gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) (11/08/84)
> In article <7@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) writes: > > To sum up: If everyone at your site has the right to post, except you, and > this decision was made on the basis of unpopular opinions in your postings, > your civil rights have been violated. Now that the US Constitution has been distributed over the entire Usenet you have no excuse for not reading it. The First Amendment says: "*CONGRESS* shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." (emphasis mine). If someone else abridges your freedom of speech (and this happens all the time) your civil rights are not being violated -- UNLESS this abrigement is executed by some government entity, federal or otherwise. By convention, using political means to silence another's use of a medium (such as Usenet), is considered a violation of *ETHICS*, which I take just as seriously as a constitutional violation. This is what happens on Usenet. It is not, then, illegal -- merely despicable. -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!gam [ This is just me talking. ]
rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (11/13/84)
> > Now that the US Constitution has been distributed over the entire Usenet > you have no excuse for not reading it. > > The First Amendment says: "*CONGRESS* shall make no law ... abridging > the freedom of speech." (emphasis mine). > > If someone else abridges your freedom of speech (and this happens all > the time) your civil rights are not being violated -- UNLESS this > abrigement is executed by some government entity, federal or otherwise. Hogwash. It means that the Constitutional rights guaranteed to you are not being violated. As it turns out, the Constitution also grants Congress and other legislative bodies the right to create legislation of various sorts, obviously including additional legislation to secure other civil rights. Since you're hot on the Constitutional aspects of the question, see Amendments IX and X (also part of the Bill of Rights). -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (11/15/84)
> > To sum up: If everyone at your site has the right to post, except you, > > and this decision was made on the basis of unpopular opinions in your > > postings, your civil rights have been violated. > > Now that the US Constitution has been distributed over the entire Usenet > you have no excuse for not reading it. > > The First Amendment says: "*CONGRESS* shall make no law ... abridging > the freedom of speech." (emphasis mine). > > If someone else abridges your freedom of speech (and this happens all > the time) your civil rights are not being violated -- UNLESS this > abrigement is executed by some government entity, federal or otherwise. The courts have never treated the Constitution the way a fundamentalist Christian claims to treat the Bible. The approach used is that of upholding the spirit and not the letter. Since you are representing yourself as knowledgable concerning these matters, you have no excuse for your lack of familiarity with the workings of the courts. (And I wouldn't have thrown in that comment if not for yours....) The concept of "civil liberties" is much broader than the wording of the Bill of Rights suggests, at least under the interpretation of the courts. For instance, consider the "Constitutional right to privacy". This appears nowhere explicitly in the Constitution, yet it forms the basis for a large number of rulings defending the privacy of individuals. The Supreme Court held that it was clearly implied by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, not lay literal interpretation, is the ultimate authority on the document's meaning. Consider the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids racial discrimination only by the states; yet we all know that it is an illegal violation of a person's civil rights for a private company to refuse to hire him on grounds of race. > By convention, using political means to silence another's use of a > medium (such as Usenet), is considered a violation of *ETHICS*, which > I take just as seriously as a constitutional violation. This is what > happens on Usenet. It is not, then, illegal -- merely despicable. Despicable, yes, but not legal. Still, at least our conclusions are similar to that extent. Sorry for the delay in responding, but I felt sure someone else would jump on these misinterpretations. -- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: Try sending through a gateway such as DECWRL, UCB-VAX, SEISMO, or HARVARD -- mailer conventions differ on syntax "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." Liber AL, II:9.
gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) (11/15/84)
[ From a private correspondence ] > To the best of my knowledge there has never > been a test case concerning freedom of speech on anything like USENET, > and until there is, I don't see how anyone can state with certainty whether > such "silencing" is legal or not. OK, I relent and agree, we cannot answer this question now. My opinion is that corporations have the right control their employees' access to USENET as they can control any other computing resource. It is possible that public and semi-public USENET sites, especially universities and privately owned Unix systems (such as Proper Unix in Oakland) have constitutional protections on their USENET postings. However, as a practical matter, if the feeding site for Proper (intelca) felt that Proper users were generating undesirable articles then intelca could cut proper off, and so on up the line. So the protection of people's right to post (if any) would be difficult to enforce. I know if I owned a computer system attached to Usenet I would not want the government to force me to allow anyone to say anything they wanted with it. It is my property, I own it, and I should be the one to control it. (On the other hand, I wouldn't want my connection to the network severed because another site didn't like what I had to say). Constitutional issues like this are not simple matters, to be sure. -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!gam 37 22'50" N / 122 59'12" W [ This is just me talking. ]
arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL) (11/20/84)
In article <517@amdahl.UUCP> gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) writes: >[ From a private correspondence ] > >> To the best of my knowledge there has never >> been a test case concerning freedom of speech on anything like USENET, >> and until there is, I don't see how anyone can state with certainty whether >> such "silencing" is legal or not. > >OK, I relent and agree, we cannot answer this question now. My opinion >is that corporations have the right control their employees' access to >USENET as they can control any other computing resource. > >..... > >So the protection of people's right to post (if any) would be difficult >to enforce. I know if I owned a computer system attached to Usenet >I would not want the government to force me to allow anyone to say anything >they wanted with it. It is my property, I own it, and I should be the one >to control it. (On the other hand, I wouldn't want my connection to >the network severed because another site didn't like what I had to say). > >Constitutional issues like this are not simple matters, to be sure. >-- >Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!gam The closest analogy to the net I can see is a company bulletin board in a hallway, which it allows employees to affix notices to. The company certainly has the right to decide how that bulliten board will be used by saying "no religious messages" or "no political messages". I wonder, however, whether they have the right to say "only Christian religious messages" or "only liberal political messages" are allowed. This does not seem either reasonable or legal to me. I would think that they would either have to allow all messages of a given type or none -- otherwise they are discriminating on the basis of political opion, religious views, or whatever in the granting of priviliges to employees. Ken Arnold
msj@gitpyr.UUCP (Mike St. Johns) (11/20/84)
In article <> version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gitpyr.UUCP version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cmu-cs-k.ARPA gitpyr!gatech!akgua!mcnc!decvax!genrad!wjh12!harvard!seismo!rochester!cmu-cs-pt!cmu-cs-k!tim tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) writes: .... >held that it was clearly implied by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, >not lay literal interpretation, is the ultimate authority on the document's >meaning. Consider the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids racial >discrimination only by the states; yet we all know that it is an illegal >violation of a person's civil rights for a private company to refuse to hire >him on grounds of race. > Sorry, but the reason it is a violation of a persons civil rights to refuse to hire him on the basis of race is that Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. (I may be wrong about the exact title). Other acts have popped up from time to time. (For example age discrimination was an amendment to the Act). The fourteenth amendment did a lot of things. It is the "equal protection under law" amendment. Although it required equal treatment, the way the treatment was given was not specified. This gave rise to such things as the "seperate but equal" doctrine that pervaded our school systems until as late as the 1950s. The Civil Rights Act strictly defined the meaning of the term "discrimination" and further, indicated the penalties to be levied for non-compliance. Certain forms of discrimination are still permitted where there is a bona fide occupational requirement, (nude dancer in strip joint?) but even these are subject to challenge. (I seem to remember a case where a non-oriental was denied employment in a Chinese restaurant. He sued and lost...*fading memory*) Mike -- Mike St. Johns Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!msj
robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (11/20/84)
In article <517@amdahl.UUCP> gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) writes: >OK, I relent and agree, we cannot answer this question now. My opinion >is that corporations have the right control their employees' access to >USENET as they can control any other computing resource. The more general case is that companies have a right to view employees as their representatives to the world, and to mediate their behavior when using any company facilities or representing the company. The relationship between Universities and students or faculty does not fit this model well, and so complicates the issue, but even for Universities and their non-faculty employees, in general, the model holds true. Companies don't give employees time during work hours to do whatever they want, regardless of how the outside world views it; they don't have to give their employees access to company equipment to use for personal reasons. Newspapers don't allow their employees to publish any news stories or opinion that they feel like publishing. Etcetera. The Unix net is partly supported by government money. This might make a difference to the right of system owners to control access to the net, but it is not a clear right, as some writers on this net have alleged; it's tough law that has yet to be fought in the courts. [In contrast, regarding lab equipment that's partly supported by government money, can students use it any way they want, or does the University get to control it? Can students publish studies based on use of this equipment in any journal they want, or is access to report results restricted? Can students demand the free right to use any goverment-purchased hardware to form a communications system?] System owners have an obvious alternative if forced to give unrestricted access to the net; they don't have to provide ANY financial support to the net. The computers and phone lines can be used for other things. Therefore it's pretty much a no-win battle to fight for unrestricted access. Can't we settle for remarkably inexpensive, and remarkably unrestricted access for SLIGHTLY responsible people, such as we have now? - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) {allegra, decvax!ittvax, fisher, princeton}!eosp1!robison
dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) (11/21/84)
I think this whole thing is a lot more complicated than most people are
making it out to be. Consider the physical bulletin board case. If the
bulletin board were maintained by a religious organization, I think they
would be found to have the right to allow only "Christian"" or whatever
messages. Similarly a political party would probably be found to have
the right to politically censor messages on a bulletin board it control.
(These may be dumb/bad things to do, but I am talking about legalities.)
What if a business adopted a general policy that all notices on a
physical bulletin board it controls must be signed by the poster, who
must be an employee, and must be signed by the posters supervisor
certifying that the posting of the message is not harmful to the
business? This would be pretty cumbersome but I don't see that it
would be illegal/unconstitutional.
Although there are lots of exceptions these days to do with race, sex,
etc., isn't it still the default that a business can fire someone for
any reason? If so, why can't a business threaten to fire someone if
they, say, post any computer messages referencing X and then carry out
the threat if the employee violates the directive?
--
+ Donald E. Eastlake, III
ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!deerobison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (11/21/84)
>The closest analogy to the net I can see is a company bulletin board in >a hallway, which it allows employees to affix notices to. The company >certainly has the right to decide how that bulliten board will be used >by saying "no religious messages" or "no political messages". I >wonder, however, whether they have the right to say "only Christian >religious messages" or "only liberal political messages" are allowed. >This does not seem either reasonable or legal to me. I would think >that they would either have to allow all messages of a given type or >none -- otherwise they are discriminating on the basis of political >opion, religious views, or whatever in the granting of priviliges to >employees. > > Ken Arnold This is an incorrect analogy; a company bulletin board is internal, and does not affect the company's commerce with the outside world. A better analogy -- suppose the company printed a newspaper with articles by employees, and distributed it to anyone in the world who wanted it. They would NATURALLY exercise as much editorial control over the content as they wished. Regarding the internal bulletin board, I'm sure a company could reasonably penalize employees who spent too much working time posting messages, or who posted messages that hurt company morale. - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) {allegra, decvax!ittvax, fisher, princeton}!eosp1!robison