From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] Violation of the NSF AUP
Message-ID: <199201201355.AA16422@eff.org>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:55:36 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu (Richard Mandelbaum)
Subject: Violation of the NSF AUP
Message-ID: <9201201327.AA17773@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:27:56 GMT
I have seen a lot of discussion about the NSF AUP and the consequences
of violation lately and have a fundamental question which is bothering
me. As far as I can understand the NSF is buying a virtual network
service from ANS, which has to meet certain NSF conditions on traffic
etc. The NSF is buying this service on behalf of a certain subset of
the R & E community. All of the NSF traffic runs on the ANS network
some of which also carries other traffic for ANS customers. If I send
traffic out over the network, which doesn't meet NSF criteria why are
we assuming that I am taking or using NSF bandwidth. On a physical level
I am in fact using ANS bandwidth and if I haven't paid ANS CO+RE rates
I am probably guilty of theft of services from ANS, not misuse of NSF
resources. The only way I can think of misusing NSF bandwidth is if you do
something which would prevent ANS from delivering to NSF the bandwidth
that NSF has contracted for. That would require , I think, an extremely
bandwidth intensive illegal activity. I can't think of any normal use
of the network that would lead to such a situation.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201504.AA11479@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:04:06 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <25353.Jan1904.08.2692@virtualnews.nyu.edu>
Date: 19 Jan 92 04:08:26 GMT
In article faustus@ygdrasil.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher) writes:
> The visions people have of Internet security seem to range over a
> spectrum.
[ followed by two extreme models of trust ]
And there are some of us who think about the network in terms of real
things like money, responsibility, and liability, rather than obscure
notions like ``trust.'' A very useful way to think about security when
many people and organizations are involved is to ask this question:
For any action, is there someone who takes responsibility for that
action, and is it possible to ``point the finger'' all the way back to
that person?
Once the network consisted of a few big machines run by big
organizations. If someone made a connection from one of those machines,
you could point the finger at the machine's owner, and it could usually
figure out which user was responsible. It could then point the finger at
that user in turn. Fine. Of course, it's still a pain in the neck to
figure out which user made a connection, unless you can run ps and
ofiles and so on while the connection is in progress. But there are
tools---like RFC 931---which solve this.
Eventually some machines controlled by individuals joined the network.
People who talk about ``trust'' say ``Ah, the situation is totally
different, because now we can't trust root on machines any more!'' But I
say the situation is the same. Someone who points a finger at one of
those machines will be told by the network's owner ``We don't own that
machine. Joe Shmoe does. Sue him.'' Once again it's possible to trace
responsibility for an action back to its source. Of course, it's still a
pain in the neck to figure out which machine generated a particular TCP
packet, since TCP is insecure, unless you can run RARP and various other
things while the connection is in progress. But there are tools---like
secure Ethernets, or Kerberos---which solve this.
The same model also applies to the phone network. When someone calls
your computer, it asks for a password. You can assign responsibility to
the password's owner for anything done with that account. Some computers
dial back. They assign responsibility to the owner of the phone number
which they're calling. Now some phone companies offer Caller-ID, which
adds another way to trace the source of an action.
Now it's your turn to try applying this model. Imagine an open terminal
server, which for the sake of a name we'll call TERMINUS. Anyone can
dial into TERMINUS and connect to any Internet site. If you ask the
TERMINUS owner to trace the phone lines, you get nothing but a blank
stare. Tell me this: How do you find the person responsible for a
TERMINUS connection?
The old phrase ``I dunno who we're gonna sue, but we're gonna sue
*somebody*!'' seems particularly apt here.
---Dan
Cracker tracker's motto: When there's a way, there's a will.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201504.AA06046@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:04:56 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <26789.Jan1907.36.0392@virtualnews.nyu.edu>
Date: 19 Jan 92 07:36:03 GMT
In article bav@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Brick Verser) writes:
> Should pay phones be outlawed? Look at all the nasty things that one can
> do from a pay phone.
Wake up to the 1990's and look at Caller-ID.
Sure, there are situations where anonymity is desirable, and it's often
good to provide a service which accepts anonymous callers (e.g., a rape
crisis center, a police tip line). But anonymity in communications
should never be the default.
> And even on those systems where we
> require authentication, there's often nothing I can do after the fact
> to trace who attacked you--we don't log every IP connection made, and on
> a Unix system with 30 simultaneous users often the best I can do is say
> "it was one of those 30."
Oh, fer gawd's sake. Instead of saying ``I refuse to take responsibility
for what goes on in my system, and I want to remain blind to methods of
finding out who is responsible,'' why don't you pay attention to widely
available solutions?
RFC 931 (the Authentication Server, currently being renamed the
``Identity Server'' as part of becoming a proposed Internet standard)
was *designed* to solve this problem. Just install one of the three
available authd servers---they're all very small and easy to get
running---and any host X will be able to find out which user owns a
connection from your host to host X. Here's the newest server I know of:
pauthd 1.2: small, fast RFC 931 (Authentication Server) server (11/91)
ftp.lysator.liu.se:pub/daemons/pauthd-1.2.tar.Z
Several available packages will log RFC 931 results. For example, if you
get the wuarchive ftpd (wuarchive.wustl.edu:packages/ftpd.wuarchive.shar)
and define USE_A_RFC931 as 1, it'll record RFC 931 usernames. The server
itself is running on a growing number of Internet sites---197 that I
know of, including maverick.ksu.ksu.edu, cis.ksu.edu, and math.ksu.edu.
How long did you say you've been working at KSU?
---Dan
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201505.AA09024@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:05:09 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: pdh@netcom.COM (Phil Howard)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.014727.29249pdh@netcom.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 92 01:47:27 GMT
faustus@ygdrasil.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher) writes:
>What's the point of shutting down one point of internet access for
>crackers? As the internet expands, these will become more and more
>common, and breakin attempts will become more and more frequent. If
>you spent as much time fixing your own security (and complaining to
>your OS vendors) as you did complaining to MIT, you wouldn't have a
>problem.
Agreed! YOU should be responsible for YOUR OWN security and not
dependent someone at MIT.
--
/***********************************************************************\
| Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com | "The problem with |
| depending on government is that you cannot depend on it" - Tony Brown |
\***********************************************************************/
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201555.AA03745@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:55:54 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: pdh@netcom.COM (Phil Howard)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.020217.776pdh@netcom.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 92 02:02:17 GMT
bav@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Brick Verser) writes:
>Security begins at home.
Definitely!
>Should pay phones be outlawed? Look at all the nasty things that one can
>do from a pay phone. Demanding authentication before one is allowed to
>make a phone call would prevent a whole raft of criminal activity (no more
>bogus bomb threats during final week, no more real-time ransom demands
>from kidnappers). And should the phone company be held liable if a bogus
>bomb threat is made and they can't tell where it came from and who did it?
Well it seems that is what they are already doing. More and more pay phones
are violatile my privacy of travelling without someone tracking me by only
functioning if I use a credit or calling card.
I want COIN phones!!
>I don't fear the day when gaining access to the Internet from any city
>is as easy as dropping a quarter in a payphone; I look forward to it.
Sorry, but I doubt it will be THAT easy, and the way things are going,
you won't be able to make a call for a quarter, nor even as many as it
might actually cost.
>I'm really not quite as vehement about my views as the above may suggest.
>Indeed, I used to feel a little differently but have lately come around.
>One event which helped change my viewpoint was when I was asked to try
>to track and find someone who had cracked a system; I spent a while going
>through logs and coming up with probable suspects only to find out that
>the system that was "cracked" was a setup--the guy leaves an unprotected
>GUEST account on his machine and yells whenever someone uses it. Sorry,
>but I've got better things to do.
You found the problem, obviously.
>And I DID recently close (sortof) our open terminal server--it was being
>used to play MUD so much that local users were no longer able to use it to
>connect to local hosts, and our incoming modems were being tied up with
>MUD players as well. That it closed a security gap was mostly incidental.
>In an ideal world we'd have enough resources to let the locals play MUD.
--
/***********************************************************************\
| Phil Howard --- KA9WGN --- pdh@netcom.com | "The problem with |
| depending on government is that you cannot depend on it" - Tony Brown |
\***********************************************************************/
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201556.AA05040@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:56:31 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.security
From: john@iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.050837.25499@news.iastate.edu>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1992 05:08:37 GMT
i1neal@exnet.iastate.edu (Neal Rauhauser -- ) writes:
} Theres one of these at every major school. ISU has an open
}terminal server that can be reached by several dial in lines.
Before we get a bucket load of hate mail...
The ISU public terminal server will not allow you to make an off-campus
connection. (I suppose it is possible that some department has a
terminal server which is misconfigured -- if so, let us know.)
I was under the impression that it was an NSFnet requirement that
no anonymous connections were to be allowed off-site. True?
John
--
John Hascall Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center john@iastate.edu
Ames, IA 50011 515/294-9551 [fax -1717]
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201557.AA29628@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:57:11 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: leres@ace.ee.lbl.gov (Craig Leres)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <20739@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 20 Jan 92 06:32:02 GMT
Phil Howard writes:
> Agreed! YOU should be responsible for YOUR OWN security and not
> dependent someone at MIT.
I've been following this thread pretty closely and I haven't heard
anyone say they think that blocking anonymous terminal servers from the
Internet will solve their security problems, stop crackers from
cracking, etc. I seriously doubt you can find a single person who will
make this statement, either.
What I have heard is that some people (myself included) think it's
irresponsible of terminus' sysadmins to allow anonymous access to the
Internet. (But to be fair, I'd like to give them credit for offering
the blocking service.)
I haven't been able to find the reference to back this up but I believe
it is Department of Energy policy to not allow anonymous access to the
Internet (or even DOE computers, for that matter). But even if this
were not the case, I would feel it my responsiblty as a "good neightbor"
to disallow such access.
Craig
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201557.AA09677@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:57:38 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: cooper@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (ralph.moonen)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.084018.20609@cbfsb.att.com>
Date: 20 Jan 92 08:40:18 GMT
In article <13758.Jan1715.05.0292@virtualnews.nyu.edu>, brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> I have seen firsthand at least three major cracking attempts hidden
> behind the shield of TERMINUS.LCS.MIT.EDU. Every week there's another
> hint in the news that yet another site has been hit by crackers
> operating through this site. I'm not gonna take it any more!
Just a couple of thoughts:
1) Is a cracking attempt so infuriating to you? Does this imply that you
don't trust you site's own password security?
2) I won't flame you for this AntiTERM stuff, but do you think it's your
job to stop them?
3) If you are so worried about crackers having free access to Internet,
what about all the crackers at the legal .edu sites? Just closing
Terminus will not have any effect.
4) These days, it costs virtually no money to get your own site, so it
will not take long for crackers to actually do this. (It has allready
been done..... ) Now what? Ban all sites from suspected countries?
Oh well, I guess this won't be enough to make you think differently, but
remember: the safety of your site is *your* responsibility, not someone
else's..... (Yes, even as a user, *you* have the responsibility to chose
a safe password.)
--Ralph Moonen
--rmoonen@hvlpa.att.com
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201558.AA17318@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:58:31 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: cooper@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (ralph.moonen)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.104405.23117@cbfsb.att.com>
Date: 20 Jan 92 10:44:05 GMT
In article <25353.Jan1904.08.2692@virtualnews.nyu.edu>, brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> And there are some of us who think about the network in terms of real
> things like money, responsibility, and liability, rather than obscure
> notions like ``trust.''
This is getting pretty ridiculous. The day you view 'trust' as an obscure
notion, you've lost your soul, and I feel sorry for you!
> Eventually some machines controlled by individuals joined the network.
> People who talk about ``trust'' say ``Ah, the situation is totally
> different, because now we can't trust root on machines any more!'' But I
> say the situation is the same. Someone who points a finger at one of
> those machines will be told by the network's owner ``We don't own that
> machine. Joe Shmoe does. Sue him.'' Once again it's possible to trace
> responsibility for an action back to its source.
If you'r so concerned about TERMINUS being the barrier stopping you from
tracing the cracker back (because he is the only one responsible for the
actions made - you said so yourself) you've got a surprise coming. Since
the whole of USA.net.land seems to thinkl all crackers are Dutch, you'd better
start ANTI-PHON the action group against public telephone networks. Because
as long as it's possible to dial up to *any* computer through a telephone
line, following your arguments, the telephone system should made
password secured. I'm sure you can see the problems involved with this.
> They assign responsibility to the owner of the phone number
> which they're calling. Now some phone companies offer Caller-ID, which
> adds another way to trace the source of an action.
Yep, but Mr. cracker knows ways around this too, so it won't help you one bit!
> The old phrase ``I dunno who we're gonna sue, but we're gonna sue
> *somebody*!'' seems particularly apt here.
Look, it's a giant American, and it's coming to sue me!!!
> Cracker tracker's motto: When there's a way, there's a will.
Strange, that sounds like the crackers motto to me.......
--Ralph
--rmoonen@hvlpa.att.com
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201558.AA07986@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:58:17 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <4342.Jan2010.33.3392@virtualnews.nyu.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 10:33:33 GMT
In article <1992Jan20.084018.20609@cbfsb.att.com> cooper@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (ralph.moonen) writes:
> 1) Is a cracking attempt so infuriating to you?
Yes, just as it would infuriate me if I awoke one night to the sound of
someone trying to pick the lock. I can just imagine what happens next: I
open the door to the sight of a black-masked figure calmly knocking on
my neighbor's door. My neighbor, Mr. Terminus, lets him in and lets him
slip out the window as I watch in amazement. As I sputter out a few
words of shock, Terminus smiles condescendingly at me and says ``I pay a
lot of rent---you'll never be able to get me thrown out of the building.
And I'm not responsible for the actions of black-masked burglars I let
in---*you* are responsible for your own security! But I'll be nice. If
you want, I'll tell the burglars not to break into your apartment. There
are thousands more apartments in the building.''
TERMINUS infuriates me.
> 2) I won't flame you for this AntiTERM stuff, but do you think it's your
> job to stop them?
No. I just think that they're being bad neighbors.
> 3) If you are so worried about crackers having free access to Internet,
> what about all the crackers at the legal .edu sites?
If shmoe@foo.edu breaks into someone's machine, he can be traced and
arrested; either foo.edu or shmoe will have to take responsibility for
that user's actions! There's no anonymity there except what you can
illegally acquire by breaking TCP. This has nothing to do with TERMINUS,
which provides anonymous access by default.
> Just closing
> Terminus will not have any effect.
Don't be so naive. TERMINUS provides more complete anonymity than any
other site has offered for years. I don't believe its administrators
have ever traced a single line, and crackers operate through it with
impunity.
> 4) These days, it costs virtually no money to get your own site, so it
> will not take long for crackers to actually do this.
Maybe you should read my comments in a previous article on assigning
blame. If someone acquires his own Internet machine, then he is
responsible for what that machine does. Once again this is not analogous
to TERMINUS, which *nobody* takes responsibility for.
---Dan
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201559.AA02199@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:59:08 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <4937.Jan2011.41.0592@virtualnews.nyu.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 11:41:05 GMT
In article <1992Jan20.104405.23117@cbfsb.att.com> cooper@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (ralph.moonen) writes:
> Because
> as long as it's possible to dial up to *any* computer through a telephone
> line, following your arguments, the telephone system should made
> password secured.
No. All I want is to have every Internet packet traceable, at least in
theory, back to a real person who will take responsibility for it. This
is exactly in line with what the local network providers are already
planning to do---how do you think they'll bill people for network use if
they don't have accounting? I won't be surprised if TERMINUS survives an
incredible amount of peer pressure but vanishes the moment MIT is asked
to pay for its network use.
Anyway, your statement doesn't make sense, because almost all computers
allowing dialins ask for passwords or call back to fixed numbers. And
who's been talking about adding passwords to the telephone system? That
souds like an utterly impractical idea. Passwords have always been
something which can be transmitted over a phone line, not something
which you need to make a phone call in the first place.
> > Cracker tracker's motto: When there's a way, there's a will.
> Strange, that sounds like the crackers motto to me.......
You should learn the difference between a statement and its converse.
---Dan
Cracker tracker's motto: When there's a way, there's a will.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201201559.AA25213@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 03:59:54 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: bav@hobbes.ksu.ksu.edu (Brick Verser)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Date: 20 Jan 1992 12:08:16 GMT
Message-ID:
brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>In article bav@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Brick Verser) writes:
>> And even on those systems where we
>> require authentication, there's often nothing I can do after the fact
>> to trace who attacked you--we don't log every IP connection made, and on
>> a Unix system with 30 simultaneous users often the best I can do is say
>> "it was one of those 30."
>
>Oh, fer gawd's sake. Instead of saying ``I refuse to take responsibility
>for what goes on in my system, and I want to remain blind to methods of
>finding out who is responsible,'' why don't you pay attention to widely
>available solutions?
>
>RFC 931 (the Authentication Server, currently being renamed the
>``Identity Server'' as part of becoming a proposed Internet standard)
>was *designed* to solve this problem. Just install one of the three
>available authd servers---they're all very small and easy to get
>running---and any host X will be able to find out which user owns a
>connection from your host to host X. ...
Sigh. I did say "often nothing I can do," did I not? While I can perhaps
use AUTHD to keep track of things on the few machines that are running it,
most are not. Until these tools come bundled with the operating systems
it'll remain the case that very few folks will use 'em. I can install it
on our machines, but that's a small fraction of the whole. It's just hard
for me to get bent outta shape trying to track what the kiddies on our Unix
hosts are doing when they can go use a PC and do their evil deeds even more
anonymously. Or they can steal a userid and do it, at least for a while.
>How long did you say you've been working at KSU?
Actually, I don't recall mentioning it (15 years). Now then, allow me to
quote from your original posting which started all this:
>Don't send me mail about this. Post to alt.security. Raise a storm!
>(If not too many responses appear, then I guess I'm wrong about the
>magnitude of this problem, and I'll stop complaining about TERMINUS
>forever.)
Strikes me that you were asking for feedback here. Now that you've got it,
you seem unhappy about it and are resorting to playground taunts. Amusing
as they are, you just might offend someone with one of them some day. You're
coming across as being a bit eccentric, which we all know is untrue, but
you'll have a harder time generating the groundswell you desire this way.
I don't mind requesting that anonymous servers try to prevent connections
from leaving campus if they originate off-campus. But I will be unhappy if
NSF institutes an official policy prohibiting all unauthenticated access
since I want the PC's and terminal servers around here to be allowed full
Internet access. And I will be REAL unhappy if we are expected to be able
to provide a complete log of who connected where and when.
Brick Verser
Computing & Networking Services
Kansas State University
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.security,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.161436.26040@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1992 16:14:36 GMT
john@iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
[...]
>I was under the impression that it was an NSFnet requirement that
>no anonymous connections were to be allowed off-site. True?
[...]
Is there a technical fix to this problem? How hard would it be for
NSFnet to enforce its policy itself?
I would think it could, for example, not accept connections from
Terminus. This seems better solution that cutting off all of MIT. It
also seems better than imposing NSFnet policy on all the other
networks to which Terminus is connected. (The other networks may have
different policies.)
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] TERMINUS HA!
Message-ID: <9201201709.AA00198@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 05:09:03 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
From: zmapj36@cc.ic.ac.uk (M.S.Bennett Supvs= Prof Pendry)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: TERMINUS HA!
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.085550.25899@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Jan 92 08:55:49 GMT
Now I hear of this thing called 'Terminus' as far as I can understand it allows an
inbound telnet to bounce back out right? Fine.
Try tracing this...
telnet to nsf.sun.ac.uk
log into janet pad
conect to {some janet site}
now connect from there to a certain SPAN node
now patch out to the internet
There are at lease 2 of the SPAN-IP gateways in existance.
TRY tracing that convolouted mess!
It makes your terminus look like a kindergarten session:
you have involved 3 networks, 2 countries and about 5 science/networking agencies.
Its a game of hunt the duristiction folks!
DON'T PANIC! DON'T PANIC!
Sean
sean@scn1.jpl.nasa.gov (for those without gatewaying in their machines)
--
/------ ------- -----\ /------ | ====================== |
| | | \ | | M. Sean Bennett |
\-----\ |---- | | \-----\ | UKSEDS TECH.OFF. |
| | | / | | Janet:SEDS@CC.IC.AC.UK |
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: roberts@stsci.edu (Jim Roberts)
Subject: Re: [alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk] Wanted: Rotating (or Guest) CAF-News editors
Message-ID: <9201201713.AA00279@NEMESIS.STSCI.EDU>
Date: 20 Jan 92 17:13:27 GMT
Well, Carl, maybe your guest editors did a great job, but I never saw
any of it. This is the first 'eff' mail I've received in about a
month. I thought the project had died.
Jim Roberts
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: [alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk] Wanted: Rotating (or Guest) CAF-News editors
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.172425.21525@eff.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1992 17:24:25 GMT
roberts@stsci.edu (Jim Roberts) writes:
>Well, Carl, maybe your guest editors did a great job, but I never saw
>any of it. This is the first 'eff' mail I've received in about a
>month. I thought the project had died.
Sorry for the delay. I was on vacation over break. The last three
issues before break were done by guest editors.
Work on new issues has begun.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.irc-operlist] IRC at UWyo.
Message-ID: <199201210417.AA07684@eff.org>
Date: 20 Jan 92 18:17:02 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 20 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.irc-operlist
From: hellmond@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Peter H. Hellmonds)
Subject: IRC at UWyo.
Message-ID: <9201210026.AA16171@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 21 Jan 92 00:26:27 GMT
Dear Prof. van Baalen,
Thank you very much for your reply. It would
be nice if I could give Rob a copy of it (but I don't know his
current e-mail account). I would also ask you for your permission
to send your reply to our mailing list for IRC operators,
operlist@cs.bu.edu or operlist@eff.org
where the entire situation has created quite a stirr.
With regard to running IRC at UWyo, I think it would be nice if
a server process could be started on Master or a similar machine.
A server takes much less computing time than a client process,
and it would allow those with a client to log into a server near
by. As far as I have heard, quite a lot of people in Wyoming have
been using the server at UWyo, as it was the closest in their vicinity.
I am sure that Rob did not do any harm wilfully, and that
he would on the contrary be a very helpful person if you would decide
to re-install the server on Master. Many servers of IRC are run by
System Administrators, and if you are interested, I could solicit
their e-mail addresses so that your eventual questions regarding
IRC could be answered by professional administrators. (I myself
am only a graduate student, providing the service from my university
account, where both the server and the client reside).
I would again like to commend Rob to you, especially as he has been
providing a valuable programmer for the non-Unix environment, contri-
buting many hours of work to upgrade the client program.
Sincerely,
Peter H. Hellmonds
-------
Peter H. Hellmonds | === P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y ===
Princeton, NJ, USA | Woodrow Wilson School of Public & Intl. Affairs
Tel (609) 683-4893 | BITNET .......................... hellmond@PUCC
Fax (609) 258-2809 | Internet ....... hellmond@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.security
Subject: Re: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.110534.11426@ms.uky.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 92 16:05:34 GMT
bh@anarres.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>
>Your site probably has dialup ports for the use of your staff. Some
>cracker could call up your modem and then attempt to get access to your
>system.
True enough; I'm sure that most sites, especially those in academia,
provide dialup services.
>I think it's quite reasonable for you, or whoever, to ask the Terminus
>administrators to help you track down the crackers. But instead you
>seem to be asking to cut off the net access of a large class of people
>because a few of those people misuse it.
Are we really "cutting off" their access? Let's consider this:
-- Use of NSFNET and its participating networks is restricted,
in many cases, to "academic and research uses".
-- Participating sites provide computing services to their
users.
-- Participating sites control their networks, and the participating
networks (such as SURAnet) control theirs.
Assuming that an individual has a legitimate need for network access, can
we also assume that his site provides those services he needs? If that is
the case, why do we need anonymous access to the networks?
If their site only serves their legitimate *needs* (as opposed to wants),
the user can turn to other providers, such as Portal, the WELL, or UUNET.
The user's site has no obligation to provide any services other than those
*needed* by each user. Are you arguing that network access is an "all
or nothing" proposition?
>To me this feels like
>discrimination, similar in principle to the WWII internment of
>Japanese-Americans.
Give me a break.
>I am raising a civil liberties issue, not a
>technical security issue.
OK, I'll address those two issues individually:
Civil Liberties: The Internet is NOT, in and of itself, a place
for the exercise of civil liberties. Some ser-
vices provided via the Internet, such as netnews,
may be public forums, in which civil liberties
are (hopefully) somewhat intact. That partial
freedom does not extend to cover the entire net-
work. Therefore, some safeguards are necessary.
Such safeguards can, and should, include the
restriction of anonymous access.
You said that this isn't a technical security issue, but:
Tech Security: The "anonymous dialup" analogy is flawed. Dialups
usually offer only one means of attacking a system.
Telnet access, however, offers a wide range of op-
tions to the attacker. If you are using a Unix sys-
tem, look at the /etc/services file. Each of these
services is a possible security problem. Blocking a
specific network is not a viable solution; this will
interfere with other services, such as email.
>(P.S. It's also a kind of class issue. I feel damn lucky that the
>taxpayers provide me with free net access. They do that to help me do
>my real work, but they also let me use the net to read alt.whatever and
>so on. Other people have to pay Compuserve for this privilege. I can
>easily understand why they'd rather use Terminus.)
You used the key word "privilege". Net access is not a right; civil liberties
do not apply to the base issue of network access (they can apply to specific
services, such as netnews). If network access is a privilege, why should the
restriction of anonymous access to that network be such a problem?
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.120557.25409@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 17:05:57 GMT
kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>Note that these actions are not the same effect as closing down
>TERMINUS and megabyte-joke-archive.state.u.edu. For one thing, the
>services would still be available via other networks that may have
>different rules than NSFnet.
Um, that would depend on how the "other networks" get to those services.
For instance, can a BARRNet user (in the Bay Area) get to mit.edu without
going over the NSFNet backbone? After a quick perusal of my network map
collection, I don't think so.
Instead of arguing that terminus should be disabled, let's ask the question
in reverse:
Why SHOULD anonymous access to the "Internet" be allowed?
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.180136.19005@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 18:01:36 GMT
kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>Note that these actions are not the same effect as closing down
>TERMINUS and megabyte-joke-archive.state.u.edu. For one thing, the
>services would still be available via other networks that may have
>different rules than NSFnet.
morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>Um, that would depend on how the "other networks" get to those services.
>For instance, can a BARRNet user (in the Bay Area) get to mit.edu without
>going over the NSFNet backbone? After a quick perusal of my network map
>collection, I don't think so.
I understand that traffic from BARRNet through NSFNet will have to
follow NSFNet rules. What I don't understand is why traffic that does
not go through NSFNet should have to follow NSFNet rules.
>Instead of arguing that terminus should be disabled, let's ask the question
>in reverse:
>
> Why SHOULD anonymous access to the "Internet" be allowed?
[...]
I don't know if it should be allowed or not. I think it is a question
for each network to make. I don't think the NSFNet should be making
policy for the whole Internet.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [misc.activism.progressive] RESOURCE: Senate Label-Ready Addresses (autopost)
Message-ID: <9201212026.AA09540@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 92 08:26:36 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: RESOURCE: Senate Label-Ready Addresses (autopost)
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.103005.2600@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 10:30:05 GMT
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mailing labels for U.S. Senators
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
U.S. Senator Brock Adams
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SH-513 HS
Washington, D.C., 20510-4703
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SH-528 HS
Washington, D.C., 20510-0602
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SH-706 HS
Washington, D.C., 20510-2602
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Washington, D.C., 20510-4301
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SR-489 RS
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Washington, D.C., 20510-3001
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Washington, D.C., 20510-1803
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SR-249A RS
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SH-711 HS
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SR-277 RS
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SH-728 HS
Washington, D.C., 20510-0101
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SR-125 RS
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Washington, D.C., 20510-4902
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SD-332 DS
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SR-363 RS
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SR-218 RS
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SR-237 RS
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SR-225 RS
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SH-720 HS
Washington, D.C., 20510-0502
U.S. Senator Timothy E. Wirth
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SR-380 RS
Washington, D.C., 20510-0603
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.143053.24035@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 19:30:53 GMT
kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>
>I understand that traffic from BARRNet through NSFNet will have to
>follow NSFNet rules. What I don't understand is why traffic that does
>not go through NSFNet should have to follow NSFNet rules.
>
I haven't seen many statistics, but I would tend to think that the
vast majority of long-distance networks go through the NSFNet back-
bone. After all, that's why it was created.
>I don't know if it should be allowed or not. I think it is a question
>for each network to make.
I don't agree. With the growing interconnection of networks, actions
taken by one tend to have a non-negligible effect on the whole. If
Kentucky were to set up an anonymous terminal server, prudence would
dictate (in my opinion) that the server's reach be limited to this
campus.
If that terminal server were not restricted, users could go anywhere
in the world, regardless of network. At that point, "my" decision has
a real impact on *everyone*.
>I don't think the NSFNet should be making
>policy for the whole Internet.
If you want to use a given firm's services, you abide by their policies.
If NSFNet decides to ignore traffic from anonymous terminal servers, such
is their right; it's their service. We're just users.
I will ask this question again, since no one has chosen to attempt an
answer:
WHY SHOULD WE ALLOW ANONYMOUS ACCESS TO COMPUTER NETWORKS?
Everyone is talking about MIT's policies and NSF's policies, with a
dash of civil liberty and academic freedom thrown in for good mea-
sure. I've seen several people discussing reasons for restricting
anonymous access; none of these have been successfully rebutted.
Why can't someone (anyone) give us a list of reasons for *allowing*
anonymous access to the "Internet"? Could it be that no such reasons
exist? If so, then this whole discussion is moot, there is no reason
for servers such as terminus, and it should be shut down.
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.215903.7880@eff.org>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 21:59:03 GMT
morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
[...]
>If you want to use a given firm's services, you abide by their policies.
>If NSFNet decides to ignore traffic from anonymous terminal servers, such
>is their right; it's their service. We're just users.
[...]
I agree. But what will happen as commerical use of the Internet
increases? The rules for the commerical nets are much different than
the rules for NSFNet. We need more precise ways of controlling network
use.
[...]
>Why can't someone (anyone) give us a list of reasons for *allowing*
>anonymous access to the "Internet"? Could it be that no such reasons
>exist? If so, then this whole discussion is moot, there is no reason
>for servers such as terminus, and it should be shut down.
[...]
I don't know if this is a good enough reason. but I was at a
scientific conference in Boston two years ago. It was handy to have a
local number to call that I could use to sign in to my home machine.
(I don't remember if it was Termious or a guest account on another
terminal server at MIT.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 21 00:00:00 1992
From: durrell@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Cyberpixie)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <10181@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 92 23:36:23 GMT
In article <1992Jan21.143053.24035@ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
> WHY SHOULD WE ALLOW ANONYMOUS ACCESS TO COMPUTER NETWORKS?
There are, of course, many obvious reasons why anonymous access
is *useful*. It is, for one, more convienent. The real issue
is whether the utility of anonymous access outweighs the gain.
Let's look at terminus again. The only legitimate use (imho)
of terminus is to telnet to either a publically accessible
service or one's own account. I think there's no reason to
either deny that people want to do these things, and that
terminus is often used for these purposes. Further, I'd be
hard put to argue that people shouldn't be allowed to do this.
Further, there is no other way to do this if you don't have
an account in the Boston area other than to telnet from
terminus. So, terminus serves a legitimate need. Trying to
shut down terminus without offering another service to fill
that need will be difficult for purely political reasons, as
has already been seen. Clearly, terminus could be run on
some kind of registration basis. I suggest that those who
are so upset with terminus work towards this highly desirable
end rather than engaging in sniping which is unlikely to
result in any net gain.
--
Bryant Durrell durrell@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life is just like high school, but with better production values.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.admin.policy,alt.censorship,soc.college
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Abstract of CAF-News 02.01
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.061744.20138@eff.org>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1992 06:17:44 GMT
This is an abstract for the most recent "Computers and Academic
Freedom News" (CAF-News). Information about CAF-News followings the
abstract. The full CAF-News is available via email. Send email
to archive-server@eff.org. Include the line:
send caf-news cafv02n01
--- begin abstract ---
[Two weeks ending January 5, 1992
[The guest editor this issue is Elizabeth M. Reid
(emr@mullian.ee.Mu.OZ.AU). This is the first issue
of volume 2. The last issues of volume 1 are forthcoming.
- Carl Kadie]
========================== KEY ================================
The words after the numbers are a short PARAPHRASES of the
articles, NOT AN OBJECTIVE SUMMARY and not necessarily my opinion.
===============================================================
Note 1 is about Freedom of (impolite) Speech.
1. The ACLU handbook on teachers' legal rights, and Robert J. Wagmam's
_The First Amendment Book_, indicate that "The Freedom of Speech
guaranteed by the Constitution *does not* require that speakers be
polite."
<1992Jan5.025518.11163@eff.org>
Note 2 about is Internet/inter-network censorship.
2. Although the NSF can refuse to connect to other parts of the
Internet, non-NSF bodies are under no obligation to remove material
that contravenes NSF regulations from their sites. Users of NSFNet
may be bound by their regulations, but merely making information
available to NSFNet (or any other net) does not constitute a use of
that network.
<1992Jan5.161331.29246@eff.org>
Notes 3-7 are about privacy in e-mail and U.S. mail.
3. There is a crucial difference between using the U.S. mail system
and using electronic mail "via an employer-owned machine using an
employer-owned account" that means that users of the latter have no
inherent right to privacy in e-mail.
<1991Dec31.144936.19661@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
4. Provided that they are paying for the use of the facilities,
universities have the right to examine material that is intended to be
sent through U.S. mail or through electronic mail.
5. A university would need to provide a disclaimer if it intended to
monitor private e-mail, since the use of the word 'mail' contains an
implication of privacy.
<1992Jan1.134326.28721@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
6. Under federal law, a university may not inspect U.S. mail that they
are paying for. Before the application of postage to an item, the
institution "enjoys no special privilege of having paid for the mail"
and once postage is affixed the item is "unquestionably U.S. mail" and
is protected by postal regulations. Whether this should also apply to
electronic mail is undecided, however the indications are that unless
users of privately owned systems have been told that their e-mail is
not private, then it is assumed to be so.
<1992Jan1.214839.1611@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
7. While reading private e-mail would be an invasion of privacy,
scanning e-mail for key words or viruses might be analogous to
monitoring U.S. mail for explosive or volatile materials, and could
therefore be legitimate.
Note 8 is about censorship of obscenities on IRC and USENET.
8. Censorship on the basis of obscenity or racial harassment is a bad
thing. Since some people will always be offended by some things, this
curtailing freedom of speech could set a precedent for denying freedom
of speech altogether.
<9201050905.AA13749@nutrimat.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
- Elizabeth M. Reid]
--- end abstract ---
CAF-News is a weekly digest of notes from CAF-talk.
CAF-News is available as newsgroup alt.comp.acad-freedom.news or via
email. If you read newsgroups but your site doesn't get
alt.comp.acad-freedom.news, (politely) ask your sys admin to
subscribe. For info on email delivery, send email to
archive-server@eff.org. Include the line
send acad-freedom caf
Back issues of CAF-News are available via anonymous ftp or via email.
Ftp to ftp.eff.org. The directory is pub/academic/news. For
information about email access to the archive, send an email note to
archive-server@eff.org. Include the lines
send acad-freedom README
help
index
Disclaimer: This CAF-News abstract was compiled by a guest editor or
by me, Carl M. Kadie. It is not an EFF publication. The views I
express and editorial decisions I make are my own.
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201220755.AA11224@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 92 19:55:05 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.security
From: dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes)
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <1992Jan21.235546.6366@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1992 23:55:46 GMT
brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>the principle that MIT is better than everyone else. Given this attitude
>it's tempting to deny all connections from *.mit.edu. Of course, he
>wasn't speaking for MIT, but it's scary to see any hint that a site is
>using the power of its position within the Internet to insist that it
>need take absolutely no responsibility for the packets it generates.
Why don't you? It's better than wasting energy screaming at them, and
it's certainly a lot more effective...
--
Dave Hayes - Network & Communications Engineering - JPL / NASA - Pasadena CA
dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ames!elroy!dxh
"Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self." -- Eric Hoffer.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.irc-operlist] IRC WYO update..
Message-ID: <199201220945.AA02738@eff.org>
Date: 21 Jan 92 23:45:12 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.irc-operlist
From: RWED@corral.uwyo.edu (Robert Wedlock)
Subject: IRC WYO update..
Message-ID: <3522421121011992_A01422_POSSE_1161AAE62900*@mrgate.uwyo.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 92 18:57:00 GMT
Here is an update as to what is happening (to the best of my knowledge)
regarding IRC.
o I hear the University of Wyoming is no longer considering pressing
charges against me for providing IRC to the student body. (Their
defense: improper use of computer resources)... so I dont get in
further trouble let me disclaim now.. this was told to me by a
reputable employee of I.T... I dont want to get sued for slander
or whatever they can cook up)
o Due to the considerable amount of questions to Information Technology
(the overly strict administrative entity who controls most of the
computer usage on Campus) there is instead, discussion of providing
IRC to students via the "official administation". There are few
specifics as of yet. Ideas include a captive login, or dedicated port.
o Several of us have manned an unoffical crusade: We are asking local users
to mail or in person, show thier desire to lift the ban on IRC here...
It seems to be working. Its very exiting for me to see a display of
"the power of the people" as it were in action! I only hope it succeeds
in the end -- they are very non-compromising, history has shown, and
If IRC is to return here, I think it will be by the hand of a less
strict entity the Computer Science Department (primarily thru the
efforts of Cosci Admin Jerry Van Baalen)
*** I'd like to thank all of the netters who have shown thier support in
*** this matter, both to me (rwed@posse.uwyo.edu) and Jerry Van Baalen
*** (jvb@master.uwyo.edu)
- Rob (zonker)
------------------------- C.Y.A. Disclaimer ------------------------------
Ideas and thoughts resprented here are my opinions only. They are not
neccesarily those of The University of Wyoming or any other entity or
person for that matter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1992 23:44:18 GMT
BD> == Cyberpixie
BD> Let's look at terminus again. The only legitimate use (imho)
BD> of terminus is to telnet to either a publically accessible
BD> service or one's own account. I think there's no reason to
BD> either deny that people want to do these things, and that
BD> terminus is often used for these purposes. Further, I'd be
BD> hard put to argue that people shouldn't be allowed to do this.
BD> Further, there is no other way to do this if you don't have
BD> an account in the Boston area other than to telnet from
BD> terminus.[...]
No, there's no other way to do this *for free* in the Boston area unless
you use terminus. There are several ways in which you can purchase
terminal access to the Internet, through either public-access sites (the
World is in the Boston dialing area, though they don't have trans-NSFNET
access) or commercial Internet providers (Alternet and PSInet both have
local modem racks).
Of course, if you don't think it's worth paying for the privilege,
perhaps it's not that much of a privilege to you...
--
Christopher Davis | OBLIGATORY SEMI-POLITICAL COMMENT:
System Manager & Postmaster | "[The CIX] might be a conspiracy of
Electronic Frontier Foundation | lizard-like aliens here to steal our
+1 617 864 0665 NIC: [CKD1] | water, but I doubt it."
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.143224.18014@ms.uky.edu>
Date: 22 Jan 92 19:32:24 GMT
durrell@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Cyberpixie) writes:
>morgan@ms.uky.edu (that's me) writes:
>> WHY SHOULD WE ALLOW ANONYMOUS ACCESS TO COMPUTER NETWORKS?
>
>There are, of course, many obvious reasons why anonymous access
>is *useful*. It is, for one, more convienent. The real issue
>is whether the utility of anonymous access outweighs the gain.
That's one "obvious" reason. Are there others?
>Let's look at terminus again. The only legitimate use (imho)
>of terminus is to telnet to either a publically accessible
>service or one's own account.
Agreed.
>I think there's no reason to
>either deny that people want to do these things, and that
>terminus is often used for these purposes.
True enough. I wonder, however, how many of these folks are actual
MIT users. I don't know how Terminus is configured, but I wonder if
their inbound lines could be screened (through some sort of CallerID,
perhaps) to eliminate use by folks outside of MIT's "service area".
I think that the reports by various participants in this discussion
have indicated that terminus is something of a Mecca for crackers.
I must admit that I see no reason for a terminal server which will
let me dial in from Kentucky and bounce back out to whereever I wish.
I am reassured to note that Terminus, for one, does not appear to
allow "bouncing" from inbound network connections. Unfortunately,
there are still many such servers which do allow "bouncing".
>Further, I'd be
>hard put to argue that people shouldn't be allowed to do this.
>Further, there is no other way to do this if you don't have
>an account in the Boston area other than to telnet from
>terminus.
How about the gnu machines? How about machines at BU or BC? I'm
sure that there are other public systems in the Boston area. Of
course, there's always PC pursuit, Tymnet, and Telenet. Are you
actually saying that there is no other *free* way to do this?
>Trying to
>shut down terminus without offering another service to fill
>that need will be difficult for purely political reasons, as
>has already been seen.
How about setting up a public machine, such as the gnu boxes, which
do have telnet/ftp capability. Restrict Terminus' reach to MIT-only.
Legitimate users can dial into Terminus, log into the "public" machine
or any other MIT machine to which they have access, and telnet to their
heart's content. The only difference is that we have added an authenti-
cation/audit step to the process; the requirement of logging into a specific
machine prior to telnetting introduces another level of protection.
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
From: bh@anarres.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: Ignoring sites....
Message-ID:
Date: 22 Jan 92 22:32:36 GMT
Back in the good old (NCP) days, there were these things called TIPs that were
machines hooked up to the Arpanet with a zillion dialups from which you could
telnet to anywhere. This was an official DoD service. It was convenient as
hell; no matter where you were, you could make a local phone call and read
your mail back home.
Eventually they started making noises about requiring passwords for TIP access,
but it would be the same password for every TIP. In order to get a password
you had to have an account on some machine on the net somewhere.
This sounds like a great idea to me. It's a little more complicated now because
"the net" is not as simple a concept as it was then; there are quite a lot of
people with accounts on some computer hooked up to some local subnet somewhere.
Still, the idea of "well if you have an account on an MIT machine you could use
Terminus to get to that local machine and then net-hop" doesn't hack it if you're
only visiting MIT and really live in Kalamazoo or something.
P.S. This is getting to have less and less to do with academic freedom.
Maybe we should redirect this whole thread somewhere else.
P.P.S. Isn't anything *else* happening besides Terminus?
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [] UC Searches Summary 4.
Message-ID: <199201230429.AA26194@eff.org>
Date: 22 Jan 92 18:29:00 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 22 00:00:00 1992
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 14:45:45 -0800
From: dean2@garnet.berkeley.edu (Dean Pentcheff)
Message-Id: <9201222245.AA21751@garnet.berkeley.edu>
Subject: UC Searches Summary 4.
Wednesday January 22, 1992
UC computer search summary number 4.
- Dean Pentcheff (dean2@garnet.berkeley.edu)
====================================================
One final detail for clarification.
In my previous summary I said:
> The key question here is the interpretation of "university maintained
> records." The simple interpretation of the California State Buckley
> Amendment is that a student is entitled access to conventional
> administrative or faculty records of their university progress. In
> this case, the student's lawyers chose to push an interpretation that
> made university maintained records encompass any record about the
> student that exists on university maintained systems.
This turns out not to be quite the case. It was the University itself
that chose to interpret the Buckley amendment in this manner. In the
University lawyers' opinion, the Buckley amendment forces an
interpretation that any file with the student's name in it constitutes
a university-maintained record on a student. This interpretation was
_not_ pushed by the student's lawyers, but rather by the University
itself.
-Dean
--
Dean Pentcheff (Internet: dean2@garnet.berkeley.edu)
Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720
Work Phone: (510) 643-9048 Home Phone: (510) 839-1790 Fax: (510) 643-6264
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: C_KELLER@UVMVAX.BITNET
Subject: Re: Computers and Academic Freedom News 02.01
Message-ID: <01GFNHEV2H40000MK6@uvmvax.uvm.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 15:19:00 GMT
Hello,
I'm really sorry to keep doing this to you, but everytime I try
to delete myself from this list, I get a message saying that
I am either not on the list or that the list does not exist.
This has been going on for months now, and I just refuse to continue
like this. Please take me off the list, or send instructions that
will guarantee that I will be taken off the list. If this happens
again, I won't be help responsible for my actions (just kidding).
Thank you.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Sexually explicit material in dorms
Message-ID: <9201231536.AA04187@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 03:36:56 GMT
According to a posting by rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
(to talk.politics.misc, et. al), quoting an article in _U.S News and
World Reports_ by John Leo:
"A student [at State University of New York at Binghamton] was charged
with lewd and indecent behavior for posting two Penthouse centerforlds
on his dormitory door. (A student panel found him guilty, but the
administration later dropped the charges)."
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Netnews in Germany
Message-ID: <9201231552.AA00461@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 03:52:49 GMT
I've received an email report that the University of Freiburg, FRG,
has removed/banned all Netnews except the sci.* and comp.*'s groups.
According to the report, the decision was made by an administrative
committee of the University.
Ironically, it was in Germany that the principles of academic freedom,
including academic freedom for students, were developed.
- Carl
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] NREN and the Economics of Mainframes Versus Workstations
Message-ID: <199201231606.AA15507@eff.org>
Date: 23 Jan 92 06:06:41 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov (Stephen Wolff)
Subject: NREN and the Economics of Mainframes Versus Workstations
Message-ID: <9201231324.AA01976@cise.cise.nsf.gov>
Date: 23 Jan 92 13:22:15 GMT
->The NREN legislation lets researchers use their grants for network expenses
->for the first time.
Not so. At NSF, at least, there has NEVER been a prohibition against
a network charge as a line item in a grant application budget; in practice,
though, program officers interested in holding down the bottom line tended to
cut "frills", so the record is spotty.
The former Director of NSF, Erich Bloch, in fact issued a Memorandum to Staff
*specifically* allowing network charges on grants - but in the event, the
"bottom line effect" continued to prevail.
It's nice that the NREN bill also gives permission for network charges, but I
predict that the Congress will be just as unable to effect the needed social
change in funding agencies as the Director of NSF was.
Of far greater importance for universities would be a modification to OMB
Circular A-21 (?) specifically allowing the inclusion of network charges in
the **indirect** cost. This is the cleanest way to provide for ubiquity of
network access within the University - to extend network access beyond the
traditionally wealthy science and engineering departments to traditionally
grant-poor departments ( e.g., philology, history). It is of course a "soak
the rich to feed the poor" strategy, but it has the property that it does
soak *all* the rich and all at the same rate and so is equitable in that sense.
Unhappily, given the pressure - including "caps" - on the indirect rate, as
well as the recent celebrated indiscretions at some schools, the actual effect
of even such a radical change to A-21 would likely also, IMHO, be nugatory.
-s
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, et al.] Copyrights and program cracks....
Message-ID: <9201231812.AA08719@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 06:12:41 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: oneill@cs.ulowell.edu (Brian 'Doc' O'Neill)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives,rec.games.misc
Subject: Copyrights and program cracks....
Message-ID: <1992Jan20.225330.1164@ulowell.ulowell.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 92 22:53:30 GMT
[Followups to rec.games.misc, to keep everything in one place and keep
CBIP.archives clear for announcements. Perhaps we should also discuss in
misc.legal, but I don't read that group... -Doc]
Sigh...
I've been away skiing for the weekend, so missed all the good flak...
It seems that some people are confused about how the program was
"submitted". It was uploaded to an anonymous FTP area, not sent via e-mail
for CBIP submission. This upload area is used for uploads to the PC games
archives, among a few other things. CBIP has nothing to do with this.
As far as legalities, the program appeared to contain portions of the game
which are copyrighted by Sierra. This made such a file a violation of
copyright laws and hence illegal. It may not have - I do not currently have
it, but it did _appear_ to contain Sierra code.
I also did not solicit such an upload, and having a publicly writeable
upload area does not give someone else the right to place anything they want
there, as it is not a public forum. I could quite simply remove the uploads
area, which eliminates the problem quite simply, but makes things much more
difficult for me. The more difficult it becomes for me to properly maintain
things, the more likely it will be that I will close the FTP area altogether
to PC binaries and games, and resign as moderator of CBIP and someone else
can do the job. I'm not saying I will, I'm just saying I can. I am providing
this as a service to the Internet of my own accord. This University could
also decide to close it down should it become a legal issue. I am using disk
space and a system which is not owned by the University, but rather test
equipment from another company who has been kind enough to let us test their
hardware, and the usage increase from the archives has greatly increased the
efficiency of the test.
I'm not totally certain what laws apply to FTP sites (I can probably find
out - a friend I graduated with has gone into patent and computer-related
law), and I think First Amendment may a bit off the mark.
Also, just what are the legal issues about using a program to modify a
copyrighted product, really? Isn't their an implied restriction on
copyrighted material, which reads something similar to "You may
not...alter...without the expressed, written consent of..."?
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, et al.] Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <9201231814.AA24719@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 06:14:47 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives,rec.games.misc
From: bbrown@b11.ingr.com (Bailey Brown)
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.001512.15148@b11.ingr.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1992 00:15:12 GMT
smsmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Smith) writes:
>Anyway, I still don't think we should get on Brian O'Neill's case
>about his decision to not allow such programs at ulowell. Remember,
>ftp is a *privilege* not a "right". If you were paying for it, that
>would be different. I would like to thank Brian for allowing game
>materials to even be posted at ulowell in the first place. There
>are other sites that will accept programs that ulowell may not want
>at its site, so how about uploading the program(s) to wuarchive.wustl.edu
>in /pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS in the meantime until a permanent site can be
>found?
I think we should get on his case not because he decided not to allow
the program-cracking program on his site, but because he said he was
going to contact the admins at any sites where such programs originated,
presumably to punish the person who uploaded it.
It is one thing to refuse to archive software under the mistaken belief
that it is illegal, and it is another thing to go blowing the whistle
on people who upload this software without even bothering to find out
if it is really illegal.
> Stephen M. Smith \ __|__ / " #*&<-[89s]*(k#$@-_=//a2$]'+=.(2_&*%>,,@
> ohio-state.edu> \ | /
> BTW, WYSInaWYG \ | / --witty.saying.ARC
-----------
Bailey Brown "Above all else, confusion reigns."
Intergraph Corporation
bbrown@casca.b11.ingr.com Procol Harum
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <9201231815.AA14077@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 06:15:36 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.105630.3555@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
From: cctr132@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Nick FitzGerald, CSC, Uni. of Canterbury, NZ)
Date: 23 Jan 92 10:56:29 +1300
In article <1992Jan22.001512.15148@b11.ingr.com>, bbrown@b11.ingr.com
(Bailey Brown) writes:
[Bailey's quote from Stephen M Smith re ftp as a privilege not a right
and not getting on Brian's case deleted]
>
> I think we should get on his case not because he decided not to allow
> the program-cracking program on his site, but because he said he was
> going to contact the admins at any sites where such programs originated,
> presumably to punish the person who uploaded it.
^^^^^^^^^^
>
> It is one thing to refuse to archive software under the mistaken belief
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> that it is illegal, and it is another thing to go blowing the whistle
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> on people who upload this software without even bothering to find out
> if it is really illegal.
What a load of hot air about __NOTHING__.
Bailey finally came right out and said what this is all about -
presumption.
For the advantage of those who have responded so far without apparently
reading the original posting (dare I venture, most of those posting
followups?) here are Brian's origianl five lines.
*******************************************************************
At 22:23 EST last night (1/16), someone from soda.berkeley.edu uploaded a
crack program for the game Liesure Suit Larry 5, which bypasses the copy
protection scheme of the game. Please not that I will _NOT_ accept any such
files, will delete them immediately, and will notify the system
administrators on whatever system the files came from.
*******************************************************************
There is _NO_ mention, not even a hint of a presumption on Brian's part
that he thinks such things are illegal, immoral or the other things he
has been accused of here.
All he said was someone uploaded a program of a type he will not include
in his archive and he has told you the fate of such uploads - they get
deleted and the originating site is informed.
All the moral outrage is based on pure, and IMHO completely unfounded,
speculation as to what his motives were. If one were to be cynical
_AND_ apply the same degree of justifiaction as most of those posting on
this so far have, it would be pretty clear what those who have so
vigorously defended the legality of "program cracks" (even calling in
the first ammendment - heavyyy) use such programs for.
Lastly, all you people over in rec.games (or whatever), _please_ kill
the cross-post to comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives - this tirade of trivia
has no place whatsoever in cbip.archives.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Nick FitzGerald, PC Applications Consultant, CSC, Uni of Canterbury, N.Z.
Internet: n.fitzgerald@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Phone: (64)(3) 642-337
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, et al.] Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <9201231844.AA30151@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 06:44:52 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: buhr@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Kevin Andrew Buhr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives,rec.games.misc,misc.legal,alt.censorship
Subject: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.170748.3330@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 23 Jan 92 17:07:48 GMT
[ A thread on comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives and rec.games.misc (originally
titled "Distributing Program Cracks" included some discussion about what
rights and duties system administrators have in terms of what they make
available via ftp or netnews. I've cross-posted this just about everywhere
with followups to misc.legal and alt.censorship. ]
In <1992Jan22.232353.6301@anomaly.sbs.com> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>explorer@iastate.edu (Michael L Graff) writes:
>>Interesting note: Iowa State has implemented a "netnews policy" which
>>I and many other feel is against the 1st ammendment. The majority of the
>>students cannot read groups (alt.sex.*, alt.drugs, and others) because of
>>this policy.
>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>newsfeed.
Is this last statement true?
The consensus seems to be that system administrators (or their employers) can
choose to limit user access to newsgroups and types of ftp-able materials
however they like. I can't see, in the case of a private system run by
a private organization, how this could be otherwise.
At one point, however, someone mentioned that state universities have
certain duties concerning free speech that may supercede the discretion
of the system administrators. Thus, for example, while a system
administrator may refuse to carry alt.binaries.pictures.erotica (or
whatever it's called now) because the GIFs take up too much of the
system's resources, he or she couldn't censor users' exposure to newsgroups
on purely political or ideological grounds.
By way of a clearer example, while a private system administrator could
refuse to make alt.politics.homosexuality available to his or her readers
because of personal preference, a state university would have a duty to
provide that newsgroup unless it could prove there was another valid reason
for limiting access to the newsgroup (perhaps it incited riots ;-) ).
Could someone give us a more definitive ruling on what, precisely, a state
university's duties are in this regard? Can anyone comment on the
applicability of this concept to universities in other countries (eg.
Canada) ?
Kevin Buhr
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: mspencer@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject:
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.123702.3084@ac.dal.ca>
Date: 23 Jan 92 16:37:02 GMT
In article <9201200202.AA21033@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, tk@ai.mit.edu (Tom Knight)
writes:
[ lots deleted ]
> I think you people aren't going far enough. Do you realize how
> dangerous the possession of CASH could be in the hands of criminals?
> Why there are all sorts of evil things they could do with it, and it
> wouldn't even be traceable.
[ more deleted ]
> Perhaps we should
> outlaw cash, or at the very least require banks to report transactions
> greater than $10K.
Or even $10? Hey, isn't that what all the gentle, constant,
irresistable nudging toward credit cards, teller machines, POS
terminals, debit cards is? To get us to volunteer for the lovely
convenience and for the accompanying surveillance? Buying a plane
ticket with cash is already part of the suspicious character profile.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal,rec.games.misc
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.190622.21075@eff.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 19:06:22 GMT
explorer@iastate.edu (Michael L Graff) writes:
[...]
>Interesting note: Iowa State has implemented a "netnews policy" which
>I and many other feel is against the 1st ammendment. The majority of the
>students cannot read groups (alt.sex.*, alt.drugs, and others) because of
>this policy.
[...]
In <1992Jan22.232353.6301@anomaly.sbs.com> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
[...]
>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>newsfeed.
[...]
If Iowa State chooses to offer Netnews, it should not censor its feed.
I'm enclosing two FAQ's from the Computers and Academic Freedom
Discussion group. The first, addresses Iowa State University's legal
responsibility as part of the government. The second, addresses, Iowa
State University's moral responsibility as a university.
[For more information read alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk and
alt.comp.acad-freedom.news. For information about the mailing list
versions, send email to archive-server@eff.org. Include the lines
send acad-freedom caf
send acad-freedom README
]
- Carl
=============== ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/faq/media.control ===============
q: Since freedom of the press belongs to those who own presses, a
public university can do anything it wants with the media that it
owns, right?
a: Like any organization, the Government must work within its charter
(the Constitution). The Supreme Court has said that this limits the
Government's authority to control the media that owns and controls.
The rational is that it would be dangerous for a Government that is
elected by the people to have too much control on what the people
can say and read.
The Supreme Court calls created forums, like a student newspaper or
campus mail systems, limited public forums. It says that the
government can limited who may access these forums and/or what topics
may be discussed. But otherwise, "it is bound by the same standards as
apply in a traditional public forum"; "content-based prohibition must
be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest." For
example, viewpoint-based discrimination is forbidden.
- Carl
ANNOTATED REFERENCES
(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)
=================
law/san-diego-committee-v-gov-bd
=================
Excerpts from San Diego Committee v. Governing Bd., 790 F.2d 1471
(1986). A decision by an appellate court that applied the Supreme
Court's Public Forum Doctrine (to a school newspaper).
=================
law/stanley-v-magrath
=================
Comments from _Public Schools Law: Teachers' and Students' Rights_ 2nd
Ed. by Martha M. McCarthy and Nelda H. Cambron-McCabe, published in
1987 by Allyn and Bacon, Inc. It says, in part, "[a]lthough school
boards are not obligated to support student papers, if a given
publication was originally created as a free speech forum, removal of
financial or other school board support can be construed as an
unlawful effort to stifle free expression." Also, "school
authorities cannot withdraw support from a student publication simply
because of displeasure with the content" and "the content of a
school-sponsored paper that is established as a medium for student
expression cannot be regulated more closely than a nonsponsored
paper". Also, it tells what to do about libel in student
publications.
=================
law/student-publications.misc
=================
Quotes from the book _Law of the Student Press_ by the Student Press
Law Center (1985,1988). They say that four-letter words are protected
speech, that public universities are not likely to be liable for
publications that they for which they do not control the contents, and
that the _Hazelwood_ decision does not apply to universities.
=================
law/constraints.constitutional
=================
Comments from _A Practical Guide to Legal Issues Affecting College
Teachers_ by Partrica A. Hollander, D. Parker Young, and Donald D.
Gehring. (College Administration Publication, 1985). Discusses the
constitutional constraints on public universities including the
requires for freedom of expression, freedom against unreasonable
searches and seizures, due process, specific rules.
=================
law/uwm-post-v-u-of-wisconsin
=================
The full text of UWM POST v. U. of Wisconsin. This recent district
court ruling goes into detail about the difference between protected
offensive expression and illegal harassment. It even mentions email.
It concludes: "The founding fathers of this nation produced a
remarkable document in the Constitution but it was ratified only with
the promise of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is central to
our concept of freedom. The God-given "unalienable rights" that the
infant nation rallied to in the Declaration of Independence can be
preserved only if their application is rigorously analyzed.
The problems of bigotry and discrimination sought to be addressed here
are real and truly corrosive of the educational environment. But
freedom of speech is almost absolute in our land and the only
restriction the fighting words doctrine can abide is that based on the
fear of violent reaction. Content-based prohibitions such as that in
the UW Rule, however well intended, simply cannot survive the
screening which our Constitution demands."
=================
law/doe-v-u-of-michigan
=================
This is Doe v. University of Michigan. In this widely referenced
decision, the district judge down struck the University's rules
against discriminatory harassment because the rules were found to be too
broad and too vague.
=================
law/rust-v-sullivan
=================
The decision and decent for the so-called abortion information gag
rule case. The decision explicitly mentions universities as a place
where free expression is so important that gag rules would not be
allowed.
=================
law/keyishian-v-board-of-regents
=================
In this Supreme Court case, the Court said that public universities
can not infringe on the Constitutionally protected rights of their
students and employees (specially with regard to loyalty oaths).
=================
law/perry-v-perry
=================
Comments from the ACLU Handbook _The Rights of _Teachers_. It says
that campus mail systems (and other school facilities) can be limited
public forums. (Perry v. Perry was about an interschool mail system.
It was one of the cases that defined the Public Forum Doctrine.)
Also, a paraphrase from an ACLU handbook _The Rights of Teachers_. It
says that generally, speech, if otherwise shielded from punishment by
the First Amendment, does not lose that protection because its tone is
sharp.
Also, from p. 92, it says that there are legal limits to what a
(public) school can ask its teachers to sign. [Some of these same
limits might apply to what a school can ask a user to sign as a
condition of getting (or keeping) a computer account.]
=================
law/constitution.us
=================
The Constitution of the United States
=================
=================
To get these documents by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s):
send caf-law san-diego-committee-v-gov-bd
send caf-law stanley-v-magrath
send caf-law student-publications.misc
send caf-law constraints.constitutional
send caf-law uwm-post-v-u-of-wisconsin
send caf-law doe-v-u-of-michigan
send caf-law rust-v-sullivan
send caf-law keyishian-v-board-of-regents
send caf-law perry-v-perry
send caf-law constitution.us
The files are also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org
(192.88.144.3) as file(s):
pub/academic/law/san-diego-committee-v-gov-bd
pub/academic/law/stanley-v-magrath
pub/academic/law/student-publications.misc
pub/academic/law/constraints.constitutional
pub/academic/law/uwm-post-v-u-of-wisconsin
pub/academic/law/doe-v-u-of-michigan
pub/academic/law/rust-v-sullivan
pub/academic/law/keyishian-v-board-of-regents
pub/academic/law/perry-v-perry
pub/academic/law/constitution.us
=============== ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/faq/netnews.reading ===============
q: Should my university remove Netnews newsgroups because some
people find them offensive? If it doesn't have the resources
to carry all newsgroups, how should newsgroups be selected?
a: In 1989, Stanford University banned rec.humor.funny. The ban was
lifted after a university committee recommended that newsgroups be
selected according to library policy. In other words, removing a
newsgroup is equivalent to banning a magazine from an academic
library.
The principles of intellectual freedom developed by libraries can (and
should, in my opinion) be applied to the administration of information
material on computers. These principles are explained in such American
Library Association documents as the Library Bill of Rights, the
Freedom to Read Statement, and the Intellectual Freedom Statement.
With the permission of the American Library Assocation, these
documents and others are avaiable on-line. Many of these documents
deal with controversial material and material selection policy. For
example, article 2 of the Library Bill of Rights says: "Materials
should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal
disapproval". The ALA Workbook for Selection Policy Writing tells how
to create a formal policy.
- Carl M. Kadie
ANNOTATED REFERENCES
(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)
=================
stanford.statements
=================
"In 1989 rec.humor.funny was suppressed in some of the Stanford
University computers. After a campaign it was re-installed in those
computers."
This file contains
1) the "Statement of Protest about the AIR Censorship of rec.humor.funny"
2) a statement by the Stanford faculty committee on libraries
3) Notes from Professor John McCarthy on how censorship was fought at Stanford
(also see "jmcabstract")
=================
jmcabstract
=================
Professor John McCarthy lead the effort to restore "rec.humor.funny"
at Stanford. In March of 1991, he traveled to the University of
Waterloo, a place where "rec.humor.funny" and "alt.sex" was banned.
At Waterloo, he gave one talk on a new computer language and a second
talk on "Network Publication and Free Expression". This is the
abstract of that talk. (In May 1991, an advisory committee said the
ban should be lifted. In October 1991, the ban was lifted.)
(Also, see "stanford.statements")
=================
caf-statement
=================
This is an attempt to codify the application of academic freedom to
academic computers. It reflects our seven months of on-line discussion
about computers and academic freedom.
Comments and suggestions are very welcome (especially when posted to
CAF-talk). All the documents referenced are available on-line.
=================
library/bill-of-rights.ala
=================
The Library Bill of Rights from the American Library Association.
=================
library/selection-workbook.ala
=================
The American Library Association's "Workbook on Selection Policy
Writing". Although aimed at textbook and library book selection in
grade and high schools, it also seems applicable to newsgroup
selection. It includes information about how create a selection policy
and how to handle complaints. It also includes a sample selection
policy.
=================
library/int-freedom.ala
=================
"Intellectual Freedom Statement"
An interpretation by the American Library Association of the "Library
Bill of Rights"
=================
library/README
=================
Library Policy Archive
[part of the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive
[part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Archive]]
This is an on-line collection of library policy statements. It
includes the American Library Association's Freedom To Read statement
and the ALA Library Bill of Rights. (The ALA material is made
available by permission of the American Library Association.)
The archive is accessible via anonymous ftp and email. Ftp to
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.3). It is in directory "pub/academic/library".
For email access, send email to archive-server@eff.org. Include the
line:
send library-policies
where is a list of the files that you want. File README is
a detailed description of the items in the directory.
For more information, to make contributions, or to report typos
contact Carl Kadie (kadie@eff.org).
=================
faq/netnews.writing
=================
q: Should my university allow students to post to Netnews?
=================
=================
To get these documents by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s):
send acad-freeedom stanford.statements
send acad-freeedom jmcabstract
send acad-freeedom caf-statement
send library-policies bill-of-rights.ala
send library-policies selection-workbook.ala
send library-policies int-freedom.ala
send library-policies README
send caf-faq netnews.writing
The files are also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org
(192.88.144.3) as file(s):
pub/academic/stanford.statements
pub/academic/jmcabstract
pub/academic/caf-statement
pub/academic/library/bill-of-rights.ala
pub/academic/library/selection-workbook.ala
pub/academic/library/int-freedom.ala
pub/academic/library/README
pub/academic/faq/netnews.writing
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, et al.] Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <9201231928.AA06953@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 07:28:48 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives,rec.games.misc
From: jliddle@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Jean Liddle)
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.181955.13829@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 18:19:55 GMT
In article <1992Jan22.232353.6301@anomaly.sbs.com> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>explorer@iastate.edu (Michael L Graff) writes:
>
>>Interesting note: Iowa State has implemented a "netnews policy" which
>>I and many other feel is against the 1st ammendment. The majority of the
>>students cannot read groups (alt.sex.*, alt.drugs, and others) because of
>>this policy.
>
>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>newsfeed.
>
>>Maybe someone should tell ISU about the 1st ammendment? (sigh)
>
>Have you ever heard of UUNET? Purchase your own.
>
I do not attend Iowa state, and therefor have no vested interest in the
policies there. However, I assume some of the proceeds to fund the
campus network are from student tuition as well as state funding. For
their money, I believe students should expect and demand uncensored
service. In effect, Michael Graff has 'bought' (or at least helped to
fund) the service. Fortunately, our university does not censor the net-
news in any way. Although I read none of the aforementioned groups, I
would resent any effort of paternal powers to deny me the right to do so.
Perhaps we could move this discussion to another group...
Jean.
--
Jean Liddle
Computer Science, Illinois State University
e-mail: jliddle@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
jliddle@katya.acs.ilstu.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal,
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.170838.11320@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 22:08:38 GMT
>explorer@iastate.edu (Michael L Graff) writes:
>
>[...]
>>Interesting note: Iowa State has implemented a "netnews policy" which
>>I and many other feel is against the 1st ammendment. The majority of the
>>students cannot read groups (alt.sex.*, alt.drugs, and others) because of
>>this policy.
>[...]
>
I'd like to see the policy before I comment on any specifics. We need
more detail.
>> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>
>[...]
>>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>>newsfeed.
>[...]
Basically true. Very few sites could afford to carry a full Usenet feed.
The fact that Brian Reid posts newsgroup distribution/readership stats
tells us that many sites carry only a subset of newsgroups.
kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>If Iowa State chooses to offer Netnews, it should not censor its feed.
Gee, I thought that we had agreed long ago (last year) that Usenet was
not an "all or nothing" proposition. If ISU has never carried those
groups, they are well within their rights to refuse to start now.
I noticed that the poster from ISU mentioned that "the majority of
students cannot read x.x.x......". What students CAN read those
groups? Are they reading them on the same machine as the less-privileged
students? Did they arrange for a news feed themselves? We need more
information than just "they're censoring us!", please.
Carl, your comment surprises me; I thought we had hashed all this out
last year. Kind of "shooting from the hip", aren't you?
>=============== ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/faq/media.control ===============
>
>The Supreme Court calls created forums, like a student newspaper or
>campus mail systems, limited public forums. It says that the
>government can limited who may access these forums and/or what topics
>may be discussed. But otherwise, "it is bound by the same standards as
>apply in a traditional public forum"; "content-based prohibition must
>be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest." For
>example, viewpoint-based discrimination is forbidden.
>
If ISU can limit "what topics may be discussed", where's the censorship?
If they decide that discussions of erotic images should not be supported,
that's their right. Isn't it?
Here we go again.......
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <9201232231.AA24287@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 10:31:28 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.164847.5563@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 21:48:47 GMT
The legality aspect would be brought up if a student at that
University wanted to put up a deprotector. There is a very fine line
between legitimate reasons for not putting up the software and
censorship for personal reasons.
Suppose the student wanted to make available a program that somehow
made a statement that the archiver strongly disagreed with
politically. If the archiver refused to put it up for this reason, the
student may have legal recourse against the University.
The same with deprotect software. While some see it as perfectly
useful, perhaps it disagrees with the moderator's moral views.
I guess legitimate criteria might be: Is it relevant to the purpose of
the archive? Is it legal? Will others find it useful?
These standards don't really apply to student run publications, where
the University exercises no real control, and where the publication
itself has it's own first amendment rights. Perhaps that is what we
are dealing with here. If so, it's really a moot issue. If not, the
University should probably adopt a policy similar to library policy
for determining what it will archive and what it will not.
Sean
--
Sean Casey |``Wind, waves, etc. are breakdowns in the face of the
sean@s.ms.uky.edu | commitment to getting from here to there. But they are the
U of KY, Lexington| conditions for sailing -- not something to be gotten rid
606-258-6000 x280 | of, but something to be danced with.''
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] Re: Distributing program cracks #10000000000000
Message-ID: <9201232231.AA17624@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 10:31:05 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: cs163wfj@sdcc8.ucsd.edu (Dennis Lou)
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks #10000000000000
Message-ID: <27624@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 20:54:45 GMT
In article <1992Jan23.142814.1598@vax.muskingum.edu> jk_sims@vax.muskingum.edu writes:
|>>*******************************************************************
|>>At 22:23 EST last night (1/16), someone from soda.berkeley.edu uploaded a
|>>crack program for the game Liesure Suit Larry 5, which bypasses the copy
|>>protection scheme of the game. Please not that I will _NOT_ accept any such
|>>files, will delete them immediately, and will notify the system
|>>administrators on whatever system the files came from.
|>>*******************************************************************
|>>
|>>There is _NO_ mention, not even a hint of a presumption on Brian's part
|>>that he thinks such things are illegal, immoral or the other things he
|>>has been accused of here.
|>>
|>>All he said was someone uploaded a program of a type he will not include
|>>in his archive and he has told you the fate of such uploads - they get
|>>deleted and the originating site is informed.
|>
|>I agree completely with this statement and I think there has been to much
|>argument and discussion over the original posting. I am tired of hearing flame
|>after flame after flame over whether what he did was "Legal(1st ammendment),
|>moral, or whether he even had the right to do it." The fact is he did not say
I agree also. However, the upsetting part was that he would notify
system administrators. I can understand an e-mail stating something
like "Your user has been continually uploading files to my ftp site
that I do not permit. I have warned him repeatedly. Please take
disciplinary action".
The upsetting part is that his e-mail may not look like that but
instead something like "Your user is uploading code to crack
commercial programs." This second case insinuates something is
illegal is going on when in actuality, something it's something not
permissable. Also, it can be inferred that e-mail will be sent on
first offense, when in actuality, perhaps the user just didn't know
about the site's policy. I would say that users who read the READMEs
on ftp sites are in the minority.
--
Dennis Lou || "But Yossarian, what if everyone thought that way?"
dlou@ucsd.edu || "Then I'd be crazy to think any other way!"
[backbone]!ucsd!dlou |+====================================================
dlou@ucsd.BITNET |Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak went to my high school.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] RE:Distributing program cracks #10000000000000
Message-ID: <9201232230.AA05798@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 10:30:38 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: jk_sims@vax.muskingum.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
Subject: RE:Distributing program cracks #10000000000000
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.142814.1598@vax.muskingum.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 20:28:14 GMT
>*******************************************************************
>At 22:23 EST last night (1/16), someone from soda.berkeley.edu uploaded a
>crack program for the game Liesure Suit Larry 5, which bypasses the copy
>protection scheme of the game. Please not that I will _NOT_ accept any such
>files, will delete them immediately, and will notify the system
>administrators on whatever system the files came from.
>*******************************************************************
>
>There is _NO_ mention, not even a hint of a presumption on Brian's part
>that he thinks such things are illegal, immoral or the other things he
>has been accused of here.
>
>All he said was someone uploaded a program of a type he will not include
>in his archive and he has told you the fate of such uploads - they get
>deleted and the originating site is informed.
I agree completely with this statement and I think there has been to much
argument and discussion over the original posting. I am tired of hearing flame
after flame after flame over whether what he did was "Legal(1st ammendment),
moral, or whether he even had the right to do it." The fact is he did not say
it was illegal. It IS within his power to say what does or does not want on the
FTP he has control of. So the arguments and flames should end and let's get
onto the real world of games.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <9201232230.AA16080@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 10:30:08 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks (my mistake)
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.150701.10337@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 20:07:01 GMT
cctr132@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Nick FitzGerald, CSC, Uni. of Canterbury, NZ) writes:
|*******************************************************************
|At 22:23 EST last night (1/16), someone from soda.berkeley.edu uploaded a
|crack program for the game Liesure Suit Larry 5, which bypasses the copy
|protection scheme of the game. Please not that I will _NOT_ accept any such
|files, will delete them immediately, and will notify the system
|administrators on whatever system the files came from.
|*******************************************************************
|There is _NO_ mention, not even a hint of a presumption on Brian's part
|that he thinks such things are illegal, immoral or the other things he
|has been accused of here.
|All he said was someone uploaded a program of a type he will not include
|in his archive and he has told you the fate of such uploads - they get
|deleted and the originating site is informed.
At least if one reported it to the police, the police would say
"That's not against the law."
Site administrators, on the other hand, are entirely ignorant of legal
issues, and their only concern is to protect their proverbial butt --
even when it's not really in trouble. They'll likely take steps
against the person who has committed no breach of legality.
Perhaps what he should have said was that he'll report such instances
to the FBI. That would be more appropriate. At least then innocent
users wouldn't be punished.
Sean
--
Sean Casey |``Wind, waves, etc. are breakdowns in the face of the
sean@s.ms.uky.edu | commitment to getting from here to there. But they are the
U of KY, Lexington| conditions for sailing -- not something to be gotten rid
606-258-6000 x280 | of, but something to be danced with.''
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [misc.legal, et al.] Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <9201232320.AA14808@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 11:20:24 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.221220.29570@mdd.comm.mot.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 22:12:20 GMT
in comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, buhr@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Kevin Andrew Buhr) said:
>[ A thread on comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives and rec.games.misc (originally
> titled "Distributing Program Cracks" included some discussion about what
> rights and duties system administrators have in terms of what they make
> available via ftp or netnews. I've cross-posted this just about everywhere
> with followups to misc.legal and alt.censorship. ]
>
>In <1992Jan22.232353.6301@anomaly.sbs.com> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>
>>explorer@iastate.edu (Michael L Graff) writes:
>>>Interesting note: Iowa State has implemented a "netnews policy" which
>>>I and many other feel is against the 1st ammendment. The majority of the
>>>students cannot read groups (alt.sex.*, alt.drugs, and others) because of
>>>this policy.
>
>>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>>newsfeed.
>
>Is this last statement true?
>
>The consensus seems to be that system administrators (or their employers) can
>choose to limit user access to newsgroups and types of ftp-able materials
>however they like. I can't see, in the case of a private system run by
>a private organization, how this could be otherwise.
>
>At one point, however, someone mentioned that state universities have
>certain duties concerning free speech that may supercede the discretion
>of the system administrators. Thus, for example, while a system
>administrator may refuse to carry alt.binaries.pictures.erotica (or
>whatever it's called now) because the GIFs take up too much of the
>system's resources, he or she couldn't censor users' exposure to newsgroups
>on purely political or ideological grounds.
>
>By way of a clearer example, while a private system administrator could
>refuse to make alt.politics.homosexuality available to his or her readers
>because of personal preference, a state university would have a duty to
>provide that newsgroup unless it could prove there was another valid reason
>for limiting access to the newsgroup (perhaps it incited riots ;-) ).
We're not talking about freedom of speech here. We're talking about freedom
of listen.
No, wait a minute, more than that, we're talking about a requirement for
subsidy of listen.
It seems to me that they are no more obliged to provide you with the ability
to read alt.politics.homosexuality or alt.sex.aluminum.baseball.bat than
they are obliged to provide you with a subscription to Penthouse and Hustler.
However, closer to the point of the original question, I think they are
required to refrain from censoring postings to a public forum which they
provide purely on the basis that they disagree with the content of those
postings. It seems to me that's a fairly straighforward departure from
first amendment free expression principles, that observance of first
amendment principles is required if congressionally appropriated money is
used, and that state universities are supported by congressionally
appropriated money.
I'm talking thru my hat here, but it sounds like everyone else is too.
>
>Could someone give us a more definitive ruling on what, precisely, a state
>university's duties are in this regard? Can anyone comment on the
>applicability of this concept to universities in other countries (eg.
>Canada) ?
>
Yeah. Anybody.?.?.?.? (listens intently for a response)
--
mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.234353.29842@eff.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 23:43:53 GMT
kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>If Iowa State chooses to offer Netnews, it should not censor its feed.
morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>Gee, I thought that we had agreed long ago (last year) that Usenet was
>not an "all or nothing" proposition.
We had. I just meant that if Iowa State chooses to offer Newnews,
"[m]aterials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan
or doctrinal disapproval."
[ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/library/bill-of-rights.ala]
> If ISU has never carried those
>groups, they are well within their rights to refuse to start now.
[...]
If ISU had never carried those groups, they would likely be within
their *legal* rights to refuse to start now. It would still, however,
be a violation of academic freedom for them to proscribe or remove
material "because of partisan or doctrianal disapproval."
In any case, they didn't just decide not to start carrying groups,
they removed groups that they had already been carrying. This fits the
American Library Associations's definition of censorship. Namely:
"Censorship -- The change in the access status of material, made by a
governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include:
exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes."
[ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/library/censorship.def.ala]
More information about Iowa State is available from the CAF-talk
archive via anonymous ftp. Ftp to ftp.eff.org and go to directory
pub/academic/batch. Get files dec_22_1991 and dec_15_1991.
The CAF Newses for these weeks are forthcoming. A guest editor
is working on Dec 15th. (I still need a guest editor for Dec 22nd.
There was a lot of traffic that week, mostly related to Iowa State
University and to Marquett University.)
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives, et al.] Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <9201232353.AA15920@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 11:53:55 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 23 00:00:00 1992
From: francis@dogwood.atl.ga.us (John Stracke)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives,rec.games.misc
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID:
Date: 23 Jan 92 21:43:16 GMT
In article <1992Jan17.145132.20098@ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>oneill@cs.ulowell.edu (Brian 'Doc' O'Neill) writes:
>|At 22:23 EST last night (1/16), someone from soda.berkeley.edu uploaded a
>|crack program for the game Liesure Suit Larry 5, which bypasses the copy
>|protection scheme of the game. Please not that I will _NOT_ accept any such
>|files, will delete them immediately, and will notify the system
>|administrators on whatever system the files came from.
>These programs are completely legal. Some are sold on the commercial
>markets. The fact that they can be used by copyright infringers is
>incidential. Copyright infringement is not their purpose.
Yeah, right.
>Preventing the distribution of these programs or taking alarmist
>actions and notifying systems administrators is not only unnecessary,
>it may be illegal. State Universities must adhere to first amendment
>principles. The act of putting a program up on Usenet or announcing
>its availability via anonymous FTP may be considered publication.
Hold that thought....
>Censoring this software--whose existence is perfectly legal--because
>of its content may be a violation of first amendment rights.
Garbage. The contributor is not the publisher; the FTP site is. A
publisher has a perfect right to refuse to publish anything, for any
reason whatsoever. That's part of what editors are for. (The human
kind, not Emacs. :-) The fact that the publishing medium is
state-supported is not relevant; every publisher has a right and a
responsibility to use judgment in deciding what to publish, and not to
publish items whose obvious purpose is to assist violations of the
law. Saying the FTP site has to accept these programs is like saying
that I can take a set of lockpicks to a military PX and demand that
they sell it.
/===========================================================================\
|John (Francis) Stracke |My opinions are my own. |
|Natl. Science Center Foundation|===========================================|
|Augusta, GA |Beware of wizards, for you are |
|francis@dogwood.atl.ga.us | crunchy and good with ketchup. |
\===========================================================================/
(Formerly francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu)
--
--
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.091646.17034@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 14:16:46 GMT
kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>
>> If ISU has never carried those
>>groups, they are well within their rights to refuse to start now.
>
>If ISU had never carried those groups, they would likely be within
>their *legal* rights to refuse to start now. It would still, however,
>be a violation of academic freedom for them to proscribe or remove
>material "because of partisan or doctrianal disapproval."
Eh....that's too much of a judgement call for me to put words in ISU's
mouth.
>In any case, they didn't just decide not to start carrying groups,
>they removed groups that they had already been carrying. This fits the
>American Library Associations's definition of censorship.
If they were removed for reasons of partisanship/doctrine, I'll agree
with you. However, I have noticed that the most controversial groups
are often the groups with the highest volume. Since no one from ISU
has spoken to the admin's position, we don't really know what the
situation is.
The thing that concerns me the most is the original poster's statement
that "a majority of students cannot read alt.sex.*". Does this mean
that some students CAN read those groups? Which students? What systems?
If they are offering certain newsgroups to only certain students on a
particular machine, we definitely have a mess on our hands; I'll be
arguing right beside you that this is wrong.
However, it could be that some particular machines have made their own
arrangements for news feeds. That would make each site responsible for
its newsgroups selection and put a different spin on things.
Could someone from ISU PLEASE post a copy of this "new policy", or some
more details (if an actual copy isn't available)? We really need more
information before we start picking this apart.
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.151131.23467@eff.org>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 15:11:31 GMT
morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
[...]
>Could someone from ISU PLEASE post a copy of this "new policy", or some
>more details (if an actual copy isn't available)? We really need more
>information before we start picking this apart.
[...]
I'm enclosing a copy of the policy and a copy of the
proscribed-newsgroups list. Note that while the policy does not ban
newsgroups from department machines, it does ban newsgroups from
Computation Center machines.
========= ftp.iastate.edu:pub/netinfo/news/usenet-news-policy ==========
NOTICE: The following policy is a new policy that will be activated on
January 6, 1992 at Iowa State University. It is not currently
in effect.
Usenet News Policy
Iowa State University Computation Center
December 12, 1991
Introduction
The Iowa State University Computation Center has established the following
policy on the distribution of Usenet News lists. This policy addresses
challenges and conflicts that have arisen due to the rapid evolution of services
provided by the Computation Center in network-based news lists. While most of
these news lists provide a wealth of technical, research-based, and collateral
material, a few lists may contain material which may be illegal or viewed by
some as socially or morally objectionable.
The purpose of this statement is to provide a brief overview of Usenet News,
provide a description of the problems that arise, and present the Computation
Center's policy on this issue.
Overview of Usenet News
Usenet News is the term used to refer to a collective group of computer-
accessible lists on a wide variety of topics. These lists do not come from a
central repository with a central administration but are "passed around" by the
network-connected systems. Thousands of computers of various types are
connected via telecommunications links ranging from slow-speed telephone lines
to high-speed data networks. Any network-connected system can install the
Usenet News software. That site then contacts one or more other sites on a
network near them and requests a "news feed". Once the "news feed" is
established, the news software at each site begins communicating. News files on
one site that do not exist on an adjacent site are automatically transmitted.
In this manner, a new article generated on a single network-connected news
system will eventually replicate itself to all network-connected news systems
throughout the world.
The large group of network-connected computer systems running Usenet News
software is collectively called "Usenet". The files exchanged by the news
software are called "news lists". These lists are named in a hierarchical
fashion, with the name indicating the subject matter of the list. There are
currently over 1,100 lists that an individual user can subscribe to. Major
divisions of Usenet News lists are:
comp Technical computing discussions
news Usenet News discussions
misc A "catch-all" category
sci Science-related discussions
soc Discussions on the society or its culture
talk Talk on current issues (politics, environment, etc.)
rec Hobby related discussions
Using the "comp" division as an example, there are lists included with such
names as "comp.lang.fortran", "comp.sys.ibmpc", and "comp.unix.questions". News
lists are created by "common consent" of all the news administrators on all
systems. A defined procedure exists for suggesting a new list. A vote of those
interested in participating is taken and, if accepted, all sites have the option
of "turning on" the new list. Individual news systems are managed by "news
administrators" (a technical systems person). Each site may be as selective as
it wants in allowing the reception of individual lists into its system. In
addition, the local news administrator has the option of creating "local lists",
which are lists of local interest that are not passed on to other news systems.
From the individual news reader's perspective, Usenet News is "subscribed to".
Most systems containing news are multi-user systems. The news feed for all
lists is stored in the disk file system of the news machine and each user is
given access to "news reader" commands that allow the user to read and post
articles to the various news lists. Most news lists are unmoderated, meaning
that anyone can say anything they want without any review. In general, the only
form of content control is by "peer pressure" from other list participants.
A key observation is that there may be no point where any systematic review of
material can occur before it is included in the "news feed". Postings can
arrive from any point in the world which has computer access to Usenet. While
moderated news lists are said to be "reviewed by the moderator", how (or
whether) that person reviews material is not subject to any further review.
Most lists are unmoderated.
In a university environment with a multitude of computers and users, the Usenet
News articles generally come into campus over a high-speed data network called
the Internet. The high-speed data transfer backbone communication facility is
funded by the National Science Foundation. Note that the NSF does not directly
provide the Usenet News service--it only provides one transport mechanism which
is used to relay the news lists from one area to another. Connected to this
backbone are regional high-speed networks formed by regional associations for
the purpose of providing access to the NSF backbone. Iowa State belongs to and
uses the facilities of MIDnet, a seven-state regional network.
All news comes into one campus system and is stored for later reading. This
system is called the "news server". The other computer systems on campus that
wish to read news utilize software to function as "news clients", allowing them
to read news off the "news server" via the campus network. In this manner, one
copy of the news (which collectively occupies approximately 500 megabytes of
information with frequent purging of old material) is kept for the entire
campus.
It is important to note that at this point a significant share of the support
structure for distributing Usenet News is derived from public funding. Most
(although not all) of the long-haul news article transport occurs over the
National Science Foundation's data communications network and the regional
networks supported in part by NSF and other public funding. Many of the news
systems that receive and re-distribute news articles are owned by or operated
for the U.S. government (in the case of military or research systems) or by
state and local governments (in the case of university systems). Usenet News
could not function at the current level without the existing public-funded
infrastructure.
Challenges which Accompany this Technology
The use of Usenet to discuss a wide variety of issues has grown over the years.
Before long, the "pure technical" nature of the news lists gave way to general
talk on almost anything, including such topics as aspects of sexual lifestyles,
illegal drugs, and racist humor. The collective group of Usenet
"administrators" early on decided to address this potential problem by creating
an "alt" group division for "alternate" selections. This group of lists could
presumably be omitted if some topics were considered questionable at an
individual's site. Currently, the "alt" groups contain such topics as:
alt.sex Postings of a prurient nature
alt.sex.bondage Postings about dominance/submission
alt.sex.pictures Graphics images of a prurient nature
alt.drugs Recreational pharmaceuticals
and also these topics:
alt.fishing Fishing as a hobby and sport
alt.recovery 12-step recovery groups
(such as Alcoholics Anonymous)
alt.sources Alternative source code
alt.native Issues for and about native Americans
The lines of distinction between "objectionable" and "non-objectionable" groups
can become very fuzzy when groups such as "rec.humor" begin exchanging ethnic or
"off color" jokes or a sexist discussion begins on "alt.sex".
Some university sites in other locations have already come under internal and
external criticism for the alleged use of state and federal funds to store and
distribute items which are alleged either to be illegal or objectionable.
Institutions on campus such as the Parks Library already have guidelines
regarding free access to information. They also have policies in place to
handle complaints from those who object to various forms of research material.
The guidelines do not impose censorship. They allow access to all materials,
although some material may be available only upon request. Procedures exist to
review the purchase of materials which might be considered illegal under state
or federal statute. Costs, themselves, prevent the collection of all possible
material.
Usenet News lists, however, present a new form of "openness", both in access and
in collection. University computer access may extend further into the public in
the immediate future with ever-expanding network access. Assumptions that
access is limited to adults (student, staff, or faculty) may no longer be valid.
This new medium provides any user the ability to voluntarily read and say
anything they want in a relatively uncensored and anonymous atmosphere. What is
posted anywhere on the world-wide network will result in Iowa State "acquiring"
that posting.
Development of the Usenet News Policy
Many aspects of Usenet News were considered in developing a policy. Several of
them are discussed here for insight into the policy itself.
Some of the material provided through Usenet has been objectionable to some
members of the university community. These objections have ranged from an
objection to having news lists considered "frivolous" available on a
researcher's workstation to objections to the display of material in violation
of the university's sexual harassment policy. The volume of material that
arrives at campus every day precludes individual review of articles or even of
selected news groups. The campus commitment to open access and intellectual
freedom makes the review of material unlikely even if it were technically
feasible. With the academic freedom of the campus environment goes individual
intellectual responsibility. Hallmarks of that responsibility are to obtain and
use material in manners respecting others in the campus community, the goals of
intellectual inquiry, and state and federal law. Certain aspects of public law
may apply to the dissemination of material to persons under the age of 18.
Access to news lists are by request for the specific news list based on the name
of the list. Currently, textual material is easily viewed. Graphic material
requires additional processing to be viewable, although once processed, it can
be easily recalled on common workstations and microcomputers. The future
undoubtedly holds advances in the user interface so that graphical material will
be as easily viewed as text. Additionally, multi-media advances will make
moving video replete with sound as easily seen and heard as text is viewed
today.
Since individual article review is precluded by the volume of material received,
news lists can only be assessed by their name and the accompanying description
of their contents. Due to the extremely distributed nature of the posting
process, any news list may contain an occasional posting (particularly with
respect to offensive language) which could be considered to be objectionable by
some.
Certain technical issues also pertain. The news server software can distinguish
recipients of news lists based only on the Internet address of the receiving
computer (timesharing system, workstation, or microcomputer). Of the
timesharing systems offering general access operated by the Computation Center,
only the software on the HDS system (WYLBUR) is readily modifiable to allow
individual choice of access.
Usenet News Policy
The Computation Center maintains a news server offering Usenet News lists for
the Iowa State University community. This offering of service must comply with
federal, state, and local laws; policies of the Iowa Board of Regents and Iowa
State University; and be within the guidelines of any agreements between the
university and local, regional, national, or international computer networks.
The Usenet News Administrator is responsible for the day-to-day management of
the service on the Iowa State University campus. Any material, particularly
locally-posted material, which could be harmful to a specific individual(s) may
be removed by the Usenet News Administrator. News lists which have large
resource requirements which adversely affect general use of Usenet News may be
restricted in some form by the Usenet News Administrator.
Any news list may contain material which is unfamiliar, unorthodox or unpopular
to some. Occasionally, even ordinary news lists may contain material which a
reader finds objectionable. Members of the university community have the right
to request a review of particular material by contacting the Usenet News
Administrator in writing. An alternative consistent with the Intellectual
Freedom Statement (as adopted by the American Library Association Council on
June 25, 1971) would be to recognize that each item available within Usenet News
is a view or mode of expression of the person posting the material. The
presentation of such material in Usenet News does not imply any endorsement by
those providing the news service or by those subscribing to it. This suggested
alternative does not apply to the public display of offensive materials, only to
the presence of material within Usenet. A separate policy governs the public
display of material.
Three variations of Usenet news lists are offered. These are called the Focused
News List, the Standard News List, and the Full News List.
The purpose of the Focused News List is to provide an alternative to those who
want their computer to only access news lists which appear to be focused on
academic information directly rather than hobby, recreational, or undefined
areas. The Focused News List contains all news lists except the alternative and
recreational hierarchies (i.e., "alt" and "rec"). Other hierarchies may also be
excluded in the future if their primary focus appears to be away from academic
information.
The purpose of the Standard News List is to provide access to the lists which
are unlikely to evoke questions regarding access, use or distribution of the
material. Hence, the Standard News List offering will explicitly exclude some
news groups. The Standard offering will be the default for campus use. The
excluded lists are those which by their name and accompanying description
appear to offer potential conflicts with law, (particularly with child
protection and pornography law) or with policies such as the sexual harassment
policy. A list of the excluded news lists will be posted monthly to the
newsgroup "isu.newsgroups" with the subject heading "Monthly Posting -- ISU
Usenet Access Policy - Standard List". If other news lists are created which
appear to offer these same potential conflicts, they will be added to the
excluded list.
The purpose of the Full News List is to offer full access to all news lists to
anyone in the Iowa State community who requests it and acknowledges their
responsibility in accessing, using, and distributing material from it. Some
material in the full news feed may not be appropriate for general distribution.
It is the responsibility of those receiving the material to comply with
appropriate law and policy.
All computers served by the Computation Center news server will receive the
Standard News List as the default. Those persons in charge of computers
(time-sharing systems, workstations, or microcomputers) may request either the
Focused List or the Full list by filling out the appropriate form obtained from
the Computation Center administrative office, 291 Durham Center. The form for
the Focused News List acknowledges that certain material may not be available to
the specified computer. The form for the Full News List acknowledges
responsibility for access, use, and distribution of all Usenet material via that
specific computer via either console or remote use. Once either Full or Focused
access has been requested, the requester may revert to the Standard offering by
filling out a form.
All publicly-accessible computers in the Computation Center, with the exception
of the HDS WYLBUR time-sharing system, will offer the Standard News List only.
University users of WYLBUR may request access to the Full or Focused News Lists
by filling out the appropriate form obtained from 291 Durham Center. The form
acknowledges individual responsibility of the user-id owner for access, use, and
distribution of Usenet material. Some material in the full news feed may not be
appropriate for general distribution. It is the responsibility of those
receiving the material to comply with appropriate law and policy.
========= ftp.iastate.edu:pub/netinfo/news/usenet-news-std-list ========
NOTICE: The following list relates to a new policy that will be activated on
January 6, 1992 at Iowa State University. It is not currently
in effect.
*** ISU "Standard List" Newsgroups ***
(This information is current as of 12/13/91)
The "Standard News List" is the full Usenet newsgroup list MINUS
certain groups excluded because their name and accompanying description
appear to offer potential conflicts with law, (particularly with child
protection and pornography law) or with policies such as the sexual
harassment policy.
Reasons for the exclusion of certain groups from the "Standard List" are
outlined in the monthly posting to "isu.newsgroups" with the subject
"Monthly Posting -- ISU Usenet Access Policy - Policy Stmt". A full copy
of the ISU Usenet News Policy is available via anonymous FTP from
"ftp.iastate.edu" in the file:
net-info/news/usenet-news-policy
The following is a list of newsgroups that are unavailable unless a
person responsible for a system (or WYLBUR user-ID) has filled out a
"FULL NEWSGROUP ACCESS REQUEST" form (available from the Computation
Center main office, 291 Durham Center).
Groups currently not provided with "Standard" newsgroup access are:
alt.personals.bondage
alt.drugs
alt.psychoactives
alt.sex
alt.sex.bestiality
alt.sex.bondage
alt.sex.motss
alt.sex.pictures
alt.sex.pictures.d
If other news lists are created which appear to offer these same potential
conflicts, they will be added to the excluded lists.
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal
From: john@iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.160039.20161@news.iastate.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 16:00:39 GMT
-=[I only work and go to school here, this is opinion, not official policy]=-
That much said....
morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
}kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
}>> If ISU has never carried those
}>>groups, they are well within their rights to refuse to start now.
The original policy was open access.
}The thing that concerns me the most is the original poster's statement
}that "a majority of students cannot read alt.sex.*". Does this mean
}that some students CAN read those groups? Which students? What systems?
}If they are offering certain newsgroups to only certain students on a
}particular machine, we definitely have a mess on our hands; I'll be
}arguing right beside you that this is wrong.
By default a machine does not receive:
alt.sex, alt.sex.*, alt.psychoactives, alt.personals.bondage, alt.drugs
(or any of the new erotic binary groups whatever their names are)
}However, it could be that some particular machines have made their own
}arrangements for news feeds. That would make each site responsible for
}its newsgroups selection and put a different spin on things.
The person in charge of the machines (generally the head of the dept
where the machines are located) can sign a form requesting:
a) no groups be censored
b) all alt.* and rec.* be censored
The net result being: machines in faculty/staff offices have the full
feed (unless the dept head is a real ___) machines available to students
don't. Also many people are concerned about appearing on what has
become known as the `perverts list' (those signing up for option "a" above).
}Could someone from ISU PLEASE post a copy of this "new policy", or some
}more details (if an actual copy isn't available)? We really need more
}information before we start picking this apart.
A group of students & staff has formed to work to change the policy.
This group has been meeting with the Comp Ctr (interim) director to
discuss their concerns about this policy and to propose changes and
alternatives. Progress appears to be being made in a couple of areas:
a) The director is likely going to remove all of the
textual groups from the restricted by default
category.
b) A proposal has been submitted by the group to the
director outlining a policy and mechanism for
personal choice based on personal responsibility.
-=[I only work and go to school here, this is opinion, not official policy]=-
John
--
John Hascall Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center john@iastate.edu
Ames, IA 50011 515/294-9551 [fax -1717]
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Sexual Harassment Law book
Message-ID: <9201241802.AA28446@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 92 06:02:47 GMT
Anyone interested in the law of sexual harassment should look at this
book. It is an up-to-date and encyclopedic.
Conte, Alba.
Sexual harassment in the workplace : law and practice / Alba Conte.
New York : Wiley, c1990.
xvii, 556 p. ; 26 cm. (Employment law library.)
Kept up to date by pocket supplements.
Includes index.
ISBN 0471507431
1. Sexual harassment of women--Law and legislation--United
States. I. Title. II. Series.
ocm20-824476
- Carl
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <199201242006.AA00402@eff.org>
Date: 24 Jan 92 10:06:30 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov (Stephen Wolff)
Subject: Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <9201241343.AA05345@cise.cise.nsf.gov>
Date: 24 Jan 92 13:40:34 GMT
No, A-130 is NOT the basis for the NSFNET Backbone AUP.
The NSFNET Backbone AUP is consistent with the NSF enabling legislation. A
new AUP is about to be issued that is the product of the Networking Division's
Advisory Committee and the NSF General Counsel; it will represent the most
liberal possible interpretation of the NSF enabling legislation.
A-130 is the Circular that commands Federal agencies to share their
telecommunications facilities - and to account for the shared use.
-s
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] Norther American Directory Forum Introduces "User Bill of Rights"
Message-ID: <199201242004.AA00223@eff.org>
Date: 24 Jan 92 10:04:04 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: schoff@psi.com (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Subject: Norther American Directory Forum Introduces "User Bill of Rights"
Message-ID: <9201232252.AA04537@psi.com>
Date: 23 Jan 92 12:52:55 GMT
NORTH AMERICAN DIRECTORY FORUM INTRODUCES "USER BILL OF RIGHTS"
TAMPA, FL. JAN. 23, 1992.....The North American Directory Forum (NADF)
introduced a "User Bill of Rights" to address security and privacy issues
regarding entries and listings concerning its proposed cooperative public
directory service. NADF members also approved continuing efforts on an
experimental publich directory pilot at their eighth quarterly meeting.
The "User Bill of Rights" addresses the concerns of the individual user or the
user's agent, and is in response to issues brought to the attention of the
NADF.
Final plans were completed for the X.500 directory pilot scheduled to begin in
the first quarter of this year. The pilot will be used by the NADF to validate
its technical agreements for providing a publich directory service in North
America. The agreements have been recorded in standing documents and include
the services that will be provided, the directory schema and information
sharing required to unify the directory. It will test the operation of X.500
in a large-scale, multi-vendor environment.
All NADF members are participating in the pilot. The members are AT&T, Bell
Atlantic, BellSouth Advanced Networks, Bellcore representing US West, BT North
America, GE Information Services, IBM, Infonet, MCI Communications Corp.,
Pacific Bell, Performance Systems International, US Postal Service and Ziff
Communications Co. Joining the NADF at this meeting are Canada Post
Corporation and DirectoryNet, Inc.
The NADF was founded in 1990 with the goal of bringing together major messaging
providers in the U.S. and Canada to establish a public directory service based
on X.500, the CCITT recommendation for a global directory service. The forum
meets quarterly in a collaborative effort to address operational, commercial
and technical issues involved in implementing a North American directory with
the objective of expediting the industry's transition to a global X.500
directory.
This quarter's meeting was hosted by the IBM Information Network, IBM's
value-added services network that provides networking, messaging, capacity and
consulting services.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
USER BILL OF RIGHTS
for entries and listings in the Public Directory
The mission of the North American Directory Forum is to provide interconnected
electronic directories which empower users with unprecedented access to public
information. To address significant security and privacy issues, the North
American Directory Forum introduces the following "User Bill of Rights" for
entries in the Public Directory. As a user, you have:
I. The right not to be listed.
II. The right to have you or your agent informed when your entry is created.
III. The right to examine your entry.
IV. The right to correct inaccurate information in your entry.
V. The right to remove specific information from your entry.
VI. The right to be assured that your listing in the Public Directory will
comply with US or Canadian law regulating privacy or access information.
VII. The right to expect timely fulfillment of these rights.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scope of Intent - User Bill of Rights
The North American Directory Forum is a collection of service providers that
plan to offer a cooperative directory service in North America. This is
achieved by interconnecting electronic directories using a set of
internationally developed standards known as the CCITT X.500 series.
In this context, the "Directory" represents the collection of electronic
directories administered by both service providers and private operators. When
an entry containing information about a user is listed in the Directory, that
information can be accessed unless restricted by security and privacy controls.
A portion of the Directory--The Public Directory--contains information for
public dissemination. In contrast, other portions of the Directory may contain
information not intended for public access. A user or user's agent may elect
to list information in the Public Directory, a private directory, or some
combination. For example, a user might publicly list a telephone number or an
electronic mail address, and might designate other information for specific
private use.
The User Bill of Rights pertains to the Public Directory.
Source: NADF, January 1992
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] Re: Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <199201242006.AA00469@eff.org>
Date: 24 Jan 92 10:06:54 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us (the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow)
Subject: Re: Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <9201241846.AA13297@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
Date: 24 Jan 92 18:46:10 GMT
Steve,
Could you detail who the members of NSF's Networking Division Advisory
Commettee are? I've never heard of this group - what is its charter,
and who are its honorable members?
Geoff
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.com-priv] Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <199201242004.AA00309@eff.org>
Date: 24 Jan 92 10:04:39 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.com-priv
From: cook@tmn.com (Gordon Cook)
Subject: Scriptural Texts for Acceptable Use
Message-ID: <9201240039.AA04437@tmn.com>
Date: 24 Jan 92 05:39:36 GMT
<> Gordon Cook 24-JAN-92 0:39
cook@tmn
Is it correct that OMB circular A130 Management of Federal Information
Resources is the legal basis for the NSF acceptable use policy? Is this
document available in electronic form? If not how does one obtain it.
I found Richard Mandelbaum's querry about the unacceptable use being a
matter between ANS and the transgressor rather than the NSF and the
transgressor to be quite intriguing. It seems to have passed here without
comment. Would circular A130 show why it is invalid, if indeed it is?
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [rec.games.misc] Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <9201242127.AA21589@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 92 09:27:48 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc
From: oneill@cs.ulowell.edu (Brian 'Doc' O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Distributing program cracks
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.175815.6672@ulowell.ulowell.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 17:58:15 GMT
I guess no one saw my followup article...my original article must have been
misleading, and looking at it, I misstated something. I said in the original
article it was a "crack program". More correctly, I should have stated, it
was a "cracked program". The file contained sections of the Sierra code
which had already been cracked. I contacted the administrators to notify
them that a file, which _was_ illegal, was uploaded to my system from
theirs.
Sigh...
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.censorship,misc.legal
From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.172743.26515@ms.uky.edu>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 22:27:43 GMT
john@iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
> -=[I only work and go to school here, this is opinion, not official policy]=-
Duly noted.....
>The net result being: machines in faculty/staff offices have the full
>feed (unless the dept head is a real ___) machines available to students
>don't.
Hmmmm....I've never stopped to consider a policy that allowed certain
news access to faculty/staff only; that's an interesting approach.
>Also many people are concerned about appearing on what has
>become known as the `perverts list' (those signing up for option "a" above).
Yeesh, that could get nasty.......
>A group of students & staff has formed to work to change the policy.
>This group has been meeting with the Comp Ctr (interim) director to
>discuss their concerns about this policy and to propose changes and
>alternatives. Progress appears to be being made in a couple of areas:
Bravo!
> b) A proposal has been submitted by the group to the
> director outlining a policy and mechanism for
> personal choice based on personal responsibility.
Interesting; of course, the default behavior of most newsreaders supports
this approach. Throw in an online disclaimer (as I described some months
ago), and I'd say that you're set to go.
--
morgan@ms.uky.edu |Wes Morgan, not speaking for| ....!ukma!ukecc!morgan
morgan@engr.uky.edu |the University of Kentucky's| morgan%engr.uky.edu@UKCC
morgan@ie.pa.uky.edu |Engineering Computing Center| morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [misc.legal, et al.] Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <9201250146.AA29036@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 92 13:46:52 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 24 00:00:00 1992
From: jwalsh@aspentec.com (Jamie Walsh)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan24.131624.489@aspentec.com>
Date: 24 Jan 92 13:16:24 EST
Last I heard, your rights to free speech don't extend into other people's
wallets, including university budgets for non-curricular public services.
I don't see how the first amendment enters into it, unless they are preventing
you from reading your article on the front steps.
If the university is paying to provide newsgroups, they should be able to
carry or not carry whatever they like. By analogy, if a state university
decided to provide standard cable TV to its dorms, it wouldn't be
required to provide all the pay channels as well.
--
--jamie
"There's a seeker born every minute."
Internet: jwalsh@aspentec.com
UUCP: uunet!aspentec!jwalsh
From caf-talk Caf Jan 25 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.california,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.dads-rights
From: flt@sactoh0.sac.ca.us (Frank L. Topping)
Subject: Betrayal of California's Children
Message-ID: <1992Jan25.123853.14678@sactoh0.sac.ca.us>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 92 12:38:53 GMT
An OPEN LETTER TO THE SYSADMIN - is the same needed in your area?
Likely not if you're not from California - the GOLDen state.
======
Hi Mark!
Brett Elliott gave me a call and said you had deleted his account
on the California State University Network.
I attempted a logon to the CSUNET under my account and had found
that you have deleted it too apparently.
I'd like to ask that you restore these accounts immediately if
possible, it's important to enable the training of teachers and
children of the Northern California Area; something Ca.DeptofED
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE has failed at miserably.
We've brought you teachers more quickly, trained them MORE IN
DEPTH, than you have ever been able to do any other way. ...for
the sheer "fun of it" which is a totally novel concept, I know.
What's the problem, that Brett left me and some of the teachers
a "hacker" informative file - something wrong with free speech
nowadays? ....how about opportunity for others. We are taking
action to get these teachers online and trained _effectively_
because there seems to have been a failure to do so coming from
up "on high." Our children have been betrayed miserably and
IT WILL BE THAT WAY NO LONGER. ...they need this training to be
competitive tomorrow in their careers if they're to succeed.
Leme tell ya about the group meeting in the hop field I used to
play in as a child. They're under the assumption that because
this is the Camellia Capital of the World we're supposed to roll
over and "lay down" smelling those camellias or something while
they betray our kids. ...they "flat have another think commin'!"
This town didn't come from those roots, I'm not from those roots
and Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford & Crocker would have barfed all
over their muddy boots if they were witness to such corruption
betrayal and incompetency in a "business atmosphere."
That committee isn't _FIT_ to meet in the same town these great
legends of business started the Trans-continental Railroad from.
While we take a look at that - I suggest you give brett a call at
home and have him log back on - if you don't know how to get the
Z-Modem protocol up correctly he'll be glad to show you how - the
implementation of just about every other piece of junk you've got
up needs work too - 16 year old Brett has been helping teachers
on your system _LEARN_ ...if you have any other ideas about the
mission of the California State University System perhaps you'd
like to come on up to Sacramento and talk them over; in the mean
time learning _WILL_ occur on that system. If we have to get you
out of the way to achieve this, so be it.
Who's at fault here, the governor's office? ...Ca.DeptofED? ..the
Educational Technology Committee? The Subcommittee on Telecommun-
ications or the "so-called" Blue Ribbon Committee that wasn't
there for them before and shows no signs of being for them yet?
One person in Sacramento sure isn't at fault and that's Brett
Elliott - get the hell out of that child's way and restore his
account or we'll get someone able to run that system that will.
You're doing a miserable job Mark - if you need help, say so -
and let others know of what nature, otherwise, the American
working class will have to train our kids to be competitive
against the Japanese. ...your Wilson gov't. sure hasen't been!
Frank L. Topping, Journeyman Inside Wireman (916) 455-5154
member:
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local #180
Vallejo, California, U.S.A
"Just tellin' it like it is - BRO.!"
* Them's OUR KIDS - Let's FIGHT for 'em! *
( President ain't, Governor ain't - IBM ain't; and the
rest are in bed with Apple for BUCK$ - not for our kids.)
--
Frank L. Topping INTERNET: flt@sactoh0.SAC.CA.US
UUCP: {ames | apple | att | sun}!pacbell!sactoh0!flt
or: ucbvax!csusac!sactoh0!flt
From caf-talk Caf Jan 25 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [eff.mail.phrack] The Harsh Reality of Life
Message-ID: <199201252008.AA03470@eff.org>
Date: 25 Jan 92 10:08:59 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 25 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: eff.mail.phrack
From: kl@stormking.com (Craig Neidorf)
Subject: The Harsh Reality of Life
Message-ID: <199201251620.AA02150@stormking.com>
Date: 25 Jan 92 06:27:20 GMT
THE HARSH REALITY OF LIFE
by Craig Neidorf
kl@stormking.com
January 18-19, 1992 marked the two-year anniversary of my visit from and
subsequent raid by the United States Secret Service, Southwestern Bell
Security, and the University of Missouri Police Department.
The publicity and attention that once surrounded United States v. Craig Neidorf
has long been over, and; for most people involved life has returned to normal
and those events are history.
Unfortunately things are not quite as simple for me.
After my trial concluded, I went back to school at the University of Missouri,
and hit the books hard. I earned a 4.0 (straight A average) that semester,
focusing on political science and pre-law courses. I did almost as well the
following spring and summer semesters. I graduated on August 2, 1991.
However, my legal bills remained very high. In fact, my parents and I still
owe close to $50,000.
I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of actually making a direct
appeal to people to send donations in to my defense fund, but over the last
year and a half, my idealism about the future has faded and been replaced with
reality.
At the end of my trial, my legal fees totaled about $108,000 and this figure
does not include travel expenses in going back and forth to Chicago from St.
Louis and Columbia or any other related expenditures that I had to make during
that 7 month period.
- This figure does not include the money I lost by having to drop most of my
classes at the University of Missouri that semester because I could not
consistently attend class during my ordeal.
- This figure does not reflect the pain and suffering that my family and I
were put through by a malicious and ignorant prosecutor and other similarly
unpleasant people at Bellsouth, Illinois Bell, Bellcore, and AT&T.
- This figure does not include the traumatic incidents of my suspension from
the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity or the threats of expulsion I received from the
Chancellor's office of the University of Missouri.
- And finally this figure does not include the additional $900 I had to spend
to finally get my arrest records expunged. That fee could and should have
been avoided altogether except as with the trial, William Cook (the assistant
U.S. attorney) opposed my motion for expungement and so several more motions
and court appearances were necessary for me to achieve victory.
The number one MYTH about my legal fees is that they were paid by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is complete fiction. Although I appeared
to have been somewhat of a spokesperson and "poster-child" for the EFF
throughout 1990 and 1991, and despite what you may have read anywhere else,
there were no monetary contributions granted to me by that organization. NONE.
There was a private and very generous donation made by Mitch Kapor personally,
but this is separate from the EFF.
EFF did pay for some legal motions to be filed in my case regarding the First
Amendment, but since these motions were denied, they impacted only slightly on
the outcome of my trial. The most beneficial outcome of the EFF's involvement
with my case was the general increase in awareness in the community at large to
the issues my case presented.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well more than a year has passed since the day my trial ended...
My entire life savings that I had stored for college and law school was needed
as a downpayment on my legal fees and my parents of course had to give up most
of their savings as well. A payment plan was arranged over what looks to be a
10 year period. We had no choice, but to accept that these were the cards life
had dealt us and after all things could be much worse. I have my health and my
freedom (such as it is) and such things are worth more than money.
However, I am a young person starting out in life. I have applied to several
law schools across the country, both public and private. Unfortunately, after
reviewing my financial options, I have discovered that the expense of a legal
education may now place it very far beyond my means.
Like a very large number of Americans, the recession has hit home, putting my
father out of work and keeping my mother in a job beneath her talents.
It seriously pains me to have to do this, but trust me when I tell you that
I've thought about this for a long time. I need YOUR HELP to get my legal
bills paid. I need to be able to live my life without this debt hanging over
my head. There are at least 343 people on the Phrack emailing list alone: If
each person only contributed $30 it would save me over $10,000. You see
helping me out is not beyond the reach of our community if we all work
together. Consider it an investment in your future, because what happened to
me can happen to anyone and with a legal education I'll be back to return the
favor.
If you find that you can afford to help me, you have my most sincere thanks and
appreciation. I know a lot of you are in tight financial situations like me
and can sympathize with what I am going through. If you are unable to help me
because you are having problems of your own then you have my sympathy as well.
Please make checks or money orders payable to: Katten, Muchin, & Zavis
Send them to: Sheldon Zenner
Katten, Muchin, & Zavis
525 West Monroe Street
Suite 1600
Chicago, Illinois 60606-3693
And do not forget to write my name in the memo section or enclose a letter
explaining what the check is for. If you neglect to do that, KMZ will not
credit my account for the amount of the check.
PS - I'd also appreciate any tips or leads on potential sources of financial
aid, grants, and scholarships available for an aspiring law student.
From caf-talk Caf Jan 25 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1992 19:36:40 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Jan25.193640.25341@anomaly.sbs.com>
I had written:
>Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
>newsfeed.
buhr@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Kevin Andrew Buhr) replies
>Is this last statement true?
Absolutely. The intention of the 1st amendment is to prevent the state from
passing laws/regulations which infringe upon your freedom of speech.
Does this mean that every government entity cannot choose to edit or
otherwise restrict that material which it carries? Absolutely not.
>The consensus seems to be that system administrators (or their employers) can
>choose to limit user access to newsgroups and types of ftp-able materials
>however they like.
You bet. Your right to free speech doesn't include the right to spend my
money.
>At one point, however, someone mentioned that state universities have
>certain duties concerning free speech that may supercede the discretion
>of the system administrators.
State Universities have *no* duties concerning free speech, unless
specifically mandated by their charter. They merely cannot enact
regulations which restrict students' right to free speech, as an
extention of the state.
For example, let us take the issue of some universities which do not
carry ALT.SEX.
Does this mean they are preventing you from reading ALT.SEX? Absolutely
not. You are perfectly free to call up any system you wish that carries
ALT.SEX and read it. You are perfectly free to pay UUNET or another
commercial service provider for uninterrupted access to ALT.SEX via a
newsfeed to your personal system.
Now, if the university or state involked a law which stated that you are
prohibited from calling another system to read ALT.SEX, or you could not
call UUNET to get a newsfeed of ALT.SEX, then *THAT* is a restriction on
your 1st amendment rights.
Your right to free speech does not extend itself to include complete,
unrestricted access to the state's possessions. You have no more right
to read ALT.SEX on a university computer than you have to use an M-1
tank owned by the Department of Defense.
>...a state university would have a duty to
>provide that newsgroup unless it could prove there was another valid reason
>for limiting access to the newsgroup...
The state has no duty to provide anything other than a computer system
which is used for the purposes of completing classroom assignments,
administrative work, etc. Anything above and beyond those duties are
"perks". Perks are completely up to the discretion of the managing
individual.
MD
--
-- Michael P. Deignan /
-- Domain: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com / I'm not a bigot,
-- UUCP: ...!uunet!rayssd!anomaly!mpd / I hate everyone.
-- Telebit: +1 401 455 0347 /
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
From: baillod@sparky.eecs.umich.edu (Brad Baillod)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,misc.legal,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan26.045844.10853@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 92 04:58:44 GMT
In article <1992Jan25.193640.25341@anomaly.sbs.com> mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>Does this mean that every government entity cannot choose to edit or
>otherwise restrict that material which it carries? Absolutely not.
>...
>Does this mean they are preventing you from reading ALT.SEX? Absolutely
>not. You are perfectly free to call up any system you wish that carries
>ALT.SEX and read it. You are perfectly free to pay UUNET or another
>commercial service provider for uninterrupted access to ALT.SEX via a
>newsfeed to your personal system.
>
>Now, if the university or state involked a law which stated that you are
>prohibited from calling another system to read ALT.SEX, or you could not
>call UUNET to get a newsfeed of ALT.SEX, then *THAT* is a restriction on
>your 1st amendment rights.
>
>Your right to free speech does not extend itself to include complete,
>unrestricted access to the state's possessions. You have no more right
>to read ALT.SEX on a university computer than you have to use an M-1
>tank owned by the Department of Defense.
>
>The state has no duty to provide anything other than a computer system
>which is used for the purposes of completing classroom assignments,
>administrative work, etc. Anything above and beyond those duties are
>"perks". Perks are completely up to the discretion of the managing
>individual.
It seems to me, however, that the people responsible for usenet
policy in most places are treating
newsgroups as library-like material. The fact that they exist,
and that they are used for discussion of a wide range of topics already,
means that they fall under the same standards as libraries. The
government and the universities may not have originally intended to
have the various *nets used for discussion of sex and politics, but
creating the rec groups and ultimately the alt groups also created
a responsibility for unbiased administration of these groups.
Take your second-to-last paragraph and substitute "read 'The Joy of
Sex' in a university library" for "read ALT.SEX on a university computer
system" and see how it sounds. The fact is, the government is NOT
our "management," it is our employee, and we DO have the right to
use a good deal of its property; libraries are one such example.
If Usenet was used strictly for educational and research purposes,
then censors would have a valid argument for keeping non-research
and non-educational material off it. But given that we have rec.motorcycles,
talk.politics.mideast, rec.sewing and alt.fan.jiro-nakamura on Usenet,
it is arbitrary and capricious to censor alt.sex, and, in fact, against
what the goal of Usenet has become. Usenet has progressed far beyond
being a research tool; it is now a form of mass communication. The
group hierarchies in Usenet's original setup testify to the fact that
it was never meant to be strictly a research tool, and it has come
to fill its desired role nicely.
If universities are bound to keep their libraries free of arbitrary
censorship, they are just as bound to keep Usenet free of arbitrary
censorship, as Usenet has become nothing less than an electronic library
of ideas.
The argument "censorship is not censorship if you can get the material
from another source" is not valid. Does this mean that poor people are
excluded from the exchange of ideas? If libraries are censored, those
of us with enough money can get the books ourselves. This does not
make censorship of libraries okay.
Universities would be within their rights to shut down all of Usenet
except the groups directly related to research and discussion in
university fields of study. But to arbitrarily censor newsgroups
on sexual topics when so many topics are discussed is a violation
of the freedom of thought that Universities stand for, and should
be no more permitted than censorship of library materials.
--
Brad Baillod baillod@eecs.umich.edu
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan26.170429.27078@eff.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1992 17:04:29 GMT
mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
mpd2> I had written:
mpd1> Iowa State has no responsibility for providing you with an uncensored
mpd1> newsfeed.
I'm not sure I unstand your claim. Do you mean that
1) they don't have to provide Netnews, or
2) that if they provide Netnews, it's OK for them to pick and choose
which groups to which they subscribe, or
3) that if they provide Netnews, it's OK for them to screen
articles and to delete those that are found offensive?
#1, I agree with. Just as a university has no legal responsiblity to
establish a library or student newspaper, a university has no legal
responsibility to provide Netnews.
#2, I agree with. Just as a university library has no legal
responsiblity to subscribe to every magazine in the world, a
university computer center has no legal responsibility to subscribe to
every newsgroup in the world.
But just as a university library has a moral responsibility to select
magazines in accordance with the principles of academic freedom and
intellectual freedom, a university computer center has a moral
responsibility to select newsgroups in accordance with the princples
of academic freedom and intellectual freedom.
For example, the American Library Association's "Library Bill of
Rights" says: "Materials should not be proscribed or removed because
of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."
[ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/library/freedom-to-read.ala]
#3, I disagree with. Just as a university has a moral and legal
responsibility not to censor articles in a student newspaper, so a
university has a moral and (probably) legal responsibility not to
censor articles in a newsgroup.
[ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/library/README]
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan26.170854.27232@eff.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1992 17:08:54 GMT
mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
[...]
>The state has no duty to provide anything other than a computer system
>which is used for the purposes of completing classroom assignments,
>administrative work, etc. Anything above and beyond those duties are
>"perks". Perks are completely up to the discretion of the managing
>individual.
[...]
At most state universities, matters relating to freedom of expression
and use of university resources are matters of university policy. They
are not completely up to the discretion of any individual.
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,misc.legal,alt.censorship
From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Duties of state universities regarding 1st amendment
Message-ID: <1992Jan26.171433.27369@eff.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1992 17:14:33 GMT
mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
[...]
>State Universities have *no* duties concerning free speech, unless
>specifically mandated by their charter.
[...]
According to the courts, the U.S. Constitution puts constraints on
state universities. For example, it outlaws viewpoint discrimination
in all limited public forums and it outlaw most kinds of censorship of
student newspapers.
The student codes of most state universities detail more duties to
free expression. Here are some excerpts from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Code on Campus Affairs and Regulations
Applying to All Students (Aug. 1985)
"STATEMENT ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
I. Preamble
A student at the University of Illinois at the Urbana-Champaign campus
is a member of the University community of which all members have at
least the rights and responsibilities common to all citizens, free from
institutional censorship;"
...
"III. Campus Expression
A. Discussion and expression of all views is permitted within the
University subject only to requirements for the maintenance of order.
[...]
B. Members and organizations in the University community may invite
and hear any persons of their own choosing, subject only to reasonable
requirements on time, place, and manner for use of University facilities.
C. The campus press and media are to be free of censorship. The editors
and managers shall not be arbitrarily suspended because of student,
faculty, administration, alumni, or community disapproval of editorial
policy or content."
...
"VI. Student Affairs
[...]
B. Freedom of Inquiry and Expression
1. Students and student organizations should be free to examine and to
discuss all questions of interest to them, and to express opinions
publicly and privately. [...]
2. Students should be allowed to invite and hear any person of their
own choosing. [...] The University's 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."
- Carl
--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
=kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.3619@layout.berkeley.edu=
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [alt.security] Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The [Dan Bernstein] Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID: <9201261736.AA02234@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 92 05:36:41 GMT
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
From: t891368@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au (Mark)
Newsgroups: alt.security
Subject: Re: Announcing AntiTERM: The [Dan Bernstein] Anti-TERMINUS Alliance!
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Jan 92 04:44:53 GMT
brnstnd@nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>In article tk@ai.mit.edu (Tom Knight) writes:
>> I'd point out that MIT runs Terminus in the way it does mostly for the
>> benefit of visitors.
>So you go against the will of the community simply because you don't
>want to be bothered to set up a few guest accounts every now and then.
>Damn it, the consensus of the community is that TERMINUS is not wanted!
>There are far more people who know about TERMINUS and want it taken off
>the net than there are people who legitimately want that service. And
>whenever someone learns that TERMINUS is claimed to be there for the
>benefit of visitors but in practice serves as a cracker haven, he joins
>the anti-TERMINUS camp. AntiTERM represents the consensus of the
^ Dan Berstein
Seriously, this all looks like a one man, bible waving band wagon. I support
terminus because it does serve a useful purpose. We here in Australia have
used it several times when our international link went down. We connected
via another (non ip) network, dialed up terminus and linked our communication
nets back up.
If your so worried about connections from it, then ftp from CERT the
tcp wrapper program. It does what you want, in that you can deny *anything*
from terminus, and also adds the ability to see who is playing with what.
It's better than asking MIT to restrict your host in that it works for all
hosts and not just terminus people coming in.
Of course some machines have inetd.sec files :) (Thanks HP)
Mark
mark@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au
mark@gus.bf.rmit.oz.au
From caf-talk Caf Jan 26 00:00:00 1992
From: lethin@raisin-scone.ai.mit.edu (Richard A. Lethin)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Proposed Yale Restructuring Could Hit Engineering Hard
Message-ID: <21753@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 92 19:54:40 GMT
Apologies if the following article is not appropriate to this newsgroup.
The following text concerns a proposed plan by Yale University to cut
faculty by 10%, with the most serious cutting in the department of
engineering. I'm pretty disappointed with the proposal, particularly in
light of the decline in US competitiveness, the deficit of reasoned
tecnological preficiency in US policy making, and the potential of
technology in helping to remobilize resources and attack current presseing
problems. The proposal conveys an indifference to Engineering (though it
pays lip service while proposing major cuts), an indifference that mirrors
the general public ignorance of the unique nature of engineering, its
fundamentally creative nature and critical role in society.
Of note - the plan has not yet been adopted, and enlightening the Yale
Administration and Corporation may help kill it.
Included below are:
- The 1/17 New York Times article reporting the plan.
- A Yale Daily News Editorial Attacking the plan (enjoyable)
- A Letter from Yale MB&B professor Crothers criticizing the plan.
- The full text of the plan.
- and if you get through all that, various other letters and discussion
**** If you know Yale alums, please pass this article on to them, and
please encourage them to contact me electronically (lethin@ai.mit.edu).
from New York Times, Friday Jan. 17th, 1992, front page
-------------------------------------------------
Yale Panel Proposes Deep Cuts in Faculty And in Departments
By ANTHONY DePALMA
In what could represent the most substantial changes to Yale University in
40 years, a faculty committee has recommended the elimination or
consolidation of several academic departments and a 10.7 percent reduction
in faculty positions. While most major universities are struggling to cut
costs, Yale's proposed reductions would be among the most stringent.
The departments of linguistics and of operations research, a mathematics
discipline, will be closed outright if the recommendations are accepted by
the Yale Corporation, the university's governing body, next month. The
sociology department's faculty will be cut by almost 40 percent, three
separate engineering departments will be consolidated into one, and the
departments of physics and applied physics will be scaled back and then
merged.
Administrators claim the cuts, which would be phased in over several years,
are crucial if Yale is to remain competitive. But many faculty members
worry that such deep cuts are unwarranted and would damage the university.
"I'm outraged," said Deborah S. Davis, a professor of sociology. "This is
unbelievable." Like most other Yale faculty members, Professor Davis saw a
copy of the committee's recommentations in her mailbox yesterday morning,
although the contents had been rumored for weeks.
The report was released a day before Yale's contract with 3,500
non-teaching staff members expires. University officials said the two
actions were not connected.
Faculty and staff have a month to comment on the plan, written by the
Committee on Restructuring the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Yale's
president, Benno C. Schmidt Jr., and the provost, Frank M. Turner, will
consider any revisions, then send final recommendations to the Yale
Corporation, which is expected to accept them. A final decision is expected
by the end of February.
Mr. Turner, the university's provost, said that Yale was running an $8.8
million deficit in its $799 million budget for this fiscal year and would
have deficits for the next few years. But by reducing faculty size and
cutting other expenses, the university would he able to suppnrt itself,
compete for the best faculty and students and "let Yale be Yale,'' Mr.
Turner said.
Most major research universities are struggling because they are spending
more for employee fringe benefits, financial aid and other items while
income has leveled off. The return from endowment investments has slowed,
and they have lost substantial amounts of government research money since
last year, when Government auditors began questioning billings at Stanford
University and other research universities.
Mr. Turner said Yale's situation is even tighter because it needs to spend
$l billion over the next decade to fix aging campus buildings.
The restructuring committee of 12 senior professors from arts and sciences
and several administrators spent a year looking for cuts that would still
leave Yale academically sound. Mr. Turner, chairman of the committee, at
first sought to reduce the faculty by 15 percent, but was persuaded that
that was too severe. The target was moved back to beween 1O and 12 percent.
Arts and Sciences, which includes the undergraduate college and the
graduate schools of arts and sciences, has 698 faculty members. No tenured
faculty would he laid off, but vacated positions would go unfilled. Mr.
Turner said the cuts, when fully enforced, could save the university
between $4 million and $5 million.
During the long months of the committee's work, linguistics and sociology
were often mentioned as being on a short list for elimination. The
committee said the department has had trouble offering a balanced program
and attracting students, charges the chairman denies.
"Although the program is small it has been extremely balanced," said
Laurence R. Horn, chairman of linguistics since 1988. Tenured linguistics
proiessors would be transferred to other departments and could continue to
offer linguistics courses as electives.
The Institution for Social and Policy Studies, which is not an instructonal
department but a research center founded in the mid-1960's for the study of
public policy issues, would also be eliminated. Yale has not had to
eliminate any departments since the Department of the History of Science
and Medicine was closed in the late 1970's. The university underwent a
substantial reorganization in the mid-1950's, under President A. Whitney
Griswold.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
from Yale Daily News, Jan. 13th, 1992
---------------------------------------------------------------
Step Out of The 'March Toward Ignorance'
By Richard M. Koster
Yale has fallen on hard times, is running at a deficit and finds its
physical plant in disrepair.
The condition, in itself, is not shameful. Many others in our country
Qindividuals, firms, institutionsQare in the same boat. Yale, in fact, has
less to complain of than most. Yale's endowment is large, Yale's alumni are
generous. And Yale is at least somewhat part of the problem, having granted
George A. Bush a B.A. in economics. Yale's response, however, suggests that
its troubles are moral and mental as well as material.
Last February Yale's president, Benno Schmidt Jr., convened a
self-examination committee that both faculty and students have criticized
as unrepresentative. The committee then deliberated in secret. As a result,
according to the New York Times, "the university plans to spend $1 billion
over the next ten years to renovate its physical self," that is, its
buildings, and "to reduce the scope of its scholarly endeavors by paring
and possibly eliminating several academic departments, including
linguistics, sociology, and engineering." Brighter readers are invitited to
guess the names of three departments not represented on the committee.
The wrong people, operating in the wrong way, have (not surprisingly)
arrived at the wrong priorities. Any group that means to chart the future
for a community of scholars ought to reflect that community fully, and
ought also, in scholarly humility that it doesn't know everything, air its
views and invite suggestions, especially if paring departments is to be
considered. In other words, castration without representation is tyranny.
It is foolishness also. Of all the Reagan Bush administration's blunders
none was so foolish as reducing our country's scholarly efforts by slashing
funds for research and student loans. Such short-sightedness is
understandable in politicians, but even working in committee educators
ought to have moreJsense. If persisted in, our current policies regarding
education will make ours the first country in history to go from developed
to underdeveloped. One or two generations is all it will take. Those
running our great universities ought to be pointing us in more useful
directions, not joining in the march toward ignorance.
Paring engineering, for example. Even for the short term the idea is
foolish. Some in New Haven may not have gotten the word, but we are in a
trade war with the Japanese and others, a war largely fought by engineers
with engineering. We are lucky the likes of President Schmidt's committee
weren't in power in Washington 50 years ago. We might have had to fight
World War II without the graduates of West Point and Annapolis.
Nor is patriotism out of place when considering Yale's future. My alma
mater's alma goes "For God, for country, and for Yale," in that order. And
mere practicality suggests that if our society needs good engineers, those
planning a university's future ought to think twice before cutting out
engineering.
More importantly, great universities must not be things of the moment.
Where else can we look for a sense of tradition, a commodity of inestimable
worth in a young and restless society like ours? Yale's future cannot be
secured by forgetting Yale's past. Here, again, the example is engineering
which, by the way, I didn't study at Yale or elsewhere.
Yale awarded our country's first doctorate of engineering. The recipient,
J. Willard Gibbs, went on to become the greatest scientist our country has
yet produced.
However important investment in buildings may be, investment in minds ought
to take precedence. Donald Trump has buildings. Yale, too, has buildings,
but is better known for academic programs and should put academic programs
first. Yale has the Willard Gibbs Laboratory, a building that didn't exist
when I was enrolled there. I say it would be foolish to finance the
renovation of the building by eliminating the program in which Gibbs got
his training, thus maining sure Yale produces no more minds like his.
Sometimes, of course, one has to bite the bullet. Yale cannot have
buildings collapsing with people inside them. Cutting a program or two may
be unavoidable. If so, President Schmidt has a chance to lead from the
front, and in a useful direction, by proposing that Yale shut down its law
school, which awarded him a degree back in the `60s. That would surely be
the least of evils. Other universities might even follow suit. If there is
one thing our society has more than enough of, it is lawyers. Even
sociologists are of more use to the commonweal, thus more of an ornament to
Yale, let alone linguist and engineers.
--------------------------------------
R. M. Koster `55 is the author of four novels and a member of the faculty
of Florida State University.
---
Open Letter to the Committee on Restructuring the FAS
Donald H. Crothers, Profesor of MB&B
January 19, 1992
The long awaited report of the Committee on Restructuring the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences has been delivered, and the Faculty should be grateful to
their colleagues for devoting extraordinary amounts of time to a difficult
task. However, I believe that the report is fatally flawed.
The Committee has failed to attach dollar figures to the savings to be
expected from the recommended reduction in the size of tho FAS. The
following approximate estimate suffices for my purposes, however. My
calculation is based on a figure of $60,000 per year per Junior faculty
equivalent (JFE) for salary and fringe benefits. The savings, after a
number of years of attrition leading to a final reduction of 114 JFE, are
$6.8 million. I believe this number should be reduced by the loss of
overhead recovery from positions removed from the physical and biological
sciences. For this calculation I estimate $50,000 per JFE, for a total of
$2.3 million in lost income. Hence the net savings at the end of this
painful process will be $4.5 million per year.
I am astonished that anyone thinks that savings of this magnitude warrant
reducing the academic strength of Yale by 10%. For comparison, the proposed
annual incremental expenses to repair our infrastructure have been in the
range of $30 - 100 million per year; the projected increase in operating
expenses for a single year is 46 million in 1992-93 (excluding the School
of Medicine; see Table 4 of "The Financial Situation of the University: A
Statement to the Yale Community". 1991),
Implicit in the logic of the financial position papers we have received
from the Provost's Office is the assumption that reducing the size of the
faculty will be accompanied by a corresponding reduction in other operating
costs. I believe that this assumption is false. Yale does not provide
secretaries or other support personnel who report to individual faculty.
Our operating costs depend primarily on the size of our physical plant, the
number of students we serve, the number of administrators and the size of
their supporting staffs, and the scope of our libraries. Some small savings
will probably accrue from the proposed consolidation of departmental
offices, but I suspect we could save as much by combining the offices of
the Deans of the College and the Graduate School. Only by closing entire
buildings could a reduction in faculty size result in substantial operating
savings. The committee is silent on this option, and I suspect that it will
not happen. I conclude that the idea of restructuring academic programs as
the organizing principle in reducing overall operating costs is not
logically sound. The main costs are too insensitive to the size of the
faculty and how they are organized.
I turn next to the issue of principle inherent in allocating faculty cuts.
The committee, with its emphasis on financial imperatives, has greatly
muddied the waters on this subject. An illustration may be found in the
relative treatment of my two departments, Chemistry and Molecular
Biophysics & Biochemistry (MB&B). The Committee recommended that Chemistry
lose three JFEs, and MB&B none. According to press reports, Provost Turner
stated that this is because MB&B "more than pays its way". (I'm not sure
how the cost of the new Bass Laboratory was factored into that
calculation.) After sustaining its cuts, the Department of Chemistry will
have an average of about 7-8 faculty each year to teach all areas of
chemistry more advanced than sophomore organic and junior physical
chemistry. This will be impossible in a discipline so intellectually
diverse. MB&B, on the other hand, with responsibility for only a few
courses which could be considered elementary, can provide good teaching
coverage of its specialities.
As for as one can tell, the decision to remove JFEs from Chemistry but not
from MB&B is based on the higher average overhead recovery of MB&B faculty,
all of whom work in NIH-supported fields. The imperatives for Yale as an
educational institution would have been just the contrary: the teaching
needs of Chemistry should take precedence. If the Committee's line of
thinking were pushed to its logical conclusion, there would be no cuts at
all in most science departments because their faculty earn more overhead
recovery than do English or Philosophy professors. By allowing science
funding policies set in Washington to determine its course of action, the
Committee has betrayed Yale's principles of resource allocation. We are an
educational institution, not a research institute.
Yale in recent years has been ludicrously ambivalent about Engineering, and
the Committee has maintained that tradition. The proposed cuts are large
enough to demoralize but not severe enough to kill. We should take a wider
view of this problem. It is in the interest of both Yale and Connecticut,
whose economy in devastated by the loss of the defense industries, that the
university play a more active role in technology transfer: Yale's
environment is dependent on the economic health of New Haven and the state.
Reducing the strength of Yale Engineering will not just weaken Yale
intellectually, it will also lessen the role we can play to create local
industries that rely on Yale inventions. This problem calls for much more
creative thinking than the Committee was charged with; a new joint
faculty-alumni advisory committee could play this role. In the interim Yale
should ignore the recommendations of the Committee to Restructure.
If restructuring the FAS is not a tenable basis for attacking the budget
problem, what should we do? This year's budget deficit ($8.8 million),
while serious, is not a disaster. The problem is in what is projected to
happen. The university's policy document "The Financial Situation of the
University" projects a 9.6% increase in operating expenses next year,
corresponding to increased spending of $46 million, which contributes to a
final projected deficit of $23 million. It is strange policy to anticipate
such large expense increases in a recessionary era with stable commodity
prices. While increased efficiency from teachers, managers, and staff will
help, in the end we are going to have to scale back our collective
expectations about salary and wage increases.
Yale salaries are set annually, and this year the bargaining unit contracts
are up for renewal. Through control of these factors, the Yale Corporation
has the power to bring the rate of growth of our expense budget rapidly
into line with the growth of revenues. If the administration takes
seriously its own, baleful projections, it should use that power. Decisive
action taken across the board for faculty, administration, and staff will,
I believe, be generally accepted. I personally would find an equitable
salary restraint policy more rational and far less demoralizing than the
Committee plan, which cuts faculty strength in many Yale departments below
the level that is critical for their function.
What action should the Faculty of Arts and Sciences take? The Committee to
Restructure was charged with a flawed mission. Curing Yale's budget deficit
by restructuring the faculty is like trying to lift a bowling ball with a
feather. We should reject the Committee's report, and ask the
administration to produce a comprehensive plan that incorporates total
savings commensurate with our financial prospects. I see no legitimate
reason for using current fiscal conditions to justify a ten percent
reduction in Yale's academic strength in exchange for savings that are tiny
compared to the size of the problem. Following a year of salary restraint,
and with optimism about the end of the recession, we can look forward to a
more rational consideration of legitimate pruning of Yale's academic tree.
--------
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 92 03:37:42 EST
From: pjk@corwin.eng.yale.edu
Subject: Restruct.Comm. Report, Pt.1
To: lethin@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Time:
01:33 AM
OFFICE MEMO Restruct.Comm. Report, Pt.1 Date:
1/18/92
Dear Friends -
The complete report of the Restructuring Committee follows below.
Please let me know if you did not receive it all or if something got
corrupted in transmission. I wouldn't want anything to impair the stately
language of the report. (I also apologize for any errors which my OCR
scanning introduced and which I did not spot. On that score I did check
rather carefully.)
I regret exposing you to this dense ASCII barrage, but I wanted you to have
the full flavor of the report, rather than just the engineering
recommendations out of context. You will note that the recommended cuts in
engineering and applied science average 24%, whereas in the departments
represented by the Restructuring Committee members they average 6%. For the
Faculty of the Arts and Sciences as a whole, the cuts average 14%. The
choice of representation on the committee was Provost Turner's.
There is a flurry of faculty meetings now following the release of the
report, and I'll have updates for you over the next week. Turner has
invited faculty comment by Feb. 17th, in preparation of the Committee's
formal recommendation, to be presented to the Yale Corporation at its
meeting at the end of February 1992.
We will of course do everything we can to convince the Corporation that
these reductions and the merging of the engineering departments cannot but
mean the demise of engineering in the end. We feel that the Committee
proceedings show bias and a disastrous failure of leadership by Turner and
Schmidt in addressing the technological imperatives of a major university.
The Corporation will not want to be drawn into micro-managing the academic
administrative process, but may respond to a believable charge of lack of
leadership.
Your support has been deeply appreciated in the past. As we go into this
last round, I hope we can impose on you for a bit more letter writing.
Target the Corporation (with a pro forma copy to Schmidt or Turner) and any
other individuals or organizations you can think of whom the Corporation
would regard as a respected source of perspective.
A great deal of damage has already been done to engineering at Yale, a
sense of insecurity by funding agencies and the destruction of the
motivation of junior faculty. Add to that the proposed restructuring, and
not only will anybody who can find another position leave, but I do not see
how we can seriously expect to attract new faculty.
Thanks again for your past support and interest.
Peter
-----------------------------------------------------------------
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESTRUCTURING
THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
January 15, 1992
Over the past two years, the President and Provost have discussed with the
faculty and described to the Yale community the serious financial problem
facing the University. Recent slowing in the rates of growth of the
University's major revenue streams has not been accompanied by a similar
slowing in the growth of the University's expense base. The problem is
compounded by Yale's need to attend to its deteriorating physical plant and
the impact that this effort has begun to have on the operating budget. The
recently issued statement entitled "The Financial Situation at Yale"
describes this situation in detail and need not be repeated here.
In the spring of 1991 the Provost and Vice-President for Finance and
Administration asked most departments and units to reduce their 1991-92
budgets for staff and other expenses by specified amounts. The reduction
of about $8 million in the University's expense budget that resulted was
not enough, however, to prevent an $8.8 million projected deficit for
1991-92. Without substantial corrective action, the deficit will grow
significantly in future years. The officers and the Corporation have
determined that this financial problem can be solved only by reducing the
scale of Yale's programs to a level that can be sustained by the resources
expected to be available in the future. The University must accept deficits
in the operating budget for several years so that the necessary reductions
can be made in an orderly and constructive way.
In February 1991, as part of a process to achieve long-term reductions in
the operating expenses of the University, President Schmidt and Provost
Turner asked 12 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to serve on a
committee to recommend reductions in the size of that faculty and in the
scope of its academic programs. The committee is called the Committee on
Restructuring the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and its members are:
Richard H. Brodhead, Chair of the English Department; Donald Engelman,
Chair of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Gerald Jaynes, Professor of
Economics and Chair of the African and African-American Studies Program;
Alvin K. Klevorick, Professor of Law and Economics and Director of the
Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics; Richard Levin., Chair of
Economics; Peter B. Moore, Professor of Chemistry; Jules D. Prown, Chair of
History of Art; Alison F. Richard, Professor of Anthropology and Director
of the Peabody Museum; Judith Rodin, then Chair of Psychology and
subsequently Dean of the Graduate School; Robert B. Stepto, Professor of
African and African-American Studies, American Studies, and English, and
subsequently Acting Chair of the American Studies Program; Henry A. Turner
(spring 1991 only), Professor of History and then Master of Davenport
College; and Michael E. Zeller, Chair of Physics. Also on the Committee, ex
officio. were Donald Kagan, Dean of Yale College, and Jerome J. Pollitt
(spring 1991 only), then Dean of the Graduate School. The Committee was
chaired by Provost Frank M. Turner and staffed by Deputy Provost Charles H.
Long.
Charge to the Committee
The Restructuring Committee was charged with developing a plan for reducing
the size of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The President and Provost
asked the Committee first to identify reductions and recombinations of
academic activities that might be made for sound academic reasons without
regard to financial pressures. They asked the Committee next to indicate
where further reductions might be made with least risk to the strength and
flexibility of the faculty as a whole. Finally, they asked the Committee to
consider all departments, programs, areas, subfields, and centers, and then
to establish priorities, rather than recommend proportional,
across-the-board reductions. The process was to be one of restructuring,
not just reducing, and it was expected that it would result in the
consolidation of some departments and programs and the elimination of
others. The Committee was asked to forward its recommendations to the
Executive Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (consisting of the
President, the Provost, the Dean of Yale College, and the Dean of the
Graduate School). The Executive Committee will solicit comments from the
members of the Yale College Faculty and consult with the Restructuring
Committee before making formal recommendations to the Yale Corporation at
its meeting at the end of February 1992.
Important principles that guided the Committee's considerations include the
following:
(1) to focus Yale's resources on its most important academic activities;
(2) to maintain existing areas of strength whenever possible;
(3) to preserve activities that are fundamental to Yale's mission,
regardless of their current strength; and
(4) to set aside some resources so that the University can continue to
respond to emerging academic needs.
The Work of the Committee
The Committee began meeting weekly in mid-February 1991 and continued
through mid-June, meeting more than once a week after classes ended. In
September the Committee began again, maintaining a schedule of two meetings
a week and numerous subcommittee meetings. Several times the Committee met
with President Schmidt and Vice-President Finnerty to review the financial
situation of the University and its effect on the resources available to
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In addition, Deputy Provost Long prepared
documents and tables that included statistical profiles of departments
generated annually by the Office of Institutional Research, financial
analyses and budget projections produced by the Office of Financial
Operations, and analyses of the distribution and growth of faculty
positions made by the Provost's Office.
The Committee asked the divisional advisory committees to report on the
relative strengths of each of the departments under their purview,
including their professional standing in their disciplines, the areas in
which they have achieved or might expect to achieve distinction, and their
success in attracting graduate students and faculty. The Committee asked
each divisional advisory committee to consider what reductions might be
made in the light of academic priorities, and to suggest more effective
ways to configure the departments and programs in its division. Questions
directed to the advisory committees included:
(1) Which departments are strong and which could be strengthened by the
addition of modest resources?
(2) Are the current relative sizes of departments appropriate for the
future?
(3) Could higher academic quality or greater efficiency be achieved by
combining some departments or programs?
(4) Are there departments or centers that could appropriately be
significantly reduced or even eliminated?
(5) Are there subject areas or kinds of instruction in which resources
should be reduced?
During the spring of 1991 the Committee met with the University Librarian
to gain an understanding of how Yale's library resources correspond to the
sizes and fields of departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and how
different kinds of reductions in that faculty might affect library costs.
The Committee also reviewed the size and cost of the Graduate School,
particularly the structure, net expense, and growth of its financial
support program: tuition income, stipends, teaching fellowships, and
dissertation fellowships. It discussed the factors that influence the
number and quality of incoming graduate students, and how these might be
affected by reductions in the size of the faculty.
The Committee reviewed a number of instructional programs that have become
heavily dependent upon non-ladder faculty -- e.g., courses in foreign
languages and expository writing -- to determine whether these areas
present opportunities for reductions. The Committee considered
interdisciplinary programs and how better to monitor, evaluate, improve
and, when appropriate, reduce or eliminate them. It examined enrollment
data, class size, and teaching loads to consider whether faculty resources
could be more efficiently deploys Finally, the Committee looked closely at
the income that flows from indirect overhead cost recovery and the effect
that reductions in certain departments might have on the University's
budget
In May the Committee met with the directors of the divisional advisory
committees, who by then had had an opportunity to review the departments in
their divisions and to meet with the chairs of some of those departments.
Some committees had recently participated in external reviews of certain
departments. In the course of discussions concerning all of the departments
in the division, each advisory committee identified departments or programs
about which it had special concern.
Based on these reports, on further conversations with the divisional
directors, and on other materials such as summaries of the findings of
external departmental reviews, the Committee identified a number of
departments and programs that seemed to warrant further study. Among these
in the social sciences were Sociology, Statistics, and the Institution for
Social and Policy Studies; in the sciences, Operations Research and the
departments composing the Engineering Council; and in the humanities,
Linguistics ad Philosophy. In addition, the Committee considered a number
of departments where administrative consolidation might be beneficial and
others that seem to be attempting to cover so many subfields that internal
consolidation might be appropriate.
During June the Committee discussed, with increasing intensity and level of
detail, the departments and programs in which significant restructuring
might be justified. It also considered the effect that major changes in
these areas would have on the research and teaching missions of other
departments. At this time the Committee had the benefit of further written
communications from the divisional advisory committees. To look more
carefully at the departments of each division and to explore various models
of reductions, the Committee divided into subcommittees, which met
independently and brought their findings to the whole Committee.
Scale of Reductions
The Committee looked closely at the size and composition of the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences and reviewed the changes that have taken place in the
distribution of faculty since the last time a reduction of positions was
undertaken. That reduction began in the late 1970's, when in the face of
recurring deficits it was decided to remove 7.5% of the ladder faculty
positions allocated to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The specific
reductions were recommended by an Academic Review Committee, composed of
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Executive Committee and the directors of
the four divisions. Between 1979 and 1982 many of those reductions took
place, but before they were all accomplished the University relaxed the
schedule for reductions. In the changed economic climate of the mid- 1980's
new positions were added, with the result that the ladder faculty of Arts
and Sciences is currently not 7.5% smaller, but somewhat larger than it was
in 1979-80.
The growth in ladder faculty since 1979-80 did not take place evenly over
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Division of Physical Sciences grew
more than the other divisions; the Division of Humanities shrank slightly.
The growth that did take place can largely be attributed to initiatives in
several departments and areas of study -- African and African-American
Studies, Comparative Literature, Computer Science, Engineering, foreign
language instruction, Judaic Studies, and Women's Studies -- and the
transfer of Operations Research from the School of Organization and
Management to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The Committee looked carefully at the financial savings that might be
anticipated from various kinds of reductions. Two important facts emerged
from this examination. First, the elimination of a department would result
in more savings than would the elimination of the same number of positions
across many departments, since the former would result in far greater
savings in staff, graduate student support, equipment, space, and other
overhead costs. Second, because faculty in some departments conduct
significant amounts of sponsored research and thus generate income for the
University, reductions in some areas might result in significantly less
savings than would reductions in others. But with the possible exception of
Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry -- a department shared with the
School of Medicine -- even in departments that generate significant
overhead revenue, faculty reductions result in long-term measurable savings
for the University.
Although the Committee could not ignore the financial implications of its
choices, it could not recommend closing whole departments for reasons of
cost alone or eliminating only those positions that would yield the most
savings. Factors other than cost always dominated the Committee's
consideration. These include departmental quality, the need at Yale for
certain areas of study, the desirable balance among departments and
divisions, research interactions among departments, and the requirements of
the undergraduate and graduate teaching programs.
As the University's financial situation became clearer, Provost Turner
asked the Committee to develop a plan that would lead to a reduction of 15%
in the number of ladder faculty positions. Ladder faculty constitute the
basis of a department's size and therefore the resources it requires in
salary, benefits, support staff, equipment, space, and other overhead
costs. The Committee agreed to use as its common measure of ladder faculty
the number of budgeted junior equivalents -- a measure that counts one
tenured position as equal to two nontenured ones. This equivalence is
roughly accurate with respect to compensation, and has for seven decades
been an accepted way for departments to change the ratio of tenured to
nontenured faculty within a given level of resources. Using this measure,
it is possible to track changes in the resources allocated to Yale's
departments over a considerable period of time. There are now 1067 approved
junior faculty equivalent positions in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
budget, comprising 367 tenured and 295 nontenured positions in individual
departments and 38 junior equivalents outside of departments, most of them
unfilled positions in divisional pools. A reduction of 15% would require
the elimination of 160 of the 1067 junior faculty equivalents.
Review of the Financial and Capital Plans
In the fall of 1991 the Provost informed the Committee that over the summer
he and Vice-President Finnerty had initiated planning, comparable to that
being undertaken by the Restructuring Committee, for significant reductions
in the professional schools and administrative units. The deans and
directors are still developing these plans, but it is already apparent that
the reductions required will cause significant changes in the scope of many
of the University's activities. As a result of the reductions in
administrative units, the University community will lose a number of the
services these units currently provide.
The Committee reviewed the financial situation of the University and in
particular the plans for capital expenditures. The Committee read an early
draft of the "Financial Statement of the University" and met with
Vice-President Finnerty ad Associate Vice-President Janet Ackerman to
discuss the latest budget projections, the scope of the facilities
renovation program; and planning for eliminating the projected deficit. The
Committee then met with former Provost William Nordhaus, who shared his
perspective on the budget projections and the current facilities prod
In addition, the Committee met several times with President Schmidt, who
discussed the budget and the University's plans for a capital campaign. He
also indicated that the University Buildings and Grounds Committee has been
reconstituted and given increased responsibility, including authority to
establish priorities for projects to be included in the capital budget, to
determine that the levels of renovations proposed are appropriate, and to
ensure that the work is carried out at reasonable cost.
Discussions with Specific Departments
Throughout their deliberations, members of the Committee read and discussed
a considerable amount of material from various sources, including faculty
and students who elected to write to the committee directly about specific
departments or about restructuring generally. They also read a number of
statements about departments, programs, and centers from individual faculty
members and chairs with respect to those departments that had been
identified as areas of concern. They reviewed reports on departments or
centers submitted by outside Q ~ advisory committees id sees of reports
from committees of the University Council. At appropriate points members of
the Committee informally sought information from members of the Yale
faculty. Many members of the faculty also initiated conversations with
members of the Committee about issues raised by the restructuring process.
The Provost also met with a large number of Yale faculty, both individually
and in groups, and he and the Dean of the Graduate School reported on
consultations they had made at Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, and
Stanford.
At the end of September the Provost sent letters to the chairs of
departments and programs that seemed to warrant further discussion,
inviting them to speak with the Committee. The Committee then met with the
chair and in most cases also with several faculty members of each of the
following units: Linguistics, Operations Research, Sociology, Statistics,
the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, all four departments of
Engineering, and the Council of Engineering. During these meetings, the
chairs described their departments, answered questions posed by members of
the Committee, and discussed various options for the future.
Following these discussions the Committee began working on two fronts.
First, it discussed each of these departments in more detail id attempted
to reach consensus as to the most appropriate action to take. Second, it
discussed all other departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to
develop models for achieving a total reduction of up to 15%. During this
process, discussions were led by the divisionally organized subcommittees,
which suggested alternative ways of achieving reductions and informed the
Committee about the merits and risks of each. Each subcommittee also met
with the appropriate divisional director, and in some cases with the entire
advisory committee, to share views and discuss alternatives.
After due consideration the Committee came to the view that a reduction of
15% would seriously jeopardize the capacity of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences to accomplish its academic mission. Following the subcommittees'
detailed presentations of the departments, division by division, the
Committee reached consensus that reductions beyond the level of 10 to 12%
would make it difficult for many departments to retain their academic
quality or meet their teaching obligations.
After reviewing the likely impact of a 15% reduction, the President and
Provost accepted the Committee's judgment that reductions of this magnitude
should not be attempts As a result, they reduced the target to 10-12%. They
indicated, however, that smaller reductions in the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences necessarily shifted the burden to other areas of the University
and increased the risk that additional actions within the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences may become necessary in the future.
With this lower target in mind, the Committee continued its deliberations,
reaching consensus on two sets of recommendations: first regarding those
departments to be eliminated, significantly reduced, or consolidated, and
second for reductions that might be made in other departments. These
recommendations follow.
Recommendations for Specific Departments
LINGUISTICS. From background materials and discussion, the Committee was
made aware of the illustrious history of the study of linguistics at Yale,
which predates the formation of the department in 1963. The Yale
Linguistics Department was founded on traditional strengths in historical
linguistics. Since the late 1960's, however, when the discipline itself
underwent significant change in its approaches to theoretical and
structural linguistics, the Yale department has had difficulty offering a
balanced program and attracting students.
The Committee noted the connections between Linguistics and other
departments and programs that teach in the area of linguistics or have
overlapping interests in that field. These include African and
African-American Studies, Anthropology, Computer Science, English,
Philosophy, Psychology, the Haskins Laboratory, and departments of
nonwestern languages. It discussed whether Linguistics might become part of
the Division of Social Sciences or an interdisciplinary program. The
Committee recognized the intrinsic importance of the study of human
language, but it reached consensus that the existing departmental structure
is not the most effective way to pursue this study at Yale. ~ Committee
recommends that the Department of Linguistics be discontinued. It further
recommends that in allocating faculty resources. both the Humanities and
Social Science Divisional Committees be directed to support the study of
linguistics within the context of other departments.
OPERATIONS RESEARCH. The small size and low enrollments of this department
made it a concern of the Committee. Operations Research currently consists
of three tenured and two nontenured faculty members, and five unfilled
positions. Two of the three tenured faculty members have primary
appointments in other departments. All three share research interests in
the areas of mathematical pro g and the application of optimization methods
ad game theory to problems of resource allocation. Their activities link
them to faculty in the School of Organization and Management and in the
departments of Computer Science, Economics, and Mathematics.
It appears to the Committee that the continuing research interests,
collaborations, and teaching of the Operations Research faculty can be
accomplished successfully without the current departmental structure. The
Committee recommends that the Department of Operations Research be
discontinued.
THE INSTITUTION FOR SOCIAL AND POLICY STUDIES. In its years at Yale ISPS
has taken several forms. It currently serves as a resource and meeting
ground for interdisciplinary research by faculty from several professional
schools and departments in all divisions, primarily in the social sciences.
The Restructuring Committee reached the view that despite some excellent
programs, for some time the research and other activities generated by ISPS
have not been commensurate with the resources devoted to the institution.
The Committee recommends that the Institution for Social and Policy Studies
be discontinued. but that some of its resources be retained to foster
research in the social sciences. It further recommends that a committee be
appointed to consider the most effective way to achieve this goal.
ENGINEERING. Engineering poses a particularly complex set of issues for the
University. For over a century Yale has offered an undergraduate program in
engineering that has had notable success in training leaders in the area of
technology. For some time, however, the University has had difficulty
determining what the size and structure of this activity should be. Yale
engineering began in 1852 as a separate school and two years later joined
the School of Applied Chemistry as the Yale Scientific School, later
renamed the Sheffield Scientific School. In 1932 engineering again became a
separate professional school, but in 1962 was moved to the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences as a single department of Engineering and Applied Sciences
consisting of several sections. That department was later divided into the
existing departments of Applied Physics, Chemical Engineering, Electrical
Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, whose activities are coordinated
by the Council of Engineering.
Since Yale's engineering faculty has traditionally been much smaller than
that of major engineering schools, it has been difficult to create programs
with sufficient breadth to attract many undergraduates to study
engineering. Each of the departments contains areas of impressive strength,
but size limitations seem to have prevented the Yale engineering program
from making a major national impact. The collective view of the chairs of
the engineering departments, conveyed in a comprehensive presentation and a
number of supplementary reports to the Committee, is that departments of
Chemical, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering are all required to
maintain a viable engineering program at Yale. The chairs also believe that
engineering as a whole cannot and should not be expected to reach national
prominence unless it is allowed to grow substantially.
In effect, the Committee seemed to be faced with three options: (1) expand
the existing departments so that they can compete more effectively, (2)
maintain the status quo, or (3) terminate engineering entirely. After
considerable deliberation the Committee reached consensus on several
points. First, given current financial constraints, significant expansion
is not possible for engineering -- or for any department in the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences. Second, the Committee cannot justify exempting
engineering from the reductions that must be imposed on other departments,
especially since the per capita cost of engineering is high relative to
other science departments and the teaching burden is low relative to all
departments. Yet the number of faculty in the existing departments is
already so small that the departments regularly face curricular and
administrative difficulties, and even modest reductions would exacerbate
these problems. Third, it is essential for Yale to retain a strong presence
in technology and applied science, and this cannot be achieved without an
engineering prod
For these reasons the Committee proposes a fourth course of action. The
Committee recommends that the three existing engineering departments be
reduced by 12 junior faculty equivalent positions and consolidated into a
single Department of Engineering. It further recommends the establishment
of an ad hoc advisory committee for the period of restructuring to assist
this consolidation. The merged department would be one of the larger in the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It should not be limited by difficulties due
to its size, since it will be able to draw resources from a larger pool.
This consolidation will require extensive discussion and planning,
including consultation with outside experts. The members of the department
and the ad hoc advisory committee should pursue such issues as whether the
three existing engineering areas should continue as distinct subgroups of
the new department and whether its undergraduate programs should maintain
or seek accreditation. The primary tasks that the University faces in this
transitional period are: (1) to find effective leadership for the new
department, (2) to design a process to ensure faculty appointments of the
highest quality, and (3) to develop a strong undergraduate program that
attracts engineering students to Yale and Yale students to engineering.
The Committee further recommends that five junior faculty equivalent
positions from the pool of the Division of Physical Sciences be reserved by
the Executive Committee for enhancing excellence in Engineering. These are
to be used to make strong appointments that support the directions taken by
the reconfigured department after the restructuring of engineering has been
successfully completed.
Applied Physics. The major thrust of research in Applied Physics is in the
area of condensed matter physics. Recently Applied Physics and Physics have
jointly created a condensed matter theory group, but the need for
additional strength on the experimental side is recognized by both
departments and has been commented on by past external review committees.
Because the two departments share the common discipline of physics, and
because the Committee has concerns about the relative cost and teaching
load in Applied Physics, the Committee recommends that Physics and Applied
Physics be merged into a single Department of Physics. It further
recommends that 8 junior faculty equivalent positions be removed from the
joint department --5 from Applied Physics and 3 from Physics. The
department that results will have a broader research base and a size large
enough to strengthen the national position of Yale physics. Those members
of the current Applied Physics Department who wish to join the new
Department of Engineering should be welcome to do so. The Committee
understands that this merger may take several years to achieve. An advisory
committee composed primarily of faculty drawn from the two departments
should be appointed to assist in the transition.
Sociology. The Committee's primary concern about this department is that
its research and teaching programs are not concentrated sufficiently on the
core of its discipline. Many of its faculty members have strong connections
to other departments and programs, and although these connections have
benefitted the University generally, they appear to have diffused the focus
of the department. The expected retirement of a large segment of the
department's senior faculty raises questions about Sociology's future
direction.
After considerable study and discussion, the Committee was persuaded,
because of the importance of the discipline ad its interactions with other
social sciences, that the Sociology Department should continue at Yale, and
that it should seek a renewed focus. Given the number of current openings
and pending retirements, it appears that if new faculty are chosen
carefully, this goal can be accomplished with a faculty smaller than the
present one. The Committee therefore recommends: (1) that the Department of
Sociology be reduced in size by 11 junior faculty equivalent positions; (2)
that the department build a strong base in the theory and methods of
sociology, as well as in two or three core fields of specialization; (3)
that special attention be given to assuring strong leadership for the
department and (4) that an advisory committee be appoints consisting of
faculty from inside and outside the University, to advise the Provost on
the direction and composition of the department. During the initial years
of the rebuilding process, it may be necessary for Sociology to be chaired
by a member of the Yale faculty whose primary appointment is outside the
department.
Philosophy. The Committee accepted the view of the Divisional Advisory
Committee that, given the University's strength in the humanities, Yale
needs a strong Philosophy Department. Recognizing that efforts are already
underway to rebuild the department by recruiting senior faculty, the
Committee agreed that it would be inappropriate to recommend significant
restructuring at this time.
Statistics. The Statistics Department drew the attention of the Committee
because of its small size and low undergraduate enrollments. Despite its
size, the Statistics Department has enjoyed an excellent national
reputation for many years, and it represents a field important to the
social and natural sciences at Yale. Recently, however, the Statistics
faculty has diminished in size to only two tenured and two nontenured
members, calling into question the department's long-term viability. The
Committee discussed this situation as well as the department's current and
potential contributions to the teaching program of the University. The
Committee recommends that Statistics be retained at its current size and be
given the opportunity over the next three years to fill its open senior
position. At the end of that period, should efforts to fill the position
prove unsuccessful, a review of the department and the teaching of
statistics at Yale would be appropriate.
Reductions in Other Departments
The Committee's recommendations for the departments undergoing significant
restructuring would remove 49 junior equivalent positions from the faculty.
After further conversations between the subcommittees and the chairs of the
divisional advisory committees, the Restructuring Committee developed
specific recommendations for each of the remaining departments. These
recommendations resulted in 65 further reductions for a total of 114, or
10.7 % of the 1067 junior faculty equivalent positions currently budgeted
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Although divisional parity was not a
goal, the combined recommendations do not alter the current relative sizes
of the divisions significantly. A list of all departments follows, with
their current sizes and the number of junior faculty equivalent reductions
recommended:
Departments Current JFE JFE Reductions
PHYSICAL SCIENCES
Applied Physics 20 5
Astronomy 12.5 0
Chemistry 42 3
Computer Science 25 3
Engineering 53 12
Geology and Geophysics 34 3
Mathematics 44.5 3
Operations Research 11 11
Physics 50 3
Other Positions 14.5 0
Total 306.5 43
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Biology 55.5 3
MB&B 36 0
Other Positions 3 0
Total 94.5 3
SOCIAL SCIENCIES
Anthropology 27.5 1
Economics 68.5 7
Political Science 42.5 3
Psychology 46 2
Sociology 27.5 11
Statistics 9 0
Other Positions 9 0
Total 230 24
HUMANITIES
African & Afro-American
Studies 12.5 1.5
African Studies 12 (+1)
Classics 23 2
Comparative Literature 16.2 1
East Asian Langs.& Lits. 10 1
English 71.8 5
French 24.5 3
German 16.5 2.5
History 71 5
History of Art 34 2
Italian 6 0
Linguistics 10 10
Music 23 3
Near Eastern Langs.
and Civs. 13 1
Philosophy 26 4
Religious Studies 25.7 2
Slavic Langs. and Lits. 14 1
Spanish and Portuguese 17 1
Other Positions 10 0
Total 436.2 44
Total Faculty of Arts and Sciences
1067.2 114
Implementation
Implementation of these recommendations will take time and thoughtful
planning. Since reductions will be accomplished only by attrition
(retirements, resignations, and expiration of term appointments) and since
after 1993 the timing of retirements cannot be predicted, the full
restructuring process may not be completed until after the end of the
decade. Throughout the process the divisional advisory committees, in
conjunction with the Steering Committee of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, must monitor the balance of positions among departments and make
adjustments as educational changes require.
With respect to departments scheduled for elimination, all tenure
appointments and all current terms of appointment for nontenured faculty
will be honored. For these departments and for those recommended for major
restructuring, the Executive Committee, the divisional advisory committees,
and special advisory committees, consulting closely with the departments
concerned, will determine the time frame for closing designated
departments, reassigning faculty as necessary, and scheduling other
reductions. After consultation with the departments, the Executive
Committee of the Graduate School will discuss and take whatever steps seem
appropriate with respect to current and potential graduate students.
In departments not scheduled for elimination or major restructuring,
detailed implementation of the Committee's recommendations will be carried
out by the departments themselves in consultation with the divisional
advisory committees and the Steering Committee of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences. All reductions will take place by attrition over the rest of the
decade, but largely in the next 3 to 5 years.
In departments not scheduled to close, assistant professors will continue
to have the same opportunity for reappointment and promotion to term
associate professor as they had before restructuring. Nontenured faculty
in these departments will continue to be considered for tenure positions
according to existing policies of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Opportunities for promotion to tenure will depend, as always, on the
qualification of the candidate, the availability of resources, and the
department's demonstration of the need for a tenure appointment in the
relevant field. To keep nontenured faculty apprised of their prospects for
tenure, all departments, and particularly those scheduled for significant
restructuring, should keep faculty as fully informed as possible about
their academic plans and the fields in which tenure appointments might be
made in the future.
Under a policy adopted in the fall of 1989, when a senior faculty member
retires or resigns, one junior faculty equivalent position is retained by
the department and one is transferred to the appropriate divisional pool.
The Restructuring Committee reaffirms the value of this policy and urges
that the practice be continued, while recognizing that the pressure on
departments undergoing reductions may temporarily reduce the number of
positions that will accrue to divisional pools. During the period of
restructuring the divisional advisory committees will play an especially
important role, for rigorous attention to the divisional pools and a very
careful allocation process will be required to maintain the flexibility and
vitality of the appointments process. The divisional pools embody the
resources available for responding to educational initiatives and special
opportunities. An important reason to protect them is to ensure the
continued opportunity to promote outstanding candidates to tenure
positions.
Additional Recommendations
In the course of its deliberations, the Committee identified three
areas of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences that warrant further study.
1. The Graduate School. Over the past decade there has been considerable
growth in graduate enrollment because of larger classes of incoming
students and an increasing length of time to the Ph.D. For example, from
1979-80 to 1990-91 the number of Ph.D. students in the first and second
years increased from 681 to 824 (or 21%). The number of Ph.D.s awarded
annually has grown only half that much. Given the significant increases in
stipends, teaching fellow compensation, and new dissertation fellowships
over the period, expenditures in the Graduate School have grown rapidly
relative to other parts of the University's budget. Steps have recently
been put in place to reduce enrollment in the later years, but it is
important to monitor the situation carefully and to set reasonable
departmental targets for the future.
For many reasons, and in particular because the number of faculty will be
reduced over time by more than 10%, the Committee recommends that the
enrollment and financial structure of the Graduate School be reviewed and
that the number of incoming graduate students be reduced. The Restructuring
Committee believes that there are now more graduate students in certain
fields at Yale than faculty can effectively supervise, and that this
problem is likely to become more acute as the number of faculty declines.
Given the complexities of the budget, differences among departments, and
the length of time a graduate student may be enrolled, it may be
appropriate to appoint a special committee reporting to the Dean of the
Graduate School to assist in this review.
2. Language and Other Non-Ladder Instruction in Yale College. The use of
non ladder faculty, including graduate students, to teach certain courses,
particularly foreign languages and expository writing, increased
significantly over the past decade. Without presuming to determine the
appropriate level of such teaching, the Committee recommends that a
committee be appointed to examine this area with respect to the quality and
efficiency of non-ladder teaching and to determine whether all of the
courses so taught have a sufficiently high priority to justify the
expenditure and the heavy use of this faculty. Given student demand and the
faculty's expressed commitment to languages and expository writing, it is
unlikely that there will be large savings in this area, but it would be
inappropriate to overlook this extensive area of instruction.
3. Interdisciplinary Programs and Special Majors. The Committee recognizes
the importance at Yale of graduate and undergraduate interdisciplinary
programs, the difficulty those programs often have in securing the faculty
and support necessary for their continuing quality, and the lack of an
adequate process for monitoring these programs, particularly when they
cross divisional boundaries. The Committee therefore recommends the
institution of a standing Committee on interdisciplinary Programs and
Special Majors to work in conjunction with the divisional advisory
committees and to report on a regular basis to the Steering Committee of
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. This committee would monitor all programs
informally every year and formally every five years to confirm the quality
and vitality of those programs and to ensure that the resources devoted to
them are clearly identified and effectively use This committee would also
be charged with recommending the creation or elimination of such programs.
As its first assignment, for the purposes of restructuring, over the next
two years the new committee should review all special programs in light of
the available resources. By the spring term of 1993-94 the committee should
make its recommendations for consolidation or elimination of programs. This
committee should develop a clear understanding of the number of faculty
positions and the amount of staff and program support -- whether present in
departments or allocated to the individual program -- that are necessary
and available for each program. It should also secure from the divisional
pools some resources that can be shifted from one program to another as
appropriate.
* * *
The recommendations of the Restructuring Committee are made after many
months of consultation, analysis and discussion. Although a reduction of
the size contemplated cannot be made without risk to the quality and
productivity of the faculty, the Committee has attempted to minimize those
risks and to establish a framework that will enable the reductions to be
made over time in a responsible and constructive way. Some positive effects
should follow from this process. Departments and divisional committees
will be able to make academic plans with a clear understanding of the
resources that will be available to them over the next decade. Since the
somewhat smaller Faculty of Arts and Sciences here envisioned will be
sustainable by the resources of the University, the whole educational
enterprise will rest on a firmer footing. These changes should ensure that
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will be able to meet its important
academic goals in the difficult years ahead.
------
Date: 1/18/92 03:16 PM
To: pjk
From: Blake Hannaford
X-Mac-To: pjk
X-Mac-From: Blake Hannaford
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 92 12:10:49 PST
From: blake@uw-isdl.ee.washington.edu (Blake Hannaford)
To: pjk@corwin.eng.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Restruct.Comm. Report, Pt.2
Peter,
Thanks for sending the report - I just read about it in the New York Times.
Their rationale for cutting engineering by 3 times the average (beginning
of file 2) is much a piece of double-speak as anything I have read
recently.
One thing that is not mentioned anywhere is the income from sponsored
programs generated by each department. How does the "per-capita cost of
engineering" at Yale measure up if engineering research grants are included
in the picture?
Another funny aspect is the 5 jfe's reserved for "enhancing excellence".
Why take away 12 and then give 5 back? Who are they trying to get rid of?
(i.e replace).
I think the departments should counter with option 2: maintain the status
quo. Since economic times are hard, the univ is not in a position to make
the major expansion of engineering that is obiously warranted by the
committies own evaluation:
"Third, it is essential for Yale to retain a strong presence in
technology and applied science, and this cannot be achieved without an
engineering prod [program?]"
Since this will probably not fly, the fallback position should be merger
into one department (like the old E&AS days) WITHOUT faculty reductions.
This will still save the university in terms of adminstrative staff and
salary increments for chairs, but keep the program intact (except for
morale).
GOOD LUCK
Blake
------
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 92 18:07:51 EST
From: pjk@corwin.eng.yale.edu
Reply to: RE>Re: Restruct.Comm. Report
Hi Blake -
>One thing that is not mentioned anywhere is the income from sponsored
>programs generated by each department. How does the "per-capita cost
>of engineering" at Yale measure up if engineering research grants are
>included in the picture?
There is a lot of funny arithmetic in the report. Presently the
overhead income to Yale from engineering grant & contract overhead is
about $40-50K/year/faculty member. This is of course a bit variable
as the funding agencies renegotiate overhead rates. Still, that's
likely to be more, even a lot more, than in some other departments
that are hardly touched, and is probably not taken into account, even
though we presented detailed data to the Committee.
Further, the arithmetic on teaching is flawed. True, we don't teach
any large service courses under engineering listings, but EE faculty
have taught, and continue to teach, large introdroductory math
courses. But right now, when Peter Schultheiss teaches such a service
math course, listed as a Math Dept. offering, that counts towards the
Math Dept's teaching credits, not ours.
>Another funny aspect is the 5 jfe's reserved for "enhancing excellence".
>Why take away 12 and then give 5 back? Who are they trying to get
>rid of? (i.e replace).
I think this is just smoke, intended to make their cutting look more
constructive. This statement is coupled to the one about the ad hoc
oversight committee, intended to make sure that somebody does
something about our low standards. It is rumored that the oversight
committee would be chaired by one of the physicists or chemists who
are on the Restructuring Committee. At any rate, it is not clear that
those 5 slots would ever materialize, any more than the "Schmidt
initiative" which was to make 10 JFEs available and was later
retracted.
The departments don't have a choice. Option 2 was one of the choices
the Committee says it considred, but that's history. Their stated
recommendation is the reduction/consolidation of Engineering and the
merger of Applied Physics into Physics. We will do our best to
- induce the Committee to modify their report before its final
version becomes the recommendation to the Corporation. Turner invites
comments from the faculty, but we know he hasn't listened in the
past.
- educate the Corporation about the implications for engineering of
the Committee recommendations. I'm not sure whether we can make them
realize how unconscionably myopic that outlook is. The issue probably
falls somewhere between their unwillingness to micro-manage
university affairs, and their perception of themselves as guardians
of the institution.
I'll send out some Corporation addresses asap for those who are able
to take the time to write. We have to dig them out ourselves. The
Secretary's office won't give them to us.
We have written to Bromley (Werner Wolf did). I don't think our
letter was ever answered. Maybe Bromley might feel more impelled to
take an interest, given the now higher profile of restructuring after
the NY Times article.
Peter
Yale Administration
Donald Kagan
Yale College Dean
1604A Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-7430}
Frank M. Turner
Provost, Yale University
117 Hall of Graduate Studies
Box 1504A Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut 06520
Benno Schmidt
President, Yale University
Box 1302A Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut 06520
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yale Corporation Members
Lowell Weicker, ex officio
Lieutenant Governor, ex officio
Sid Richardson Bass
David Lyle Boren
Diana Dwyer Brooks
Jose Albert Cabranes
William Henry Draper III
Richard James Franke
Joseph Grafton Gall
William Lee Kissick
Linda Koch Lorimer
Vernon Reece Loucks, Jr.
Robert Wood Lynn
Ellen Ash Peters
Frederick Phineas Rose
Henry Brewer Schacht
Kurt Lidell Schmoke
Calvin Marshall Trillin
From: pjk@corwin.eng.yale.edu
Subject: Time:
03:23 AM
OFFICE MEMO Restructuring Issues Date:
1/22/92
Dear Friends -
Let me add some comments to Richard Lethin's summary in his message "Yale
Admin, Corp. Trustee Addresses, letters."
Last fall all indications were that engineering would be terminated.
Although it was never stated publicly by the administration, the signals
were as strong as any could be. E.g. Turner opened a meeting with the
engineering faculty by comments about early retirement options. The charge
was made that engineering was "academically weak."
We were very fortunate to have so many supporters both within Yale and
outside. Faculty from many other departments spoke up in our at the Yale
College faculty meetings. Letters like Ed Lee's were eloquent testmony. I'm
not sure how hard the administration listened, but such support was
wonderful for our morale. At least though, the level of support seemed to
surprise the administration.
In mid-November the chairmen of the engineering and applied science
departments met with Joe Gall and Henry Schacht of the Corporation, who had
been delegated to meet with them. They heard our views about (1) the
restructuring process, (2) importance of engineering and applied science in
Yale's mission (consistent with Benno's statement), (3) the origin of the
myth and hearsay that 'Yale Engineering is academically weak', (4) the
facts which support the claim that Yale Engineering and Applied Science is
very strong on a per-capita basis, and we are doing very very well in what
we choose to do, (5) the rumors of cutting engineering or the elimination
of its present form have already made significant impact negatively within
Yale and externally, (6) what Turner proposed to do will in effect remove
engineering and technology representation from Yale, and (7) the review
process that took place during 79-80 period was the right approach,
resulting in our current three departments structure, and the vector has
been in the positive direction and the momentum has been building up
rapidly, especially since Benno Schmidt made such strong supportive
statements on a number of occasions since 1987.
Both Mr. Schacht and Mr. Gall were very attentive; they both took extensive
notes, and were apparently very interested in what the chairmen had to say.
They said they would report those views to the other members. We suspect
that very little about the restructuring process had been communicated to
them by the Provost, and that they were quite surprised by some of the
things they were told.
My colleagues and I feel strongly that our contact with the Corporation had
a beneficial effect. The Restructuring Committee report would have made
much bleaker reading otherwise.
The Committee now proposes cuts to engineeing and applied science faculty
that are much deeper than those for other departments, followed by merging
engineering into one department and applied physics into physics. The
Restructuring Committee may believe itself to have responded to the calls
against abolishing engineering. They seem to feel they are preserving
engineering, albeit with an ad hoc oversight committee.
The main challenge before us now is to convince the Corporation that this
restructuring as proposed amounts to the blunt side of the axe head, rather
than the sharp side. The effect is slower, but ultimately just as lethal.
- As a single department of severely reduced size, engineering will
not be able to attract good faculty, junior and senior.
- With 12 JFE removed it is unlikely that we could mount ABET
accreditable tracks in EE, ME and Ch.E. with our remaining teaching
resources. Without ABET accreditation (which we presently have in all
engineering departments) we slide that much further into oblivion.
- We fail to understand the Committee's reasoning in recommending
merging, because its consequences go counter to all its three
espoused objectives: (1) to find effective leadership for the new
department, (2) to design a process to ensure faculty appointments of
the highest quality, and (3) to develop a strong undergraduate
program that attracts engineering students to Yale and Yale students
to engineering.
Merger will also not alleviate the high costs relative to other
departments in Division IV, often claimed in conversation with
restructuring committee members. We already have a common business
office and other shared administrative functions. Savings in that
area would be minor.
- For applied physics merging will mean its weakening and
disappearance as a discipline. Merging is recommended "because the
two departments share the common discipline of physics." What about
the common discipline with Engineering, which is equally important?
In fact, there are far more scientific interactions and sharing of
research facilities with Engineering than with Physics.
In communicating concern to the Corporation at this juncture,
there is still benefit in affirming the national need for engineering
and its permanent role in our lives. It is a great irony that Yale
sees so little use for engineering at a time when it could offer it a
uniquely advantageous liberal arts setting.
But the more technical issue to be communicated to the Corporation
are the terms of survival of the engineering departments at a
university:
- the need for departmental identity (EE, ME, Ch.E.) to attract
faculty, students and research support,
- the need for enough faculty to sustain viable, ABET accreditable
programs.
We have discussed these matters extensively in recent faculty
meetings. We conclude that if our cuts were at the same level as the
present average for all departments, it would set us back about 10
years, but we could just pull through. But with cuts almost twice
that we slide into extinction.
With your help we hope to make the Corporation understand both the
general issues and these more technical factors, how engineering
below a certain size doesn't even have much of a "shelf life."
Thank you again for your concern and support.
Peter Kindlmann
pjk@corwin.eng.yale.edu
