BORDEN@YALEMED.BITNET (jonathan borden) (03/03/88)
The postmaster at MITVMA (Arthur Anger) read a message which
was en-route to UMASS. This message contained some language which
this postmaster did not approve of. He chastisted the sender.
I was amazed that a postmaster would comment upon, let alone
read a message not addressed to him/her, nor even his/her institution!
This appears to be blatant censorship. I asked the accused postmaster
to comment upon the truth of this:
****start of reply****
From: "Arthur L Anger (Postmaster)" <Anger@MITVMA>
To: BORDEN
Subj: Re: Is this true?
1. It is true that I received an impolitely titled message to UMass from
"Hobbit", and that I chastised him for the form of the message being sent
to one or more people unknown to him personally.
2. He soon sent a more civil inquiry into the fate of his message, to
which I sent a lengthy reply addressing his questions, and followed up
with a copy of my forwarding to UMass.
3. I had informed him that we had had trouble forwarding several messages
to UMass; I did not say they were his messages--this was the first I had
seen from him.
4. I explained to him that it is not our practice to snoop at messages
passing through our gateway, but when one gets stuck, we have to look at it.
If his language had been addressed to a private individual, I may not have
reacted so strongly. Since it was addressed impersonally to a Postmaster
from whom he expected favorable treatment, and I happened to be a
Postmaster who had to deal with it, it seemed to apply to me.
****end of reply****
It would not appear to this reader that a message addressed to the
postmaster at UMASS would "seem to apply" to anyone at MITVMA, nor to the
postmaster at MITVMA. It is also not clear why a postmaster at MITVMA should
need to (or want to) read messages en-route. The fact that he was having trouble
forwarding several messages to UMASS would not reflect upon the content of the
message (unless it was some sort of anti-BITNET virus!), rather the status of
the link between MIT and UMASS. Arthur Anger would never have become angered
at the message in the first place had he not read it!!! and certainly having
read it, had less right to respond to it.
jonathan borden
yale university