jbn@wdl1.UUCP (jbn ) (10/16/84)
There is not now, nor should there be, any legal obligation of the
operator of a bulletin board, electronic or otherwise, to censor the material
placed there. This should be viewed as a First Amendment issue. The nation
has survived the publication of the Pentagon Papers and publication of the
details of how to build an H-bomb. The nation will survive the phone phreaks.
The use of government censorship to protect a private company's billing
information is a gross abuse of government authority. Where harm can be shown,
there are legal remedies after the fact. But prior restraint is not to be
borne.
Read up on the history of censorship before replying.
John Naglebatie@omovax.UUCP (Alan Batie) (10/16/84)
As a former sysop of a fairly small bulletin board system, I would like to point out that I spent far more time than I should have reading all of the messages. On a popular system in a large city (such as LA), it would be almost, if not completely impossible to do so. My question is: How many megabytes did he have that he could keep messages on-line for a whole month! Alan Batie ...!decvax!microsoft!omovax!argent!batie
mikey@trsvax.UUCP (10/22/84)
>The use of government censorship to protect a private company's <
>billing information is a gross abuse of government authority. <
I thought the issue was the posting of credit card numbers. I think this is
a LOT different than a large companies impersonal internal billing and
accounting procedures. I know I'd get REAL pissed if it was MY number
given out and having an excess usage. Sure, I may not have to pay for it
it the long run, but it's still my aggravation and time to straighten it
out. You tried to compare this to phone freaks, who rip off the phone
company by stealing service but not directly fraudulently trying to
stick someone else for the bill. As to the Pentagon papers, that
applies even less as an alalogy. If you're going to provide a service
like a bulletin board, you'd better be prepared to take responsibility
for its proper usage. You wouldn't just let anybody borrow your car,
would you? Then why should you think that you can set up a BBS without
any self control. I don't advocate censorship, but I don't think that
a BBS is something that can be left "on its own". The potential for
damage is too great. Lets all leave our loaded guns on the seats of
our cars in plain view with the windows open! Lets post signs in
the stores telling people to mix "Easy Off" and "Mr. Clean" and take a
deep sniff to see what happens!
mikey at trsvax
How can anyone even think that these are the views of my employer. I
don't even know what they think.mwm@ea.UUCP (10/23/84)
/***** ea:net.micro / trsvax!mikey / 9:44 am Oct 22, 1984 */ If you're going to provide a service like a bulletin board, you'd better be prepared to take responsibility for its proper usage. mikey at trsvax /* ---------- */ Let's see. A bulletin board is a message passing service, and little else. In that, it resembles the phone company and the post office. Now, since we are going to hold the post office and the phone company liable (as a co-conspirator) of any crimes that use their services to pass vital information (that's what you said, wasn't it?), then they will naturally want to be able to make sure that such messages aren't passed through them. I don't see where they will have any option but to read all our mail, and monitor all our phone calls. No thanks - I'd rather hassle the SYSOP to help locate the criminal than put up with that. If the SYSOP refused to help, then you can slap him with obstructing justice (or whatever term you use for it). But don't make him responsible for it. That puts him in about the same position as Ma Bell and the Post Offal. Of course, the SYSOP can declare certain types of message illegal, and take action against people who post them. This leads to passworded systems. Once more, the many suffer because of the few. <mike
mikey@trsvax.UUCP (10/24/84)
The phone company and the P.O. (thats POST Office) provide private services. A private message left on a BBS should have the same protection as regular mail and your telephone calls for privacy. Maybe someday, but the issue is still PUBLIC messages left on a PUBLIC BBS. To compare PUBLIC information to a private communication is just clouding the issue. mikey at trsvax