NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/censorsh/8990

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-22 | 12.4 KB

Xref: sparky alt.censorship:8990 alt.activism:19097 talk.politics.misc:61295 soc.culture.usa:8630 misc.headlines:7115
Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!destroyer!gumby!yale!hsdndev!dartvax!coos.dartmouth.edu!guy
From: [e-mail] (Guy Schiavone)
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,soc.culture.usa,misc.headlines
Subject: Re: I Have Been Forbidden to Speak the Truth From THIS Account
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Nov 92 20:01:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (The News Manager)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 247



 In <[e-mail]>
  [e-mail] (Dave Ratcliffe) writes:

>>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Guy Schiavone) writes:
>>
>>
>> In <[e-mail]>
>>   [e-mail] (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>>
>> >I certainly concede that AT&T is within its rights to restrict access to
>> >its hardware.  The Constitution does not guarantee you the right to use
>> >other people's property to exercize your right to free speech.
>>
>>  You are probably correct in that AT&T is within its legal rights,
>> but I would argue that it is morally unjustifiable for AT&T to restrict
>> electronic speech purely on the grounds of its political content.

>When AT&T is looking at possible legal liabilities the moral argument
>falls by the wayside. They are, essentially, covering their asses and I
>can't blame them a bit in this case.

 Unless you are talking about posting practices that are clearly illegal,
 such as blatant copyright violations, it seems very unlikely that
 AT&T could be held legally liable for the contents of John DINardo's
 Usenet posts.  If you know of any such case, then enlighten us.  I realize
 that the laws governing computer-based infromation systems remain unclear,
 but if anything AT&T has probably increased its potential liability by
 the very act of trying to filter employee posts based on content.

 Personally, I think that moral arguments should never fall by the wayside.
 Laws can be unjust, and new laws are required to correct new injustices.
 I believe it is up to each and every one of us to do our best to see that
 justice is preserved in our legal system.  Why should AT&T's obligation
 in this respect be any less than yours or mine?

> It's getting tiring to see instant decrees of "Censorship" whenever
>something like this pops up. Very tiring.

 May you be renewed someday after a good night's sleep.

>> Unless it is shown that John's postings have damaged AT&T financially,
>> John should not be discriminated against based on his personal views.

>He is NOT being discriminated against. See above statement. Protecting
>legal liability is prudent. Remember, the sign on the building says
>"AT&T" and NOT "DiNardo Communications Inc"

  We can argue about whether AT&T's discrimination against John DiNardo
is justified or unjustified, but to assert that he has not been
discriminated against is simply ignoring the facts:  1)AT&T offers Usenet
access to a certain class of its employees, including John DiNardo.
2) John DiNardo has been set apart from his fellow employees and has been
told that he cannot post his material to the Usenet.

Go look up the word "discrimination" in a dictionary.

>> AT&T has been granted many special
>> privileges by government legislation (our government - we the people),
>> and has been partly subsidized in many ways, both directly and indirectly,
>> by our tax dollars.  I don't think it's asking too much of them to bear
>> a little social responsibility and recognize the basic human rights of
>> its employees.

>Will the government (our government - we the people) protect AT&T from
>possible legal action should a copyright holder take umbrage with what
>John has been posting? I kinda doubt it.

  Any possible copyright violations were definitely a side-issue
in this case.  In the original letter that John posted, he was not
asked to refrain from posting until he obtained permission from the
copyright holders, he was asked to refrain from posting material that
generated complaints.  As far as I can tell, none of the compliants received
by AT&T were due to copyright violations.   Instead, the complaints seemed
to be centered around the content of John's posts.

  In the original post John's sysadmin quotes AT&Ts NetNews
  policy :

 "Secondly, I remind you of the following portion of the Netnews Policy
   Statement:

       3.  In addition to protecting proprietary information, the
           originator is responsible for ensuring that any information
           posted to Netnews is consistent with AT&T's professional
           standards with regard to content and conduct.  Material of
           questionable taste or material that is potentially damaging
           to the company's reputation or potentially offensive to
           groups or individuals may not be posted to any newsgroup,
           internal or external.


I would contend that you are violating this portion of the AT&T Netnews
Policy."

Especially note the phrase "Material of questionable taste or material
that is potentially damaging to the company's reputation or potentially
offensive to groups or individuals may not be posted to any newsgroup,
internal or external."

This is a form of institutionalized censorship.  You may argue that a
corporation has the unrestricted right to censor its employees, or you may
hold (as I do) that the corporations rights are limited in this area.
To claim that the above policy is not a form of censorship is simply
ignoring reality.

Look up the word "censorship" in a dictionary.

> Unfortunately, judging by the case of John DiNardo,
> the powers that control access to mass media in this country will
> continue to act in their own narrow self-interest, to the detriment
> of our society as a whole.

>As long as the society you are referring to is as litigious as has been
>demonstrated in the past few years I would be willing to bet you will
>see even more "control" that is, in reality, an excercise in self
>preservation.

I take it that you are again referring to the issue of possible
copyright violations.  A solution to this problem, as pointed out
recently by [e-mail] (David Condon)  and many others, is to
grant the legal status of common carrier to electronic networks.

(This is a topic for another thread and another time, but I don't
 accept the myth of the "litigious society" being pushed on
 us by the political far right.  The increase in litigation we observe
 is a function of the increased recognition of injustice in our society.
 Personally, I do not advocate the abdication of the right of the
 common citizen to have their grievances redressed in a civil court.)

>> Publicly-accessible unmoderated computer network forums are
>> like a flower in the mass media wasteland, but one that will be soon crushed
>> by the censor's boot unless we remain vigilant.

>Oh for pete's sake. "The sky is falling! Run and hide!" Be vigilant,
>yes. But TRY and learn the difference between legal prudence and
>"censorship". The way some people on here toss that word around it
>sounds like a damnm mantra that they depend on for sustenance

>--
> ...uunet!wa3wbu!frackit!dave -or-                       |  Dave Ratcliffe  |
> frackit![e-mail] -or- [e-mail] -or-   |  Sys. <*> Admin. |
> vogon1!compnect!frackit![e-mail]            | Harrisburg,  Pa. |

Legal prudence often serves as an excuse for immoral actions.  Indeed,
censorship is and always has been institutionalized into law by most
countries in the world.  Thus, in most countries past and present,
legal prudence demands the practice of censorship.

No, Dave, the sky never falls.  Not all at once, anyways.  We give away
our rights all by ourselves, slowly and almost imperceptably.  Don't
just take my word for it.  I'll include the words of a someone who
lived through Nazi Germany in the 1930's.  Read through it, for its own
sake.  I think we can learn something from the example of history.

(begin quote)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In <[e-mail]>
 [e-mail] (Brad Pierce) writes:

|Excerpted and condensed without permission from Milton Mayer's _They
|thought they were free; the Germans, 1933-45_ (U. of Chicago Press, 1955).
|The following comments are attributed to a German philologist (pp. 166-172):

[...]
|
|``Your `little men', ..., were not against National
|Socialism in principle.  Men like me, who were, are the greater
|offenders ...
|
|``... One doesn't see exactly where or how to move. ... Each
|act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little
|worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great
|shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes,
|will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act,
|or even talk, alone; you don't want to `go out of your way to
|make trouble.' ... And it is not just fear ... that restrains
|you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
|
|``Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of
|decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets,
|...., `everyone' is happy.  One hears no protest, and certainly
|sees none. ...  you speak privately to your colleagues, some of
|whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say,
|`It's not so bad' or `You're seeing things' or `You're an
|alarmist.'
|
|``And you *are* an alarmist. You are saying that *this* must
|lead to *this*, and you can't prove it. ... On the one hand, your
|enemies ... intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-
|pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your
|close friends, ... people who have always thought as you have.
|
|``... in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel
|that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from
|the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further
|and serves as a further deterrent to - to what?  It is clearer
|all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must
|*make* an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a
|troublemaker.  So you wait...
|
|``But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds
|or thousands will join with you, never comes. *That's* the
|difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had
|come immediately after the first and smallest... But of course
|this isn't the way it happens.  In between come all the hundreds
|of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them
|preparing you not to be shocked by the next.  Step C is not so
|much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step
|B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
|
|``And one day, too late, your principles ... all rush in
|upon you.  The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and
|some minor incident, in my case my little boy ...  saying `Jew
|swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything,
|everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
|The world you were born in - your nation, your people - is not
|the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all
|untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the
|mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
|But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the
|lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.
|Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate
|and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is
|transformed, no one is transformed. ...
|
|``... Life ... has flowed to a new level, carrying you with
|it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live
|.... more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles.
|You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years
|ago, a year ago, things that your father ... could not have
|imagined.
|
|``Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you
|are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't
|done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we
|do nothing). ...  You remember everything now, and your heart
|breaks.  Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
(end quote)

 One more little step - John DiNardo was successfully censored by
 AT&T.  And all that was required of most of us was that we did...nothing.

     -Guy Schiavone