Re: Questions and comments

Jim Merritt wrote:

>     Actually, what it tells me is that they have information flow control 
>     more like corporations than universities, and that they should look 
>     there for possibly already configured solutions to their problem.  The 
>     firewalls mailing list address such things commonly.
>     
>     Beats me why folks keep bringing in their own prejudices to a comon p 
>     roblem.  A shame they are blocked by their own fears and wind up 
>     re-inventing the wheel.  Ah well.....

In Jim's oroginal message he also wrote that a member of the college
reporting the problem had been expelled for unacceptable download
practices.  I do not know whether this was a single incident or a repeat
offence.

<opinion>
I would say that any provider bears some of the responsibility for the
type of material to which they provide access.  We have had instances here
where students have been censured (but not expelled) for downloading and
printing out items from some of the more salubrious usenet lists but we
continue to provide access to these more than a year after the case.

Unrestrained religion is a dreadful thing.  Witness the crusades, the
inquisition, the Iranian Mullahs and the fundamentalist right in America.
I have a moral viewpoint and I am prepared to discuss and temper that
viewpoint in a democratic environment.  I do not hold freedom of speech
as the highest political goal and support the curbing of racist propoganda
or incitement.  However, the rise in the availability of information via
the internet requires us all to consider honestly what we consider proper
or acceptable and on that level I do not consider the "alt.sex" lists (for
example) necessarily evil.  It is, after all, more than two thousand years
since Plato wrote the allegory of the "beast with two backs".
</opinion>

Facts?  You want facts?  Have a wheel.

Alastair Aitken. (http://www.unl.ac.uk/~alastair/)

Received on Thursday, 18 January 1996 04:44:35 UTC