provide an
> environment in which a student can pursue free studies but this is not
> part of academic freedom.
------------
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 14:11:59 MDT
Message-Id: <9104172011.AA15558@math.utah.edu>
Subject: you have it wrong -- Dudley Irish post ing on academic freedom
------------
> Academic freedom is most emphatically part of a contract. It is part
> of the contract of almost every faculty member in the United States.
> It is not an inalienable right like the rights described in the Bill
> of Rights. In fact, professors at religious schools can be held to
> requirements that would get a public school censured. Academic
> freedom is not free speech. It is completely separate. It is not a
> right to privacy. It is completely separate. It does almost
> exclusively apply to research. It is a very special freedom that only
> make sense in an academic setting.
> It is the freedom to research any topic in a professor's field (a
> clear limitation) and to hold any views on that topic. A professor
> can not be punished in anyway for holding a view that does not agree
> with the rest of the professors in their department or the
> institution's administration. It is not some blanket protection that
> grants a professor carte blanc to do anything they want.
Based on the first paragraph cited above, it appears that the term
"academic freedom" does not have any unique meaning when used in
reference to students. I infer from this paragraph that, while academic
freedom means students do not give up any of their protected rights, that
professors do give up rights. This seems to me to be the crucial aspect of
academic freedom, as opposed to plain-old freedom of speech, freedom to
peacably assemble, etc.
I think that it would be helpful for Mr. Irish to specify more clearly
what rights are surrendered by academics to get this freedom (...strange
and ironic to write that sentence... :-). In signing a contract with a
university or college, faculty members are agreeing to certain terms
according to which they must teach, carry out research, and conduct
themselves (i.e., no discrimination based on sex, age, race, etc.; etc.).
What rights are surrendered? What rights that apply to one's freedom
to conduct one's research or hold certain opinions? It would be VERY
HELPFUL to get explicit citations from contracts that professors sign,
or from policies with which faculty must comply as faculty members.
In what specific ways are these surrendered rights unique to faculty
members and do not bind students in similar ways? In the third cited
paragraph above, Mr. Irish points to limitations placed on faculty
members that would restrict them to a certain field or fields. Is this
true? (I think the point was not explicit enough...) How restrictive
is it? how binding? how is it enforced? Can someone cite specific
passages from policies or contracts?
> To address Dan Brown's specific case, my reading is that the student
> has no academic freedom protection of his or her research. Until that
> student receives an faculty appointment the student's research is not
> protected. Clearly the university is not required to support the
> research of anybody who comes along, likewise, students are not at the
> university to do research but to learn. Obviously, the issue becomes
> more complex for PhD candidates but even in that case the candidate's
> adviser has a great deal of control over what research is done.
What does it mean for research in general to be protected, as opposed
to a students' research? (i.e, in what ways are faculty researches
protected that student researches are not?) More importantly, to have
one's research "supported" by an institution is quite different from having
it "protected" by it. According to my reading of this paragraph, this
distinction is muddled, and it is a distinction that carries quite
weighty implications. I hope that Mr. Irish will re-write these ideas
bearing this distinction in mind, because they are critical to
developing a clear understanding of the meaning of academic freedom
and who has it and under what circumstances.
---
I think that Mr. Irish has brought the discussion into much clearer focus,
specifically raising a few key questions:
1. What is the distinction between faculty and students in matters of
academic freedom?
2. What specific rights are surrendered by faculty members in becoming
faculty members? What do they gain? Specifically, how are faculty
limited in the fields of research which they can pursue?
3. What are the differences between "support" from an institution and
"protection" from an institution in matters concerning academic
freedom? In what ways are universities obligated to both students
and faculty to give either? Is there any reciprocal obligation on
the parts of students and/or faculty to the university?
If we can work out some answers to these questions, this will help us
define the terms of our discussion of academic freedom. We can then turn
to the more specific issue of how computers are being used to augment or
restrict this freedom in specific ways.
Unless we want this group to serve simply as a forum for exchanging stories
or for rehashing issues raised in USENET newsgroups, we need to focus on
some specific points, work on them, and move on to the next most relevant
point and/or issue.
-------------
Kurt Ackermann
[faustus@gargoyle.uchicago.edu]
From kadie Sun Apr 21 09:54:11 1991
To: cafb-mail
Subject: Computers and Academic Freedom mailing list (batch edition)
Status: R
Computers and Academic Freedom mailing list (batch edition)
Sun Apr 21 09:54:08 EDT 1991
In this issue:
kill bush kill quayle
Re: kill bush kill quayle
The addresses for the list are now:
comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org - for contributions to the list
or caf-talk@eff.org
listserv@eff.org - for automated additions/deletions
(send email with the line "help" for details.)
caf-talk-request@eff.org - for administrivia
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Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 16:13:50 CDT
From: francis%zaphod@gargoyle.uchicago.edu
Message-Id: <9104202113.AA00240@math.uchicago.edu>
Subject: kill bush kill quayle
> I would suggest that a simple (?) program could be written which
> scans outgoing
> mail for certain key words (i.e. kill, president, drugs, prostitution),
> without the need for human interference. Thus, a majority of mailings could
> be allowed through without any interruption, and only a minimal few being
> flagged for checking.
This message would have been flagged.
You'd need a *very* smart system.
/============================================================================\
| Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.|
| Department of Mathematics |=============================================|
| University of Chicago | What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9? |
| francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu | --Ultimate Question |
\============================================================================/
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Message-Id:
From: zane@ddsw1.mcs.com (Sameer Parekh)
Subject: Re: kill bush kill quayle
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 91 20:37:32 CDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL13]
Any use of a word should be legit. If I say kill bush kill quayle
(HI NSA) in my posts, why should that be illegal? Maybe we can tone down
the tone of the post. What if I said I think prostitution is not wrong.
Then do I not have the right to post 'subversive' information? (When
applying for immigration one is asked if they have ever belonged to a
'subversive' organization.)
--
The Ravings of the Insane Maniac Sameer Parekh -- zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM
