[37] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Example of how Federal control of Internet censors content
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Oct 28 22:42:09 1990
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 90 22:28:02 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: gnu@toad.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: John Gilmore's message of Sun, 28 Oct 90 16:33:47 PST <9010290033.AA14440@hop.toad.com>
A few thoughts...
1. The messages assume that the only point at which NSF enters the
fiscal picture is at the network.
Let's assume that's true and all that is relevant here (it may not
be.)
Then why WU should delete anything from their disks based on that is
confusing.
It seems to be analogous to demanding that 900 numbers be closed down
because people are calling them from work and wasting their employer's
phone resources.
They (other NSF sites) should tell their "employees" to stop
"dialing", or equivalent. Certainly the data spinning untouched on the
disk is not a violation, as described.
It's certainly not WU's responsibility if someone else abuses their
own networking agreement in some way to get to WU's ftp server.
I assume that, at least, interior campus networks can get to this
server w/o travelling over any specifically NSF networks (at least.)
The issue here is "who initiates the ``unauthorized'' connection"?
Certainly not WU. They already have all that stuff, they're the least
likely to move it across an NSF network.
2. There is a real danger here of even beginning to admit that one is
"editing" the contents of the networks.
Assuming that WU has typical silly computer games (nothing of research
interest) on-line for downloading, how is this ok while the gif's
aren't?
In fact, WU (and most other archive sites) has all sorts of things of
questionable "educational or research value" (e.g. they have a large
MS/DOS collection, much of it is in binary-only form, so forget any
educational value of studying the games' code.)
This comes up a lot when someone tries to close down a connection to,
say, alt.sex on USENET at a university using the same "educational and
research" reasoning. Why do they not shut down, oh, rec.food.cooking?
Clearly the emperors (whoever they may be) have no clothes.
It's only the sexual content of the material that's being objected to,
not its "educational and/or research" value.
There's been absolutely no general attempt to enforce any broader
notion which seems to be claimed here.
What's the expression? "When they say it's the principle, it's usually
the money." Here I think we have "When they say it's the educational
and research value, it's usually the sex."
3. In fact, as we all know, NSF does influence how money is spent at
universities (&c) who take the agency's money. I don't know to what
extent NSF can consider itself to be directly (thru research grants)
or indirectly (thru overhead) subsidizing this archive (paying for the
disks, computers etc.) Of course, that's not what's claimed here, but
let's follow it.
Certainly it's not outrageous for NSF to take the attitude that if a
University has enough spare cash to pay for "frivolous" activity X
then perhaps they don't need the asked-for funding for "worthy"
activity Y, and a more needy organization should be sought out.
If activity X is frivolous enough, one can see an issue.
The university could feel exposed to being told that they've made it
obvious (to the granting agencies) that they (WU) have more money than
they know what to do with, so they should fund themselves (e.g. their
own network connection, whatever.)
[yes, this assumes that the cost of X, or several X's, adds up to the
cost of Y, but let's assume, for the moment, this is true.]
But then again, I've never heard of a university which limits itself
to only spending money on education and research (unless you really
think kids learn a lot at those six and seven digit graduation bashes,
for example.)
Anyhow, interesting issues.
-Barry Shein
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