[[[See banned.1992 for updates - Carl 10/30/92]]] From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) Subject: Banned Computer Material 1991 (end of year update) Message-ID: <1991Dec18.181508.10501@eff.org> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1991 18:15:08 GMT [[This is an major update of an article that was posted in October. New comments are in double square brackets. - Carl]] As part of Banned Book Week (and only a week late), here is: Banned Computer Material 1991 (and earlier) [The references are to issues of the Computers and Academic Freedom News (CAF-news). Instructions on how to access back issues of CAF-news are at the end of this note.] Netnews articles or email that Steve Brack might wish to post from a free student account at Ohio State University -- Last Spring, Steve Brack meant to post a note to the alt.flame newsgroup but also accidently posted to rec.aquaria. In part because of this note, Brack was permanently expelled (without the chance for a formal hearing or appeal) from OSU's Academic Computer Services (ACS) computers. Now a University Judicial Committee hearing is deciding if Mr. Brack be should punished some more for so-called obscenity (by which they mean writing "fuck you" in the note). (cafv01n20, cafv01n17, cafv01n18, cafv01n16, cafv01n15) [[Steven Brack was dismissed, possibly because of his so-called obscenity. He has said he may sue the University. (cafv01n35, cafv01n39, cafv01n36, cafv01n20)]] Email send to or from the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) that verbally attacks the Center or the University of Illinois like the anonymous email, signed Saddam Hussein, sent to some people at the NCSA -- The NCSA is a department of the University of Illinois. To justify the methods it used to find and punish "Saddam", the NCSA created rules that allowed searches of user email if they suspected that the email verbally attacked the NCSA. [Follow up: this policy is being revised.] (cafn01n03, cafv01n09). [[...]] Outgoing Netnews article from Purdue -- All outgoing articles from some computer sites at Purdue where screened by a sys admin to make sure that there was nothing "grossly wrong with them". [Follow up: outgoing articles are no longer screened.] (cafv01n08, cafv01n03) An article, containing source code for a program, posted to a local newsgroup at Case Western -- The computer administrators at Case Western deleted the article because they were afraid that someone might read the code, learn how to make a program that would disrupt their local network, write a program that would disrupt their local network, run that program and disrupt their local network. (cafv01n08) Netnews including the so-called outrageous postings by users of the Engineering Computing Center at the University of Kentucky -- Complaints to a dean about the so-called outrageous postings were one reason that Netnews was dropped from a U. of Kentucky site (cafv01n25, cafv01n23). [Follow up: Current plans call for Netnews to be restored when more disk space becomes available.] Computer files at Boston University that anyone finds offensive or annoying -- The rules at Boston University prohibit a computer user from "making accessible offensive [or] annoying ... material". (cafv01n10) The rec.humor.funny newsgroup -- It was banned from parts of Stanford University and all of the University of Waterloo because some people found some of its jokes offensive. Ironically, at the same time the computer version of rec.humor.funny was banned from U. of Waterloo, the yearly book version could be found in the University library. [Follow up: Stanford and Waterloo decided that newsgroups should be selected more like library material and rescinded their bans.] [[...]] [[(cafv01n31,cafv01n33)]] The alt.sex newsgroup at the University of Toledo -- [[...]] [[see (ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/batch/oct_06_1991)]] GIF files of naked people on mars.ee.mstate.edu -- Deleted after the National Science Foundation received a complaint and then asked the mars.ee.mstate.edu archivist to justify the files. Apparently the files were available via anonymous ftp across a NSF sponsored net, but were not stored on a NSF computer. [[...]] [[ (cafv01n31) ]] [[ New stuff: More than a dozen newsgroups, including alt.sex, at Western Washington University -- They were removed from Western Washington University on the order of one person, the Vice Provost for "information and communication". Alt.sex remains at the University of Washington, but other newsgroups were removed right before a negative article was printed in the Seattle _Post_Intelligencer_. (cafv01n33, cafv01n36, cafv01n35, cafv01n41) An article posted by a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago -- The student was punished for posting the article, which offended many, to soc.women. The article was canceled. The system admin justified the punishment saying that the article, posted to an international unmoderated newsgroup, was not protected speech because "it can be considered as a generalized form of sexual harassment". The U. of Illinois has no rules on "generalized sexual harassment". The University's rules on (regular) sexual harassment do not authorize sys admins to judge and punish infractions. (cafv01n36,cafv01n34) Rude articles at Iowa State University -- On-line rudeness is prohibited at Iowa State. A student was reprimanded for posting a rude article to the net. (This policy may be under revision). (cafv01n38) The alt.sex.* hierarchy on PSUVM, Penn State's main general purpose computer -- (cafv01n34) Email or Netnews articles that "bring discredit to the University [of Texas] or the [Computer Science] Department." (cafv01n37) Offensive messages at the University of Newcastle -- (cafv01n39) Email containing offensive material at James Madison University -- (cafv01n39) Most on-line discussion of sex and drugs at Iowa State University -- Iowa State University labels all newsgroup as either "limited list", "standard list", or "full list". This labeling is based on the name and description of each newsgroup and not on its actual content. The standard list excludes most discussion of sex and drugs. The plan is that ,starting January 6, 1992, users on public access machines will be restricted to the standard list. (See recent alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk articles.) Racist email at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire -- The university formally reprimanded [a] student and placed him on probation for the remainder of the semester. (Follow up: The student sued in Federal district court and won. See _UWM Post v. University of Wisconsin_ available on-line as ftp.eff.org:pub/academic/law/uwm-post-v-u-of-wisconsin. The judge's decision concludes: "The founding fathers of this nation produced a remarkable document in the Constitution but it was ratified only with the promise of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is central to our concept of freedom. The God-given "unalienable rights" that the infant nation rallied to in the Declaration of Independence can be preserved only if their application is rigorously analyzed. The problems of bigotry and discrimination sought to be addressed here are real and truly corrosive of the educational environment. But freedom of speech is almost absolute in our land and the only restriction the fighting words doctrine can abide is that based on the fear of violent reaction. Content-based prohibitions such as that in the UW Rule, however well intended, simply cannot survive the screening which our Constitution demands." ]] ----------------------------- Back issues of the Computer and Academic Freedom News are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org. They are in directory pub/academic/news. Back issues are also available via email. For information on email access send an email note to archive-server@eff.org. Include the lines "help" and "index". [[For example, to get volume 1, number 39, send email to archiver-server@eff.org. Include the line: send caf-news cafv01n39 ]] I would love to get copies of the shorter banned notes. If you have the joke that got rec.humor.funny banned, the NCSA email, Brack's note, the Case Western source code, etc., please contact me. - Carl -- Carl Kadie -- kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu, or (anonymous) ap.4352@hri.com I do not represent EFF; this is just me. -------------------