[Last year the U. of Waterloo restored rec.humor.funny, alt.sex.bondage, and other newsgroups. Here is a rec.humor.funny repost from the Computers and Academic Freedom archives. I'll post a follow up with more information. - Carl] >From: funnyr@looking.on.ca (Funny Guy) >Subject: Waterloo ban on rec.humor.funny finally lifted >Message-ID: <1991Oct03.060346.5082@looking.on.ca> >Date: 3 Oct 91 06:03:46 GMT Those of you familar with the history of this newsgroup will know that in December of 1988, due to the efforts of an MIT grad student named Jonathan Richmond, a ban was placed on possibly offensive jokes in this newsgroup at the University of Waterloo. At the time, this newsgroup went into the net only via that site, and Richmond's goal was to control the content of the group by putting pressure on the University through the daily newspapers. [It didn't work of course. RHF quickly became fed out through a wide variety of other paths, and only Waterloo folk and downstream nodes were affected.] To many people's surprise, the Douglas Wright (President) and J. Alan George (Provost) supported and implemented the ban. Later groups such as alt.sex were also removed. Pressure from the community, with vigourous effort by some students and an invited talk by Dr. John McCarthy of the Stanford AI Lab (Dr. McCarthy had played a pivotal role in reversing a shorter-lived ban at Stanford) resulted in the appointment of a committee to study the question of newsgroup availability. In May 1991, this committee reported what you would expect them to report -- that, to paraphrase, a University administration should not make non-financial decisions about what people can and can't read on campus. The recommended restoration of all banned newsgroups. Today, Dr. Johnny Wong, Associate Provost for Computing at UW, announced that he would follow the recommendations of the committee. The result is the restoration of all banned newsgroups there, from alt.sex.bondage to rec.humor.funny. I take particular satisfaction in this. The banning of my publication at my alma mater has been a thorn in my side for years, and I have helped and encouraged the efforts to reverse it. I did not wish to concede any victory for the forces of thought-control and political correctness. Even though the ban never stopped any determined reader (after all, the groups could be read remotely with RRN and NNTP) it is good to see it gone. My thanks go out to all who worked to make this happen. More detailed accounts of these events can be found in the prefaces to the Jokebooks. This year's jokebook may be delayed a bit because I am moving at the end of this month. Will tell you where later. --------------- Other notes: I am keeping busy and am a fair bit behind in the joke queue. Only 600 entries to go. Please have patience. RHF is no longer USENET's most popular group. Alt.sex now easily holds that distinction -- perhaps being banned at UW is the first step for success in any USENET group. Misc.jobs.offered is also currently above, but fluctuating. Statistics are posted in the group news.lists. -- Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me. =kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
