[592] in libertarians
Reminder - MIT IAP activity, about computer policies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethf@MIT.EDU)
Mon Jan 30 03:39:33 1995
From: sethf@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 03:38:19 -0500
To: safe@MIT.EDU
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Activity: 61
Civil (And Uncivil) Computing And Network Behavior: Is It Different When
You Do It In Your Room?
Prof. Greg Jackson
Mon, Jan 30, 1-3 pm in 3-133. Enrollment limited to 60 people.
Pervasive networking creates many new opportunities for community-wide
communication and interaction. Using a few actual case studies, we'll
talk about ways people misuse networks and about how our community can
best handle these cases. Sponsor: Information Systems.
Contact: Jeanne Cavanaugh, 11-301, x3-0852.
Though the preceding activity may sound boring, it looks to be
very relevant to the issues of freedom of expression in electronic
media. This is of particularly importance to people interested in electronic
freedoms, such as myself, and hopefully other people on this list.
Greg Jackson is MIT's "Director Of Academic Computing", one step below the
MIT Vice-President in this area. He'll be describing the enforcement mechanisms
used for computer cases at MIT. There's material for this on-line, at the URL
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6095/readings-4.html
His article has a lot of the themes that would be familiar to
people who read the critical parts of the MIT harassment guide. The
"interests" rather than rights approach is prominent (i.e., instead of
thinking of your rights, think of your "interests" - like you have
a very strong interest in not being hauled before the Deans or the COD),
as well as "balancing" (the classic construction of "choosing" between
people who want to read something and people who don't want others to
read it). "Civil" behavior seems to be defined to be that behavior
which is least troublesome to the authorities.
I wrote him a long critique of the free-speech aspects of his
article, essentially arguing that his system amounted to threatening
everyone into plea-bargaining their cases, and suffered from the stock
"to be accused is to be guilty" and "you have a right as long as you
don't abuse it by exercising it" problems of policies with poor due
process. People interested in Athena should definitely go to this, it's
particularly relevant given the recent publicity over the newsgroup bans
at CMU. It would be good to have other people there to argue the
free-speech point of view, I suspect there will be many people for the
University-as-parent viewpoint. I'd much rather be the flamer of a faction as
opposed to a voice in the wilderness.
================
Seth Finkelstein
sethf@mit.edu
P.S. : Since I spent a long time critiquing Greg Jackson's article, anyone
who wants to do a little pre-activity strategizing is welcome to mail me.
