Computers and Academic Freedom (news version) Sun Apr 14 1991 Moderator: Carl M. Kadie (kadie@eff.org) [This is the first issue of the caf-news. It is made up of a selection of notes from the caf-talk mailing list. It covers notes posted from April 9th to April 14th. Expect more information about the caf-news after I catch up with old caf-talk notes. - Carl] In this issue: Carl Kadie Annoucing the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive Brendan Kehoe Re: Annoucing the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive Carl M. Kadie FYI: Jim Sanders censored no more Andrew Burt Jim Sanders censored no more Thomas E. Kunselman Computer Services Philosophy and Academic Decision-making The addresses for the list are now: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org - for contributions to the list or caf-talk@eff.org listserv@eff.org - for automated additions/deletions (send email with the line "help" for details.) caf-talk-request@eff.org - for administrivia Sender: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Precedence: bulk Return-Path: Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 10:54:13 EDT Subject: Annoucing the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive Status: R This is an electronic library of information about computers and academic freedom. It is available via anonymous ftp to eff.org (192.88.144.3) in directory "academic". For more information, to make contributions, or to report typos (and scanos) contract Carl Kadie (kadie@eff.org). ================= caf-talk ----------------- A discription to the comp-academic-freedom-talk mailing list. ================= ecpa.1986 ----------------- Portions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) related to e-mail privacy. ================= eff.rights ----------------- An overview of the electronic frontier and the U.S Bill of Rights ================= email.privacy.essay ----------------- "Computer Electronic Mail and Privacy", an edited version of a law school seminar paper by Ruel T. Hernadex ================= jmcabstract ----------------- Professor John McCarthy lead the effort to restore "rec.humor.funny" at Stanford. In March of 1991, he travelled to the University of Waterloo, a place where "rec.humor.funny" was (and still is) 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. (Also, see "stanford.statements") ================= k12.networks.survey ----------------- Results of a survey by EDUCOM and IBM on the status of computer networking in K12 education. ================= library.canada ----------------- Canadian Library Association Statement on Intellectual Freedom ================= library.porn ----------------- A parody of a real newpaper article published in the Houston Chronicle. The parody is my Carl Kadie. It was published in rec.humor.funny. ================= library.us ----------------- The "Freedom to Read Statement" of the American Library Association and Association of American Publishers. ================= library.us.excerpts ----------------- Excepts from the "Freedom to Read Statement" of the American Library Association and Association of American Publishers. ================= nsf ----------------- The tentative statement by the National Science Foundation on acceptable use of the backbone networks. ================= 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") ================= student.freedoms ----------------- Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students -- This is the main statement on student academic freedom. ================= uiuc.code.excerpts ----------------- Excerpts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Code on Campus Affairs and Regulations Applying to All Students (Aug. 1985) ================= ================= Last update Tue Apr 9 22:48:42 EDT 1991 Sender: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Precedence: bulk Return-Path: Subject: Re: Annoucing the Computers and Academic Freedom (CAF) Archive Date: Thu, 11 Apr 91 11:03:02 EDT X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: R You wrote: > ================= > nsf > ----------------- > The tentative statement by the National Science Foundation on > acceptable use of the backbone networks. There's an archive of other acceptable use policies for schools and networks on ftp.cs.widener.edu [192.55.239.132], which may be of interest to the readers of this list. -- Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone Sender: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Precedence: bulk Return-Path: Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 11:30:45 -0500 Subject: FYI: Jim Sanders censored no more Status: R Xref: m.cs.uiuc.edu alt.censorship:752 alt.conspiracy:1303 talk.politics.mideast:7685 Path: m.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!aburt Newsgroups: nyx.misc,alt.censorship,alt.conspiracy,talk.politics.mideast Subject: Jim Sanders censored no more Message-ID: <1991Apr12.140541.8984@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> Date: 12 Apr 91 14:05:41 GMT Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci. Lines: 279 I feel like I'm about to step from the frying pan into the fire... Well, here's the verdict -- Jim Sanders will be allowed back on the air again. BUT READ THIS ALL BEFORE YOU FLAME... this is a very difficult matter, not a black and white issue; I'll try to convince you this is the "right" choice; or at least the lesser of two enormous evils. People are on both sides of the fence about this, of course, but please read through this all before flaming... (and if you can avoid flaming, please do!) We're trying to get this resolved in the way fairest to all concerned, "society as a whole" included. CLEARLY we can't please everyone; and there have been plenty of flames so far. So let's let this lengthy posting be the final one on the matter. I'll try to go through the history a bit, inject some personal opinions, and tell you DU's opinion, while I explain how decisions were made. Pertinent Background: Nyx is a public access system run by DU, specifically the Math/CS dept., wherein I (Andrew Burt) am a professor and system admin for our various departmental machines. Nyx is NOT an official project of the department or DU; it's all volunteer run and donation funded. I run Nyx on my own time; DU owns the hardware. DU does not "support" Nyx in any way other than pay the electricity and allow the use of old hardware that would otherwise be shut off. I started Nyx as a personal project, to give Unix/net access to the public; consider it a hobby of mine. DU tolerates it. Nyx is completely open to the public; it is completely free to users -- no charges. Anyone can sign up for an account. We have a full newsfeed, and allow posting to anyone. All users are asked to read the netiquette documents, which are made easily accessible (the whole thing is menu oriented). I believe Nyx provides a valuable community service, by making netnews accessible to many who would otherwise never know of it. Jim Sanders is one of the 3000+ people who've tried it. He has NOTHING to do with DU -- not a student, employee, anything. (And, as it goes, he's the only user we've had any kind of "problem" with.) We have a disclaimer as users log in that reads: Disclaimer: The University of Denver disclaims everything it can relating to Nyx. DU doesn't support Nyx in any way. There. We said it. DU's policy for its students, staff, etc., forbids doing anything "inconsiderate" with a usercode. Also, DU is a private school, with a nominal Methodist affiliation. (Though I haven't a clue how many Methodists are in high places. I doubt it's much more than a nominal affiliation. I'm not Methodist at any rate, nor are the few people whose affiliations I am aware of.) And bear in mind that DU shut down the school paper for several months last year because it ran blatantly offensive, sexually biased "advertisements". Well, not ads, but the back page was sort of a free-for-all; folks paid to say whatever they wanted, and it wasn't censored. Some of the remarks were patently offensive, and the staff didn't seem to care. They were also in the red financially. So they just shut it down, fired all the workers; it has just recently resumed publishing (mid-March). What Jim Sanders did: Jim Sanders began posting pretty inflammatory material, heavily criticizing lawyers, oilmen, etc. Later, the criticisms were leveled at one particular ethnic/religious group, namely Jewish people. His postings were of personal opinion mixed with quotes from various published sources. They often included considerable profanity (even after being asked to stop). Further postings in his name appeared apologizing for the original notes. He alleged he did not send them; or sent the wrong file; even though postings weeks earlier promised these files would be posted. He later alleged that his account had been violated (I found no local evidence of this, but forging e-mail and postings is simple enough without that). At any rate, he began posting from the account of Evan Ravitz, apparently a business associate of his. Since eravitz's account predates jsanders, I presume eravitz gave jsanders his password to use. (I don't see this as an issue, however -- since jsanders could have signed up under any name at all just like a new user would. I remove obvious phony accounts like 'mmouse', but a qsmith or whatever wouldn't get removed.) Additionally, he posted the same files on a regular basis, a basic breach of netiquette. What other people did: With his anti-semitic postings, tempers flared wildly. Many people, including people from inside DU, voiced their outrage at his postings (lots of adjectives were used... "filth", "trash", "anti-semitic drivel", and on and on). The outrage was both directed at his opinions and at the fact that DU/Nyx's-system-admin (me) would allow such postings. Everyone stated their displeasure with his postings. Most asked that Jim Sanders not only be told that his behavior was not appropriate for the net but also that he be stopped, or asked to stop. I read the net articles in response to his, and saw articles saying he shouldn't be allowed to say what he said, but none (over the couple days that I watched anyway) saying "no, that's censorship, don't do it". The general consensus on the net seemed to be that his postings were absolutely ludicrous and a waste of net bandwidth, not to mention that he was "breaking" many net "rules" of conduct. Some netlanders even contacted DU administrative officials to complain about the situation. This is when the real problems started. DU brass are not computer people. They don't understand bulletin boards, let alone the Usenet anarchy; they're not sure DU even should be involved with a "BBS" type system. What DU did: Legally, DU has the right to decide what postings are allowed or not allowed from DU property, which Nyx's hardware is. The initial reaction was to apply the same regulations to Nyx-originated postings that apply to all other systems -- again, not to allow postings that are construed as inconsiderate, into which category racist and profane postings clearly are. Indeed, some DU brass had a MAJOR fit about this -- and talked of shutting Nyx down (remember, DU has reservations about running Nyx in the first place; racist postings "from" DU don't help, and this is how it was presented to them by some net folks, or is at least how they understood it; they were told "DU students are sending obscene messages"). It would certainly silence Jim Sanders to kill Nyx; but it would also be a loss to the community. Remember, this sounds a lot like the newspaper issue. People being offensive, nobody doing anything about it, etc. From a school with a religious affiliation to "answer to", "uphold", phrase it how you will. So the basic idea was: if I don't shut Jim Sanders down, Nyx is shut down. To prevent Nyx from being shut down, and feeling that (a) he had broken net rules, and (b) he had gotten his message out (over and over in fact) -- so I wasn't really preventing him from airing his views (I mean, he had done so for a while and was only being redundant) -- I chose the lesser evil. I asked Jim Sanders not to post, and enforced this restriction at the software level. Since he could easily get back on under another name, I monitored outgoing postings to verify he didn't post (he didn't). I didn't intend to censor anything else; and nothing was censored at all. Jim Sanders did not attempt to post once asked not to. [begin personal opinion:] I *personally* am totally against censorship. I thought it was pretty ironic to get called a nazi fascist pig censor! I told Jim Sanders many times that I disagreed with his opinions vehemently, but I believed in and would defend his right to express them. I did not WANT to censor him, but I didn't want Nyx shut down either. It skates on thin ice as it is. And he'd made his point thoroughly anyway; so while an evil, it looked better to keep Nyx -- I mean, Jim Sanders loses the ability to post from Nyx either way. I firmly believe in freedom of speech; after further discussion here, and with the help of overwhelming net protests against censorship, I have gotten DU to agree that freedom of speech is more important than silencing offensive speech. DU as a whole in no way supports the views of ANY Nyx users, Jim Sanders included. (Indeed, I have added a "Disclaimer:" header to all Nyx postings stating exactly this point. Too many people seemed to assume that DU supported jsander's views simply because it came from a DU system. Silly, but true.) Rationale for final decision: I could offer the "easy" way out, and point out that Jim Sanders could have been cut off for knowingly breaking net rules. But that too would be censorship, in the same vein as convicting Al Capone on tax evasion was convicting him for his other crimes. Further, it *is* DU's system. DU is a private school, and can decide what constitutes inappropriate use of its hardware. DU has the right to censor postings. Again, this is an easy way out. If Nyx is truly a public system, all the views of the public should be allowed, no matter how offensive to groups or incredibly ridiculous readers may find them. If the posting was clearly illegal, that's different (e.g., posting credit card numbers). Nyx will, however, adopt the stance that it is simply a carrier, and not responsible for the postings of its users; like the phone company isn't responsible for, e.g., drug deals done by phone. Some folks might say "we pay for our newsfeed, and don't want to waste our money on this." I think the best analogy here is to a newspaper. If a newspaper carried a story you found offensive, you wouldn't get a refund of 1% because you disliked one of the 100 articles. You bought the whole paper, both good and offensive. (You could cancel your subscription, or not buy it again -- with respect to netnews, you can drop your feed or quit reading some groups; or put jsanders in your kill file. The "Just say 'n'." approach. Or get the net to agree that we need alt.jsanders, get him to post only there, then don't carry it.) But say jsanders posts one offensive article a day (to err on the high side), that's what, one article out of 20,000; maybe you pay, what, $5/day for news (sounds high, would cover the cost of a uunet feed) -- then jsanders cost you $.00025. You undoubtedly lose more money than that in work time lost worrying about it. Some said "this isn't tolerable on a government supported network". Well, the government is MORE likely to support it under the freedom of speech amendment than is a private network. Government support doesn't mean the government supports every opinion expressed -- no more than DU or I support Nyx users' opinions. Another tack was "posting is a privilege, not a right". Agreed, but revoking the privilege simply because it contains highly unpopular opinions isn't fair. Perhaps his opinions are "over the line" -- but who's to judge? Me, or the whole net? I never wanted to be the judge; that leaves the net. Did he abuse the privilege in other ways? Profanity? Well, we all do it, it's part of being human; again, the net can judge. Apologizing then not apologizing, etc.? It still isn't clear who posted what, if any forged articles were sent. I can't hold that against Jim Sanders. Posting for different accounts? Well, he thought his account had been hacked into and presumably wanted to prove he hadn't posted the next allegedly forged message. Besides, it's better that he uses his real name (I presume it IS his real name, but no matter) than a lot of pseudonyms. What about the issue of "his postings are WAAAAAY out of line"? Well, that's for you to decide and argue with him about. YOU decide, not me. I won't decide for you. [Let me suggest this: If everyone really hates his postings so much, let's just NOBODY reply to them. If he's ignored, he'll likely go away. I argued with him once; he ignored my argument, so I quit arguing. Now I personally just ignore his postings.] Complaints on this matter have really been swamping my mailbox. First it was "shut jsanders up"; then "don't shut jsanders up". I would say, though I didn't count, that the anti-censorship letters were 5 to 10 times as many as the pro-censorship letters. Most people who said let him speak made one or more of the following points: - they disagreed with him entirely - they felt he had a right to his opinions - they would rather be the judge of his opinions than a censor - censorship was far worse than offensive opinions - he wrote nothing illegal -- no slander, no libel - they felt the net folks as a whole were pretty intelligent, and nobody would be likely to buy his ideas anyway, or at least he was unlikely to convert anyone to his ideas - private (legal) censorship whittles away our rights too, just like government censorship - silencing him only makes him a martyr - silencing him only helps prove his point about group X controlling the world Plus: - a couple people said they thought his postings were "interesting" - one person even agreed wholeheartedly with him - some said they like to watch the fireworks All critics of the censorship decision presented good arguments against censorship, no matter how offensive the material was. The critics of jsanders in favor of censorship, presented weaker arguments, which I've discussed above. Conclusion: On balance, the cost of freedom of speech is allowing the speech you disagree with. So to wrap this up, I personally disagree with jsanders writings. But I respect his right to say it. I want to keep Nyx a place where people can express their opinions freely. If you disagree, fine, I respect that. But please accept the judgement of the net and DU, which is what I consider the outcome to be. Please don't try to subvert it, or Nyx, by, e.g., bitching to DU officials, filling up jsanders mbox with megabytes of XXX's or whatever. (Someone did that. It never got to jsanders because it filled up our disk and I had to delete it; royally screwed things up, ticked me off bad.) Try Nyx before you condemn it; and regardless, don't take matters into your own hands trying to shut jsanders down, that just hurts the hundreds of other regular Nyx users, and makes you guilty of censorship. If you want to argue with him, please do. Keep it to words, not actions though. Keep it a clean fight. Remember that a lot of people want him to be able to post whatever nonsense he wants to, even though they nearly all disagree with him. Any replies should be mailed to me, as I don't really read these groups. Again, if you can let it rest now, please do. -- Andrew Burt uunet!isis!aburt or aburt@du.edu "Kwyjibo on the loose!" Sender: comp-academic-freedom-talk-request@eff.org Precedence: bulk Return-Path: Resent-Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 10:24:19 EST Resent-From: "Thomas E. Kunselman" Date: Fri, 12 Apr 91 09:29:35 EST Subject: Computer Services Philosophy and Academic Decision-making Status: R I figure I might as well start off some discussion about the place of computer services in academic decision-making. I would like to point out where I think the primary problem lies. I am very interested in suggestions on how to change the problem. I have worked for the administration of several different kinds of Universities >from small to large as a staff member engaged in providing various types of management information. Throughout all of my experiences, I have dealth with many coputer services people and the one thing I find lacking in 90% of these people is SERVICE. I'm sure there are several reasons for this, job security, feelings of owner- ship of equipment, software, data, information. The desire to be needed, wanted, respected. I'm sure I could go on and on, but are any of these an excuse for not answering a question from a user, or to accuse a user of asking too many questions? (One of the silliest things anyone has recently accused me of.) It is this Information Hoarding Culture that is the main problem in any discussion of coputers and interference with academic freedom. And I don't mean to imply that Computing Organizations within an institution are the only people guilty of this. Quite often various administrative units of an organization behave in precisly the same way for precisely the same reasons. An example of this at the University of Kentucky, involves NSFNET interim guidelines stating that the network is to be used for educational and research purposes only. This is all very good and agreable, in my mind. But which group decides what has educational and research value? I suppose the Faculty Senate or maybe even individual members of the Faculty might decide this. However, in this case, the networking group took it upon themselves to decide what was educational and research and proceeded to 'filter out' all network activity that didn't use approved applications. (They did this by restricting port useage to those ports listed in /etc/services). They discussed this with no one in the academic community. They didn't tell any of the systems people at any of the academic computer sites. Afterall, it was their network, they could do whatever they wanted with it. When we have technicians, be they programmers, network jockeys, system administrators, or computing administration, telling us what we can or can not do on their systems we have lost our academic freedom. Well, when we let them get away with it. What do these technical people know about academic freedom? Do they have tenure or faculty status, belog to the faculty senate? Why are people that we hire to support the needs of the academic community making academic decisions for this community? I think most of us on this list are probably lucky in that we are fairly sophisticated when it comes to computer use. In fact, many of us can probably say that we'd like to get a copy of the program the programmer has written so we can make our own minor modifications as reporting needs change without putting in a program request change and waiting three weeks till our request has time to be fulfilled. How many times are you turned down for something like this? How many times will you ask for an explanation or for information about something and be given the run around? How many departmental computing centers have sprung up at your campus? All these are signs of lack of service on the part of the central computing organization. What do you all do to get the information and services you require? The major thing we have done is to do everythin in-house. This is much faster in the long run, but in the short-term it takes a lot of work and means we end up duplicating a lot of what was done before but there is no other choice due to the information hoarding culture. Not to paint such a bleak picture, like I said, we have that ten percent of very service oriented and dedicated people who are very helpful. And luckily, here at UK, a lot of those ten percent are in the academic consulting group. I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on how much in agreement you are on my perceptions of computing service personnel. I am also interested in discussions about ways to effectively organize users to do planning and policy decision-making with regard to academic needs, and not the whims of empire-builders/maintainers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas E. Kunselman | Information Specialist | INTERNET: VAATEK@UKCC.UKY.EDU Office of the Assistant Chancellor | BITNET: VAATEK@UKCC #7 Administration Building | University of Kentucky | "Hacker? Not I. Sometimes the Lexington, KY 40506-0032 | average feel threatened and Phone:(606) 257-1633 | mislabel genius." -- A. Tugrik ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas E. Kunselman | Information Specialist | INTERNET: VAATEK@UKCC.UKY.EDU Office of the Assistant Chancellor | BITNET: VAATEK@UKCC #7 Administration Building | University of Kentucky | "Hacker? Not I. Sometimes the Lexington, KY 40506-0032 | average feel threatened and Phone:(606) 257-1633 | mislabel genius." -- A. Tugrik