Re: Futplex makes the news!

At 8:47 PM 2/2/96, Richard Martin wrote:
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>http://www.boston.com/globe/ap/cgi-bin/retrieve?%2Fglobe%2Fapwir%2F033%2Fre
>g%2Fag052102
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>Is an AP report on the at-home censorship.

Many thanks for providing this, Richard! I just read it, and it worries me.

If UMass has yielded, the prominently mentioned CMU and Stanford sites may
be prompted to exactly the same thing. This will "prove" to the Germans
that they did the right thing, and be a blow in _favor_ of suppression of
speech.

I hope some other sites have the mirrored material and are not reeds in the
wind as at least one university is.

(Did I hear correctly that Futplex has "volunteered" to perform 500 hours
of community service at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Boston office? And
that he has volunteered to attend 50 hours of sensitivity training? Or am
thinking of Cornell?)

Not to make light of this sorry episode, you understand. But my guess is
that unless Futplex immediately begins to grovel to the campus bigshots and
explain how his judgment was impaired by exposure to fascist Cypherpunks,
that his days at UMass as a grad student are numbered. This is the way
universities seem to handle these things.

--Tim, who hopes he's wrong....

Boycott espionage-enabled software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 15:34:24 -0800
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   If UMass has yielded, the prominently mentioned CMU and Stanford sites may
   be prompted to exactly the same thing. This will "prove" to the Germans
   that they did the right thing, and be a blow in _favor_ of suppression of
   speech.

I just heard the latest version of this story on WBZ radio here in
Boston.  The report quoted the chairman of the CS dept. at UMass; his
claim is that Futplex's distribution of the material was clearly a
"political act" and thus not an appropriate uses of computing resources
funded by public tax dollars.  The report clearly stated that Futplex's
actions were taken to protest German censorship.

Immediately after this story WBZ reported that Germany is now
investigating AOL for possible distributions of banned material.

					--bal

Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 2-Feb-96 Re: Futplex makes the news!
by Timothy C. May@got.net 
> If UMass has yielded, the prominently mentioned CMU and Stanford sites may
> be prompted to exactly the same thing. This will "prove" to the Germans
> that they did the right thing, and be a blow in _favor_ of suppression of
> speech.
>  
> I hope some other sites have the mirrored material and are not reeds in the
> wind as at least one university is.

If we're talking about Nazis, UMass is the place to look for the PC
breed of 'em. Check out http://joc.mit.edu/roundup.html for info on
their recent PC speech code censor attempts at UMass Amherst.

I've decided to take the materials off my web pages -- but with no
pressure from, and in fact no communication at all with CMU
administrators. I've had nothing but support from the School of Computer
Science folks at Carnegie Mellon. A CMU SCS faculty member even offered
to host the pages if the administration got their panties in a snit.

This after there was a front page above-the-fold article in today's
Pittsburgh Tribune Review: "CMU in middle of Internet flap" It talked
about the Simon Wiesenthal Center's efforts to, um, educate university
administrators:

    The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the world's leading anti-Nazi organization,
was fuming however -- faxing indignant messages to the presidents of CMU,
Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of
Pennsylvania...

    Mark Weitzman, the director of the Wiesenthal Center's Task Force Against
Hate, said he had heard nothing by late yesterday afternoon from CMU
President Robert Mehrabian, whom he had urged by fax Wednesday "to address
this issue as quickly as possible."...

    Linda Hurwitz, director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, criticized
the postings, saying while she didn't approve of censorship in general, some
lies were so harmful that they were tantamount to yelling "fire" in a crowded
theater.

I don't often congratulate Carnegie Mellon for a job well done, but this
is one of those occasions. (Though I'm not sure how the administration
would have reacted if the Zundelstumphen was in my Andrew account
instead of my SCS AFS directory...)

-Declan

I originally sent Tim private mail saying "you're wrong."

On the other hand, reading futplex's actual statement and the fact that
Germany continues to "investigate" CompuServe and AOL, maybe he's right... 

This is not the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.

I also think there's a place for premature ejaculations of victory, 
because they tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. If the press says 
that Germany is successfully censoring Zundel, then that sets a 
precedent; but if the press says that Germany's limp attempts to censor 
somebody on the Internet were a total failure, then they'll just look 
like a bunch of goofballs pursuing a lost cause. 

-rich