[11717] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: In the matter of advertisements and lawsuits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Phillips)
Fri Apr 15 10:32:57 1994
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 15:41:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Phillips <paulp@is.internic.net>
To: Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>
Cc: Everyone Else Lurking on Com-Priv <com-priv@psi.com>,
Risks in computing <RISKS@csl.sri.com>,
Ethics in Computing <ETHICS-L@vm.gmd.de>
In-Reply-To: <01.1994Apr14.01h05m37s.PAUL-0100000@TDR.COM>
> [Long summary of green card post and its implications for the
> future of free speech deleted]
How far did you look into this? That "green card" post was on every
single Usenet group I read, not just a few mailing lists (it also
appeared on most mailing lists I see.) It was crossposted to two
apparently random groups at a time, probably to every group that his
newsfeed carried.
This is exactly like the long religious rant that was single posted to
every newsgroup (by Clarence Thomas, I believe) and it has as much to do
with free speech as that did - nothing. The only injustice here is that
all of his posts weren't cancelled, and that he didn't receive a several
thousand dollar bill for the trouble caused.
Portraying a matter like this as a free speech issue does a huge
disservice to the future of free speech.
