piet@haring.UUCP (02/24/84)
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A recent debate here in Europe made me start this inquiry.
What's it all about?
As you know one of the virtues of Usenet is that it provides people with
a means to publicly give their opinions on certain issues. Especially a
newsgroup like (eu)net.politics provides an excellent forum for exchanging
viewpoints.
The freedom to give such opinions is based on the "Freedom of Speech", as
guaranteed by the Universal Human Rights Declaration and by the Constitution
of all participating (democratic or not) countries. But in order to avoid
*any* misunderstanding it must be clear to *every* reader that - especially in
the mentioned newsgroup - the viewpoints given in an article are - or at least
are to be considered - *private* opinions and as such do *not* necessarily
reflect the opinion of the employer of whoever submits any such article.
Now as you (may) also know there are what may be called "sensitive" sites
on Usenet, e.g. military sites and the like.
Especially employees of such sites may be in a precarious position if
they give their opinion on e.g. NATO topics, *if* the readers of this
newsgroup do not bear in mind the statement given above. This may easily
lead to "moderation" or - to put it straight - censoring of articles.
The questions now are:
- are employees of such sites - and of course others as well - free to exert
their right on "Freedom of Speech" in this context?
- if you are such an employee and you can't fully exert that right, on what
topics are you limited/prohibited to give your opinion?
- do you know of sites (no names) for which the above holds and, if so, why
and how?
Please reply by mail or submit a followup article to *both* net.followup
*and* eunet.followup; the latter is to make sure such followups reach all
European sites, even those that do not subscribe to net.general and/or
net.followup. Let's hope any such reply will come un"moderated" (although
this may sound naive...). (Hmmm, seems news/mail lacks the possibility of
sending anonymous replies...)
A summary will be posted to the net.
--
Piet Beertema
CWI (Center for Mathematics & Comp. Science), Amsterdam
...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!piet