comp-org-eff-news@well.sf.ca.us (09/15/90)
(excerpted from "About the EFF") ******************************************************** The EFF (formally the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.) has been established to help civilize the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with our society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication. ******************************************************** The comp.org.eff.news and comp.org.eff.talk USENET newsgroups on the INET distribution, and the EFF mailing list are the place to discuss topics relating to the EFF and the missions of the EFF. Discussion topics are wide open, including first amendment issues, civil liberties issues, access to technology, legal issues relating to telecommunications and technology, etc. Read the "Mission of the EFF" below for other ideas. The former newsgroup is moderated and will contain announcements, responses to announcements; and selected discussion drawn from the unmoderated "talk" newsgroup, from the mailing list, and from postings made to the moderated newsgroup. Everything that goes out over the EFF mailing list will also be posted in comp.org.eff.news, so if you read the newsgroup you don't need to subscribe to the mailing list. ******************************************************** Send requests to be added to or dropped from the EFF mailing list or other general correspondence to eff-request@well.sf.ca.us. Postings submitted to the moderated newsgroup may be reprinted by the EFF. To submit a posting, you may send mail to comp-org-eff-news@well.sf.ca.us. ******************************************************** Besides discussing things online, what can you do? ******************************************************** You can turn some of the immense processing horsepower of your distributed Mind to the task of finding useful new metaphors for community, expression, property, privacy and other realities of the physical world which seem up for grabs in these less tangible regions. And you can try to communicate to technically unsophisticated friends the extent to which their future freedoms and well-being may depend on understanding the broad forms of digital communication, if not necessarily the technical details. You can also contact Mitchell Kapor (mkapor@well.sf.ca.us) and John Perry Barlow (barlow@well.sf.ca.us) or you can just send email to eff@well.sf.ca.us. ******************************************************** Some questions people ask... ******************************************************** Q: Mitch Kapor! Isn't he with Lotus? A: Mitch was one of the founders of Lotus, but is not with Lotus now. Actually, there are more questions, but we wanted to get this out... We'll fill in this space next month. ******************************************************** Mission of the EFF ******************************************************** 1. to engage in and support educational activities which increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by developments in computing and telecommunications. 2. to develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these new technologies by society. 3. to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media and, where necessary, support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology. 4. to encourage and support the development of new tools which will endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based telecommunications.