peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (04/08/89)
In article <8154@chinet.chi.il.us>, patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes: > If you choose to obligate yourself regards Usenet by agreeing with some other > site to pass their traffic, or you obligate yourself to display some > news group, then if some site is willing to originate Whitehead's messages, > you are obligated to put them on your machine not from any obligation to > Whitehead, but to the sites up/downstream expecting to get the feed as you > got it without alterations/deletions in the interim, and/or the users > expecting to see the news group intact. I have no problem with the rest of your message, but this paragraph seems to imply that every site on the net has the obligation to pass any message originating from a site upstream. I dispute that. No site other than uunet has entered into any legal agreement to provide a feed. No commercial site has any first-amendment obligation to pass objectionable messages. How do you justify this paragraph. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.
patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) (04/09/89)
In article <3763@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >I have no problem with the rest of your message, but this paragraph seems >to imply that every site on the net has the obligation to pass any message >originating from a site upstream. >I dispute that. No site other than uunet has entered into any legal agreement >to provide a feed. No commercial site has any first-amendment obligation to >pass objectionable messages. There is no first amendment involved, so please do not bring it up. Certainly in a case like uunet, where a contract has been entered, the news has to be passed in both directions unmolested and intact. But I say this applies to the voluntary arrangments between all sites. If I say to you 'pick up the news from me every day' you have every right to assume what I give you will be intact and the way I got it. What you display on your local machine for your local users under your immediate supervision is one thing. Cancel out anything or everything. Give your users only what you want to give them, because after all, it is your machine and your phone lines. And likewise, what I display on my machine will be what I choose to display or store where my users are concerned. But what we pass between each other other, using the other's site as a gateway must be intact. Would you like writing a message, fully expecting it to be seen everywhere only to have the first guy down the line who polled you every day look at it and decide to zap yours and pass along the rest? If you are really, truly saying you feel it is perfectly okay to zap any messages you personally don't like while passing the rest of it along, then I sure would hate to be a site downstream from you, trusting you for a full feed every day! Do as you wish with the feed you offer your users, but don't you DARE tamper with what is entrusted to you to pass to the backbone, or from the backbone to some other site. Do you presently poll other sites, or feed news to other sites now? I think I will find out, and sent their sysadmins a note telling them you feel no obligation to play with a full deck of cards when they hand you their traffic every day. Tell me this: do you at least have the courtesy to tell the sites on either side of you that you have zapped the stuff you did not want to pass along, or do you just send it minus a message here and there and assume with the heavy volume they won't know the difference? I would really hate to be a site dependent on moving traffic through you. How would I know any of it got anywhere, if you were on some kind of a tangent the day a user on my site happened to post a message you took a dislike to. I think if you are presently feeding anyone you ought to resign, and ask them to find a feed elsewhere considering your attitude about the system. No one is telling you to allow stuff to stay in your machine you disagee with, but how could you even think of screwing up someone else's traffic in the process? Shame on you. -- Patrick Townson patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu / US Mail: 60690-1570 FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956
" Maynard) (04/10/89)
Background: For a long time, sugar (Peter's other site is a 386 :-) was my primary newsfeed. The Houston area news sites communicate with each other regularly. Even though sugar is no longer my primary feed, I feel that I can comment, as a potential and past downstream site from him. In article <8176@chinet.chi.il.us> patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes: >In article <3763@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >>I have no problem with the rest of your message, but this paragraph seems >>to imply that every site on the net has the obligation to pass any message >>originating from a site upstream. >>I dispute that. No site other than uunet has entered into any legal agreement >>to provide a feed. No commercial site has any first-amendment obligation to >>pass objectionable messages. >There is no first amendment involved, so please do not bring it up. Certainly >in a case like uunet, where a contract has been entered, the news has to be >passed in both directions unmolested and intact. No argument here, although I'm surprised that you've quit yelling "CENSORSHIP!!" about the concept... >But I say this applies to the voluntary arrangments between all sites. If >I say to you 'pick up the news from me every day' you have every right to >assume what I give you will be intact and the way I got it. What messages are there, yes. There's nothing that says I have to waste disk space on any posting on this net, though, and if I make that decision before the news gets batched, sorry... Personally, I'm not interested that much. I do respect someone else's right to be, though. >What you display on your local machine for your local users under your >immediate supervision is one thing. Cancel out anything or everything. Give >your users only what you want to give them, because after all, it is your >machine and your phone lines. Exactly right. >But what we pass between each other other, using the other's site as a >gateway must be intact. Would you like writing a message, fully expecting >it to be seen everywhere only to have the first guy down the line who >polled you every day look at it and decide to zap yours and pass along the >rest? Another good reason for redundant newsfeeds. Any message that I send is broadcast to five sites, and hence is less susceptible to being deleted completely when a sysadmin decides that that message doesn't belong on his system. >If you are really, truly saying you feel it is perfectly okay to zap any >messages you personally don't like while passing the rest of it along, then >I sure would hate to be a site downstream from you, trusting you for a full >feed every day! I would have no objections to such a use of the sysadmin's power; after all, it's his system. If I got unhappy enough, I'd find another feed, but I would NOT try to coerce him into using his computer and his phone bill to carry something he didn't want. >Do as you wish with the feed you offer your users, but don't you DARE tamper >with what is entrusted to you to pass to the backbone, or from the backbone >to some other site. If I trust someone that far, then I deserve to get burned. It's HIS system. Not mine. Not yours. His. Nothing in this world says that he has to support me. He's doing it out of the goodness of his heart. >Do you presently poll other sites, or feed news to other sites now? I think >I will find out, and sent their sysadmins a note telling them you feel no >obligation to play with a full deck of cards when they hand you their >traffic every day. Don't bother sending me that note; I'll blatantly ignore it. I'll save you some trouble, though: if you'd like, pass it along, and I'll post it to houston.general. >Tell me this: do you at least have the courtesy to tell the sites on >either side of you that you have zapped the stuff you did not want to pass >along, or do you just send it minus a message here and there and assume >with the heavy volume they won't know the difference? Who gives a fuzzy rat's posterior? If he doesn't want it on his system, there's nothing I can do to make him pass it along. It's HIS system. >I would really hate to be a site dependent on moving traffic through you. >How would I know any of it got anywhere, if you were on some kind of a >tangent the day a user on my site happened to post a message you took a >dislike to. I have depended on moving traffic through his system; if he didn't like what I said, and felt strongly enough about it to remove it from his system, then there's not a whole lot I can do about it. >I think if you are presently feeding anyone you ought to resign, and ask >them to find a feed elsewhere considering your attitude about the system. That would disqualify a LOT of sysadmins, who aren't willing to give up control of their system to some self-appointed protector of a non-existent right to free speech on the net. >No one is telling you to allow stuff to stay in your machine you disagee >with, but how could you even think of screwing up someone else's traffic >in the process? Shame on you. It's his right. It's his system. -- Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can uucp: uunet!nuchat! (eieio)| adequately be explained by stupidity. hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!splut!jay +---------------------------------------- {killer,bellcore}!texbell! | "Less great!" "Tastes filling!"
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (04/10/89)
In article <8176@chinet.chi.il.us>, patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes: > If you are really, truly saying you feel it is perfectly okay to zap any > messages you personally don't like while passing the rest of it along, then > I sure would hate to be a site downstream from you, trusting you for a full > feed every day! No, I'm not saying that it's OK or reasonable or moral or ethical. I'm saying there is no LEGAL obligation to do so. You were strongly implying that there was, and that editing a newsfeed was legally actionable. I'm not going to bother with the rest of your article, since it's largely composed of paranoid ad-hominem attacks. > Do you presently poll other sites, or feed news to other sites now? Yes, we presently feed sugar.hackercorp.com, and they feed us. Please feel free to send the admins there a note. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.
patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) (04/11/89)
In article <2575@splut.UUCP> jay@splut.UUCP (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes: >No argument here, although I'm surprised that you've quit yelling >"CENSORSHIP!!" about the concept... It is not censorship when a private individual or institution with a computer chooses what will and will not be on the computer, using any arbitrary and irrational decisions he wishes. Private property is private property. It is censorship when the government offers some accomodation to everyone similarly situated and then revokes that accomodation merely because of some speech made. It is unconstitutional for the government to censor. On the other hand it is perfectly within the rights of private organizations to accomodate the speech of others or not as they please. Can you understand the difference between a computer facility operated by the state, as in 'state university' versus the computer owned by a private company, for example? Somehow you have managed to confuse not only censorship by the government versus actions by private parties but you have also tried to claim that breach of a contract, verbal or written, is the same as censorship (as in your exhortation to me to quit screaming about 'censorship'. Let's not confuse all these issues. Let's talk about one of them at a time, shall we? >What messages are there, yes. There's nothing that says I have to waste >disk space on any posting on this net, though, and if I make that >decision before the news gets batched, sorry... Yes there is. What there is that says 'you have to waste disk space on any posting on this net' is the verbal or other agreement you have with some other site to make the postings available to them. And if you 'make that decision before the news gets batched' then you are playing games, pure and simple. >Personally, I'm not interested that much. I do respect someone else's >right to be, though. Obviously you do not have a great deal of respect for the rights of the other sites connected to you or you would not screw up their traffic. >>But what we pass between each other other, using the other's site as a >>gateway must be intact. Would you like writing a message, fully expecting >>it to be seen everywhere only to have the first guy down the line who >>polled you every day look at it and decide to zap yours and pass along the >>rest? > >Another good reason for redundant newsfeeds. Any message that I send is >broadcast to five sites, and hence is less susceptible to being deleted >completely when a sysadmin decides that that message doesn't belong on >his system. Must newsfeeds, all x-jillion bytes of them, be redundant because you like to play games? Wasn't one purpose of Usenet to aide in keeping communication costs at a minimum? The backbone must really be enamored of you; what do they do, send the whole feed to five times as many places just to make sure it actually gets all the way around? Talk about a need for policy, if there ever was one, this is it. >>If you are really, truly saying you feel it is perfectly okay to zap any >>messages you personally don't like while passing the rest of it along, then >>I sure would hate to be a site downstream from you, trusting you for a full >>feed every day! > >I would have no objections to such a use of the sysadmin's power; after >all, it's his system. If I got unhappy enough, I'd find another feed, >but I would NOT try to coerce him into using his computer and his phone >bill to carry something he didn't want. Oh, that's real cute. Would you try to 'coerce' anyone into doing anything? And while the machine is the property of the sysadmin or his employer, the sysadmin *has*, by agreeing to poll others and feed news, etc, come to an understanding with those sites; one that while perhaos is not legally enforceable, there being no such legal entity as 'Usenet' should certainly be ethically and morally enforceable; that is if you have any ethics and/or morals in the matter. >>Do as you wish with the feed you offer your users, but don't you DARE tamper >>with what is entrusted to you to pass to the backbone, or from the backbone >>to some other site. > >If I trust someone that far, then I deserve to get burned. It's HIS >system. Not mine. Not yours. His. Nothing in this world says that he has >to support me. He's doing it out of the goodness of his heart. But he has agreed to handle your traffic, therefore he should handle it correctly. And you should be able to 'trust someone that far', because that is what Usenet is about: the mutual sharing of news between sites. And let us not get into whose system it is again. We all know who owns the system. It is private property, and I hope you will not offer me a rebuttal which consists of commentary about censorship and such. Any site -- private or government -- which has agreed to participate in Usenet is under an ethical and moral obligation to participate as participation has always been defined, until the definition gets changed. And before you tell me that there is no breach of contract since no contract can exist without some money or other valuable consideration changing hands stop and think about the benefits to you from reading news passed along by other sites. There is your consideration, for legal purposes in expecting a contract to be followed. So when you delete all the items from the news which personally offend you, you are shortchanging the sites which follow, and violating the implied agreement you have with the person who paid the phone bill to give you the feed. >>Do you presently poll other sites, or feed news to other sites now? I think >>I will find out, and sent their sysadmins a note telling them you feel no >>obligation to play with a full deck of cards when they hand you their >>traffic every day. > >Don't bother sending me that note; I'll blatantly ignore it. >I'll save you some trouble, though: if you'd like, pass it along, and >I'll post it to houston.general. From what you have said above, how could you be trusted to pass it along? There are plenty of ways to reach houston.general, I suppose, without sending it through a site which only passes 'all the news that fits (into their philosophical framework)'. >>Tell me this: do you at least have the courtesy to tell the sites on >>either side of you that you have zapped the stuff you did not want to pass >>along, or do you just send it minus a message here and there and assume >>with the heavy volume they won't know the difference? > >Who gives a fuzzy rat's posterior? If he doesn't want it on his system, >there's nothing I can do to make him pass it along. It's HIS system. Well that is easy to answer: the originating authors care and the end readers care. Anyone who appreciates and respects the concept of Usenet cares. You are right that as Usenet is now structured, there is probably nothing legally you can do to force the issue. And your emphasis on the word 'his' demonstrates you are still confusing property rights with contractual obligations and moral/ethical obligations. >>I would really hate to be a site dependent on moving traffic through you. >>How would I know any of it got anywhere, if you were on some kind of a >>tangent the day a user on my site happened to post a message you took a >>dislike to. > >I have depended on moving traffic through his system; if he didn't like >what I said, and felt strongly enough about it to remove it from his >system, then there's not a whole lot I can do about it. Read earlier paragraphs. The best you can hope for at this time is to convince him to behave in an ethical and moral way toward the other participants in the net. Someday perhaps, when enough people get tired of petty tyrants who want all the news while picking and choosing what portion of it their neighbors should receive, a formal policy will be developed which provides for disconnection of offenders. For all the bureaucracy present in FIDONET, at least they have a very effective way of dealing with what they term 'annoying behavior' by a site: the offender is pulled out of the address matrix, and that is the end of their inbound traffic, period. >>I think if you are presently feeding anyone you ought to resign, and ask >>them to find a feed elsewhere considering your attitude about the system. >That would disqualify a LOT of sysadmins, who aren't willing to give up >control of their system to some self-appointed protector of a >non-existent right to free speech on the net. Here we go again with your free speech nonsense. 'Free speech' is only applicable to *state*; i.e. Verity's State University, sites; and then, only when the speech was the reason for the exclusion. I don't think it would disqualify a LOT of sysadmins; mainly because I do not think there are very many like whoose-it, the subject of this string, who take in feeds and wilfully tamper with them. Certainly there are sysadmins who do not carry full feeds, or do not carry certain groups, but that is okay; they don't *claim* to carry them while only carrying the parts that meet their approval and deleting the rest. At least not if they assume a role in handling the traffic of neighboring sites. >>No one is telling you to allow stuff to stay in your machine you disagee >>with, but how could you even think of screwing up someone else's traffic >>in the process? Shame on you. >It's his right. It's his system. It is his system and whatever agreements he makes with his users are valid. Likewise, whatever implied agreements he makes with other sites have to be honored. That is called a 'contract', and it has nothing to do with free speech. To the other readers of this post: this is just one more example of why the beloved anarchy style of running Usenet is also the reason so many unpopular things have happened on the net in recent years. It is hardly what would be termed 'the death of Usenet', but if some of the real old timers around here even recognize this thing five years from now, I would be quite surprised. -- Patrick Townson patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu / US Mail: 60690-1570 FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956
lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (04/12/89)
From article <8196@chinet.chi.il.us>, by patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson): " ... " It is not censorship when a private individual or institution with a " computer chooses what will and will not be on the computer, using any " arbitrary and irrational decisions he wishes. It may very well be censorship, as that term is ordinarily used. It is not just a legal term. " Private property is private property. Supposing that this is intended to mean that the use of your own private property is completely up to you, it is not correct in general. If you operate a computer system as a public facility, you may give up some rights over its operation, as an apartment owner or a restaurant owner, for instance, must maintain safety or health standards and may not choose who to rent to or serve on the basis of race. I don't know whether it is legal for a sysadmin to practice censorship. I don't think it's obvious. I hope it will prove to be illegal, because it's clearly wrong, at least in those situations in which censorship by the state is wrong. Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu