From: hallam@dscomsa.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: URGENT **** TED FRANK WANTED FOR KILLING AJ TEEL...
Lines: 181
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESYDeutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA


In article <1993Apr12.031404.25988@eff.org>, mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:

|>In article <C5Bvqy.FLD@dscomsa.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:
|>
|>>|>But punishing the person for posting such a thing smacks of
|>>|>authoritarianism.
|>>
|>>It's a deliberate act of fraud intended to cause harm.
|>
|>You seem to be unclear about the legal meaning of "fraud." Mere
|>misrepresentation is not fraud.

Your comment here is meant as a put down. It fails for several reasons :

1) You have edited out the context of the action under discussion. 
2) I never brought the legal definition up. I use the English language
and not the legal dialect. The legal definition of fraud changes from
one country to another in any case. The context of the discussion is morality
of censorship.



|>>|>How does a posting from your site do any such thing? Especially if your
|>>|>site is a university? Do you know any person who believes that a 
|>>|>university endorses every comment made from a university site?
|>>
|>>That is why I refered specifically to a company.
|>
|>Good. Now, do you know any person who believes that a company endorses
|>every comment made from a university site?

You are extrapolating from the statement I made concerning a circumstance
in which such an act of censorship would be permissable to the Teel case.
If you had bothered to read the post instead of trying to prove how stupid you
thought me you would have done rather better. The mode of argument I was using
was a form of rhetoric. Argument by example, I describe a wide set of
circumstances in which an action is permisable and demonstrate that they
do not apply, thus the action is not permisable.

Obviously a company posting from a University adress would be squashed,  it
would be contrary to the internet comercial use.

|>>|>Usenet does not distribute letterhead.
|>>
|>>Organization: DESYDeutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
|>
|>I suggest strongly that if you mean for this to be taken as letterhead you
|>get a better stationery designer. 

Now you are clutching at straws. In the context of the discussion it was
the fact of association between the company and the post that was important.
The typeface etc is inconsequential.


|>>There are people on the net who are openly supporting the murder of members
|>>of my family.
|>
|>Sigh.

If you are implying that I am lying I suggest you read Mark Holohan and Ulick
Staffords posts into soc.culture.british. If you are suggesting that 
advocating murder is a trivial matter I would prefer that you state it
directly. 

Certainly I oppose the right of Dr Sidiqui and the Ayatolah Khomenhi to
call for the murder of Salman Rushdie. Incitement to murder is not part
of what I consider legitimate freedom of speech.


|>>|>As for your notion that employees can argue their different political
|>>|>views "at their own expense," could you explain precisely what "expense"
|>>|>you're talking about?
|>>
|>>Internet is not free. The connection charges are quite expensive for comercial
|>>concerns.
|>
|>Could you give me a cost breakdown for the expense to your company
|>attributable to an employee's posting a political view in disagreement
|>with yours? Numbers, please.

That is irrelevant, the case is not the incremental cost but the facility
cost. If I decide that a company I am associated with should subscribe
to USEnet that usenet connection is the property of the company. It is
quite legitimate for a company to have a political or other agenda and
regulate the use of its property in accordance with its policy. For example
if a Microsoft employee were to post "Windows NT is crap don't buy it"
from a Microsoft machine I would consider it reasonable for Microsoft to
sack that employee. In the same way if a company decides that it has 
political objectives it might wish to regulate postings in a political
manner. This is no worse than Rupert Murdoch using his papers as a political
platform for his views.


|>>I was refering to the arrogance of your position, quoting the words written
|>>by slave owners at me in the cause of freedom.
|>
|>Which words written by slave owners did I quote? I don't recall quoting
|>anyone.

ah yes you did not quote them, merely refered to them.


|>>Your constitution is not
|>>considered sacrosanct in other parts of the globe. 
|>
|>Nor have I assumed it is. I don't consider the First Amendment to have
|>talismanic value.
|>
|>>You might just as well have attempted to argue from the King James bible
|>>to a Muslim. I was pointing out that your reasoning is parochial when with
|>>little effort you could have made a substantive point. 
|>
|>I made the effort; apparently you made a certain effort to misunderstand
|>me.

Your article consisted of a reference to the first ammendment, your signature
and pretty well damn all else. 


|>>|>For an example of a UK publication that understands this, try INDEX ON
|>>|>CENSORSHIP.
|>>
|>>I used to subscribe, I would still if I was not moving.
|>
|>INDEX regularly publishes opinions by non-Americans who believe the First
|>Amendment represents appropriate free-speech principles for all open
|>societies. See, e.g., the opinions of the dissenting law lords in the
|>SPYCATCHER case.

Are you refering to the initial hearings on an injunction or the judgments
on the substantive case?

The initial hearings that the government won were judged on the not unresonable
judgment that assertion by the government that the national interest might be
harmed would be grounds for prior restraint. The second set of hearings on the
substance judged that the government had no case and that the official secrets
act could not be used to suppress information in thwe public domain already.
The part that they won was over the copyright issue which is rather separate.

Here again the issue of censorship is rather different in the case that
information is divulged on the understanding that it will not be communicated
to third parties. The first ammendment certainly does not apply in this
case as the numerous prosecutions of spies in the US proves. 

The crux of the Spycatcher affair was extrateritoriality of British law.
The censorship aspect of it arose as a result of the government's
ludicrous attempts to prevent summary of the case in the book. 


|>>|>You haven't any reason to believe that anything I've said has been reached
|>>|>unquestioningly.
|>>
|>>Only most of what you write. 
|>
|>For someone who purports to be opposed to argument from assertion, you
|>certainly get by on assertions a lot.

Funny I saw that as a rejection of an assertion that you had made. Of course in
rejecting an assertion I have to make a contrary assertion, since this assertion
is unprovable I left it at that. 

So far I have not seen you demonstrate a command of the contrary opinion to your
own. You are attacking my anti-censorship view because I dare to accept the
validity of some pro-censorship arguments while rejecting their conclusions. 
Plus I am not an absolutist. I have this funny idea that the solution to this
problem was not decided in 1789 by a group of white male gentry in secret
session and sumarized in a single line. Furthermore I don't think that the
issues are half as simple as you imply.

|>>You may think that I am being anti-American in disallowing recourse to the
|>>first ammendment. It's just that this argument has no currency in the parts
|>>of the world where there is state censorship such as Iran, Kewait and Israel.
|>
|>I don't pretend to have geared my discourse for all conceivable audiences.

I don't think that you have geered your discourse to any audience save that
of proving that you are the only person wearing a white hat.


Phill Hallam-Baker
