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Usenet Gag Order
An anonymous coward sent us this link, noting that a judge in Seattle has issued a restraining order barring the defendant from posting in a specific Usenet group, even non-harassing posts. Taking a look at the newsgroup, it looks like one of any number of Usenet flamewars, and the defendant might well meet the definition of Usenet kook (as do the petitioners, it seems). The question is whether anyone should have the ability to use the legal system to exclude another from posting in a public forum; unlike other forms of harassment, a Usenet post is not directed to any particular person.
I guess we know who was sleeping when they did all that talk about the "first amendment" and "freedom of speech" during law school.
No matter how offensive or stupid the speech, it's not up to the government to censor it.
Hmmm, i really don`t know what to make of this. How long before we have restraining orders against posting on alt.sex.* etc newsgroups?
Spam is unappreciated, but anything else in the ballpark is permissible.
The judge should have ordered that only moderated groups can be held to this kind of standard.
I don't think this sounds too different from a normal restraining order. If you've caused someone enough trouble, you're not allowed to get near them, even if you intend only to make polite conversation. I don't know the details of the case, but I think the idea makes sense.
This seems pretty absurd to me. Unlike many other forms of communication, Usenet doesn't force you to read it. If you get tired of a flame war, or fed up with a pesky user, just don't read it anymore! I don't think their is any legal authority for what the judge did. Clearly, (s)he doesn't understand the issue.
There's no reason for a sig here.
Tragic. Silly. And mostly ineffectual, IMO, if the guy wants to persist in being a net.kook.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
I'm not so sure about usenet, but the internet isn't a U.S. thing, its international, belonging to no one specificly. If the Gov. doesn't/can't control the internet, what right does it have to interfere with usenet?
maybe the Scientologists will restrict talk on alt.religion.scientology to Scientology "happy talk" only.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
When somebody stalks you and harasses you, you don't get to decide "that's it, I'm fed up, I just won't be seeing him any more". With usenet you can. You always have the freedom not to care.
There's no reason for a sig here.
Archimedes Plutonium disappeared.
This is really typical though. Free speech is not much different than free markets. Both depend on just exactly who gets to define the words _free_, and in this case, _speech_. It appears that the judge and plaintiffs get to define words here.
Then again, pre-web, just being on the internet was dues to the Fringe Element of Society Club.
Ah well, just an old codger here, pining for the days of kibology and p-adic insanity.
ciao
If you recieve threats in the mail, they arrive at your door. You can't just ignore them. But with usenet, or a letter to the editor in fact, by "logging in"/opening the newspaper, you are ASKING for people you don't know to talk to you, and possible harass you. You can always close the newspaper.
There's no reason for a sig here.
oh, and first comment!
Should there be a fund established to aid Mr. Abraham in fighting this, please be sure to let us know! I'm sure there'll be no shortage of contributors!
That's like saying that if someone always (and only) harrasses you when you go to a public park, you should just stop going to that park. Maybe that's not a bad idea, but the law says that the person who is in the wrong (i.e. the harrasser) should lose the priviledge of using the park, not the victim. There is no reason why the person who was harrassed should no longer be able to use the newsgroup. Your solution makes the abused suffer more and lets the abuser off without consequence.
If you go through the whole article, the bit at the bottom says "help remove the gag order from our Assistant Webmaster"... I'm thinking that there's perhaps a bit of reporting bias here?
The judge's decision is ridiculous as reported in that article, but I'm pretty sure we haven't seen the entire story here. (Not that I'd care to ever see the courts interfere on USENET...)
He's been posting about his "college tour", and Leader Kibo's been all over him as usual :)
Absolutely hilarious!
Leanne did not post the requested nudie pic.
What I wonder is, why does Shirey have the right to ban this man? Death threats?
Hm. That kind of thing happens on IRC, Usenet, and the like. Coarse language? Yeah, that's there too. I'm not saying I'm wild about any of it, but has anything been substantiated? Has anyone been hurt?
Before we go on a rampage about how our justice is being undermined, let's take into consideration that some people take death threats seriously. In the midst of a Usenet flame war, I'd call it bluster and bravado, but where does one draw the line of harrassment? An interesting question.
However, one has to take Usenet with a grain of salt at times. Flames happen. People disagree. In such a flexible medium, almost anything is possible.
I think Shirey had no authority to make such a ruling on the newsgroup. Postings are owned by the poster or by the newsgroup owner, constituting it a private publication. I'd say this is a violation of free speech.
What can we really do about this though? More stipulations aren't the answer. The gov't has to realize the Internet is sort of an embodiment of freedom itself...
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
I found the whole story about flame wars being resolved in courts funny. I wonder when will the first slashdot flame war end up in court.
Personally, I find this to be a bit ludicrous-obviously some folks took things a bit too seriously on the Usenet. Even at the worst I've ever seen (the old Bazemore vs Raphael Quinet war on alt.games.quake & alt.game.doom comes to mind), its never been taken to a legal environment. Not only is this a rather disturbing development for the Usenet (before now noone _ever_ took things this far!), but its a disturbing sign of where things could well go from now. Imagine if you were ordered stop posting to Slashdot by a judge.
Anyone heard of... killfiles?
It is in the nature of government to do this sort of thing. Governments, like children, really cannot help themselves -- they must be disciplined. The only real question is whether the discipline should involve violence. I don't think it is necessary to resort to violence as long as we use the neocortex to generate signal among the noise and inventions that out-flank the limbic programming of the political animals. If we play an instinctive game of argument or violent confrontation, we're on the turf of the political animals and they win. If, on the other hand, we change reality via technology -- the game is on our turf.
Seastead this.
From the description, it sounded as though it was a fairly typical flame-war, where much is said and little is meant. If that's all it was, I can't imagine that the ruling would hold up under the First Amendment.
If, on the other hand, people were making threats which they seemed poised to carry out, then action may have been warranted.
Has anyone found a copy of the posts in question? I had a quick look but wasn't successful.
I can understand issuing restaining orders to prevent someone who is physically threatening someone from coming near or talking to an individual, but I don't think that public mass flaming/spamming falls under that. Unless a person is actually going out of his/her way to privatly harrass one person in a way that could cause them to fear for thier safety, I don't belive the government has a right to resrict one's right's. The Usenet is a public forum where free speech is fundamental, no matter how irritating or idiotic.
Stuff like this is a problem, but there are ways to deal with it. You can use spam filters and learn to ignore flames. If you still are unable to cope, take your conversation elsewhere. There are plenty of privately operated forums that moderate.
Personally, I think censorship is fine when used in private forums where the owner has the right to decide what can and cannot be said through his or her server, but the Usenet is not private. The govenment does not have the power to decide what can and cannot be siad in public communication mediums.
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
The restraining order is not for all of Usenet but for a specific newsgroup. The individual's freedom of speech is therefore not curtailed.
;)
Postings directed to a particular newsgroup may not be targetted at a specific individual, but they are targetted at a community of people formed by the newsgroup's ``regulars''. It's reasonable for these people to want some sort of remedy for someone who is an utter nuisance.
In recent years, groups of individuals have emerged on Usenet whose only intent is to harass. They crosspost on purpose between completely unrelated newsgroups. When someone trims followups, they put them back. They fill their postings with tons of garbage, ASCII graphic crud and whatnot. Clearly, when your only aim is to disturb rational conversation, you aren't expressing your freedom of speech, you are abusing your freedom to curtail that of others.
There are no adequate means of moderation in Usenet (as there is in slashdot), so turning to the courts may be the only way to get peace.
Someone mentioned that there are moderated newsgroups; how little this individual knows how Usenet really works!
First of all, the moderation can be bypassed; you can still post directly to a moderated newsgroup, even though this is obviously highly frowned upon. I have done it once or twice in the past when the moderator's address wouldn't work for me, due to broken software or whatever. Even though there was nothing wrong with my messages---they were the sort that would be passed by the moderator---I received a slap-on-the wrist e-mail not to do that again.
Secondly, newsgroup moderation works by filtering postings through the mailbox of some tireless, tolerant individual who has to sift through everything and decide what gets posted. Thus harassment and spam is simply hidden away from the public and suffered by the moderator.
Thirdly, moderated newsgroups tend to be not nearly as lively as their unmoderated counterparts. For example, comp.lang.c.moderated tends to be dead compared to comp.lang.c.
Ultimately, Usenet moderation (as we know it) is not the answer.
Frankly, what could you expect from a group of people immature enough to get into a flamewar over skiing in the first place? It was inevitable at some point that someone this immature would seek legal assistance to protect their fragile overblown egos from popping from the heat of flamewars that they themselves have caused. While it deeply saddens me to see our rights further limited due to the immaturity and ignorance of the few, I'm surprised it took as long as it did. I do have to commend the participators in the "discussion" for their response to Waldron's post in Shirey's name, though. I'd like to send a big hearty thanks to Mr. Waldron and Detective Shirey, for ensuring my safety on Usenet for years to come. I no longer have to worry about people that disagree with me! Now I only have to worry about not disagreeing with anyone else.
logan
It is trivial to post anonymously to a newsgroup. In fact, he could continue posting with his same nickname, and even continue to be annoying and if he is half competent, it would be impossible to prove it's him.
Of course that would be an extremely loser-ish thing to do. He could also just assume a different alias and write productive, on-topic posts. This would make the original problem go away, but he would still be violating the order.
The point is, they don't seem to be considering the fact that it is inherently impossible to regulate usenet, and that this ruling is basically unenforceable.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Than giving a comment -1 on slashdot. You practice this form of censorship everday then yell and scream when the government or private sector tries it.
Except for that incredibly insightful "Hollywood" character. What a riot. I will also request a picture in white tank top and orange shorts.
"In recent years, groups of individuals have emerged on Usenet whose only intent is to harass"
-->
should these people who only disturb normal conversation not be sentenced in another way?
it could be that some of them have problems emerged from subconscious agressions, and stuff like that
probably this type of troublemaker is just in need for an appropriate psychological treatment?
I remember a time when it was common to use real names in Usenet. Funny how no one mentioned this so far.
In August I was requested to come speak with the Dean of Students here about a post I had made on a local, university newsgroup (a repost of a parody of "On Top of the Schoolhouse," itself a parody of "On Top of Old Smokey," of course).
Secure in the knowledge that I had been simply enjoying my right to freedom of expression (as protected specifically by our computer resources user agreement), I walked confidently into the meeting, only to discover that the post had eventually come under scrutiny as potentially threatening.
Of course, the reason they thought it was threatening was because they didn't really understand quoting conventions, and thought I had written the whole thing, including the text I had quoted above the parody.
Still, these people--who do not understand Usenet, and who do not care to--had taken a complaint about my post and decided to act upon it. Had I not been able to convince them that part of the message was a quote, they might have acted on a perceived "threat" (doing what, I have no idea).
It's really scary to see this coming out in a court of law. It was bad enough when a Dean of Students (of a technologically oriented institution) was trying to interpret a medium that she did not really understand, and make a ruling based on that lack of knowledge.
From the DoJ FoF in the MS case, it's clear that at least someone in the Justice Dept can make the effort and learn to understand some of the computer industry. But the justice system is staffed with many individuals, most of whom really don't have to know all that much about computers/Usenet/the "Web"/such things, yet they can make rulings based on these things about which they know so little, and understand so much less.
I'm suddenly frightened. I was so secure in my First Amendment rights. What is a threat? What kind of speech deserves a restraining order? What kind of speech deserves more than that?
Words that I merely quoted in a followup were perceieved as threatening, in combination with words I did post [though I credited the original author of the parody]...
A completely unrealistic "threat" was percieved simply because people didn't understand the medium. Fortunately I was in an informal meeting with someone pre-disposed to believe me. Had I not been, I might be fighting this out in a court of law--with power to resolve resting in more people who don't understand the medium.
Louis Brandeis said, "Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means."
Clearly, this judge does not share either the intellectual capital or political leanings of Justice Brandeis. The notion that a flame war constitutes "fighting words" (which are not protected under the First Amendment) is nonsensical, and certainly unsupported by any empirical evidence that flame wars are likely to cause one of the participants to react with physical violence. In any event, the judges order appears to function as a very broad prior restraint. Statutes the prohibited speech that "stirs the public to anger or invites dispute" have been struck down as constitutionally overbroad. How constitutional can a judge's order that Usenet postings must be "on topic" be?
Clearly the judge's order is not a narrowly tailored, content-neutral, "time, place, and manner" restriction and do not serve a significan government interest. Usenet is basically a wide-open public forum, and the judge's attempt to moderate it is not a "legitimate public function."
Judges get away with this kind of unconstitutional crap because they exercise power in the form of an injunction. If this guy violates it and is held in contempt, he may not be able to raise the unconstitutionality of the judge's order as a defense (see Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307 (1967) (dealing with contempt resulting from injunction under a facially invalid statute). Probably this guy doesn't have the means to appeal the injunction, so he's got no choice but to obey it. Once again, the law works to the advantage of those with power and money.
Yes many comments are reduced to -1, but whether you view it or not is up to you. You do have the option of setting your threshold should you choose to see what got moderated down to the negative range. There is no deletion of objectionable material, nor is any specific person forbidden to post. Also, it is more a public form of "censorship" (should you choose to call it censorship). A moderator may be able to trash a post, but the ruling is never truly final. If someone is unjustly marked down another moderator can always bump that post back up where it belongs. And the most important part is that WE, the people who use /. are in control of what is seen, not the goverment or the guys who run the site.
It was long enough already, I wanted to separate this from the post :)
On Top of Tech Tower (Eric Lorenzo 31 Jul 1998)
====================
On top of Tech Tower
With an AR-15,
I shot dead three students,
Two profs and a dean.
The students were all girls [TBS: "Tech Bitch Syndrome": what happens to chicks when surrounded by hordes of slavering geeks just waiting for their turn]
Who had turned me down.
TBS is fatal:
Now they're underground.
The profs had both failed me,
When I should have passed.
And I shot the dean 'cause
He's a great big dumb-ass.
I shot them with pleasure,
I grinned as they died.
And then I ran off to
The mountains to hide.
The cops they did catch me,
And they did so well.
I wrote a confession
Signed George P. Burdell.
C'mon folks, so far we have an AC posting about a web page put up by a certified usenet kook asserting that he's under a terrible gag order.
/. to check out every story like a real news agency, but if /. starts reporting every outragious story that can be found on a web page someplace, it's going to need a whole lot more disk space.
This is news? Has anyone actually even *seen* this gag order, or what it says?
I don't really expect
It was long enough already, I wanted to separate this from the post :)
............[TBS: "Tech Bitch Syndrome": what happens to chicks when surrounded by ] .........[hordes of slavering geeks just waiting for their turn] ...........................................[As I am female, this stanza is difficult to see as a threat, from me...;)]
..[I myself have never failed a class, to which records a Dean would have access] .....[there are no male deans here]
.......[George P. Burdell is a legendary imaginary tradition :)]
On Top of Tech Tower (Eric Lorenzo 31 Jul 1998)
====================
On top of Tech Tower
With an AR-15,
I shot dead three students,
Two profs and a dean.
The students were all girls
Who had turned me down.
TBS is fatal:
Now they're underground.
The profs had both failed me,
When I should have passed.
And I shot the dean 'cause
He's a great big dumb-ass.
I shot them with pleasure,
I grinned as they died.
And then I ran off to
The mountains to hide.
The cops they did catch me,
And they did so well.
I wrote a confession
Signed George P. Burdell.
So it's a parody of "On Top of the Schoolhouse/ all covered with sand/ I shot my poor teacher/ with a big rubber band" (and all of her more gruesome fates in further stanzas). If this can be taken as a threat which needs to be acted upon...then a lot more can be "threatening" also.
I should point out, as a moderator myself (rec.toys.transformers.moderated), that there are ways to moderate a group so that direct posts don't get passed. For instance, PGPMoose, which checks each post to make sure it was properly PGP-signed by the moderation software, and if not, cancels it immediately. We use this software for our newsgroup, and it works very, very well.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
That's the big issue here.
Sure this doesn't violate your rights...this time. It's just that this is a small step in a dangerous direction. All the ultra-litigious American society needs is more court time wasted with things like this...
Not to mention the fact that part of the ruling was intended to force people to act like civilized adults...that definitely violates my rights.
So what is he does post? Your identity on the internet is so fluid that nothing can be proven. What can the judge say? "Because a hacker impersonated you on the internet and posted where I told you not to, I'm going to slap your wrist with a short prison term." Shit, bullshit, malarky, crapola, chocolate syrup.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
That being said, more was going on here. References were made about the coarse and disgusting language, and about how the posts were off-topic. That shouldn't have even a consideration. The police also had no business trying to moderate that newsgroup. If they want to post as individuals, fine. However if they post as agents of the law, that is not fine.
My opinion is that this was the perfect case for the judiciary to try to crack open a door for control of the Internet. Since threats and other illegal actions were involved, a plausible case for judicial action can be made. Statements by the Judge about the coarse language being inappropriate for the newsgroup and the police involvement in trying to moderate the newsgroup have convinced me however that this is just a smoke screen. I don't mean that there was an actual conspiracy here, but that the police and judiciary are organizations that like controlling people. It is what they are designed to do. Both of these organizations jumped at the chance to get a foothold where they have had none. If this had really been a case about threats and intimidation, the decision would have been rooted in well-established precedent, not new law made up from whole cloth by the judge.
Another judge out somewhere has just issued an order restraining a highly malicious slashdot poster known only as "Anonymous Coward". Coward will be banned from slashdot for a year.
-- The Sheep --
That aside, I don't see this as being terribly different from any other open, unmoderated group I've followed. Whatever happened to killfiles anyhow? They're the only things that ever made usenet even remotely readable by simply reducing the volume of posts in some busy groups.
--- http://foo.ca
I have actually gone to the trouble of reading the (unbelievably biased) article, and it clarified a few things for me. I would like to share them:
1) No member of the newsgroup went to the police for help. The police were informed by a member of the Australian government, who was concerned by the nature of the posts. The police, after reading the posts from both sides, decided whom they wanted to contact. It was not Mr. Abraham (the guy to whom the court order was issued).
2) The order did not only restrain Mr. Abraham from posting to one specific newsgroup. It also included a 1000 foot restaining order and an order not to contact one of the "petitioners," just as any other harrassment suit.
3) Mr. Abraham was not the only one censured, but he was the only one ordered not to post. All other parties were warned not to post to the newsgroup, or at least to keep all posts strictly on topic.
4) This was not an ordinary flame war; independent readers (particularly an Australian govt. employee) felt the posts were serious enough that they may have eventually led to actual physical violence. I believe it is safe to assume that these posts were no longer about skiing.
5) Nothing in this article gave any facts about the nature of the posts, except in the form of opinion of the detective involved. One might imagine that, given the extremely biased nature of this article (and I believe this bias is abundantly clear), the article would offer evidence defending the respondant, if such were available.
Personally, I would like to see more information about the specific posts for which Mr. Abraham was censured. I find it difficult to make a decision about a specific case when I do not know the whole story. So unless those posts are made available, I can only assume that the judge, who did have all of the information, made the correct decision.
I, as a reader and USENET contributor, care about my life. I don't want to miss potential, credible threats to my life and property with an improper setup of my killfile. I want to know what is happening around me. Heck, I even care about my reputation. I don't want to miss a smear because the smearer is in my killfile.
My rule-of-thumb summary: a killfile should be used only to remove the killjoys from your life, not the killers.
Considering recent censorship regulations passed, can someone working for the Australian govt be trusted to have decent judgement in what is/is not a threat or a Danger to Society?
:)
(the above is intended to be a fairly flippant remark. go read something else now
The statist whores have been salivating at the thought of expanding their control to the Internet. What we need is worldwide ban on big governments at all levels
In my opinion, mailing-lists and www-boards suck donkey poo-poo compared to Usenet.
Slashdot proves that building a moderation system is easy within the confines of a single web site where everyone is authenticated, and the information isn't distributed across a wide area. You could do the same thing with a single private NNTP server with authenticated access, and kill files.
Usenet is a world-wide distributed system, with many points of entry and countless users who aren't tracked in any way. The problems to be solved there are entirely on a different plane.
IMHO, what Usenet needs is a protocol for sharing killfile information among like-minded individuals. Killfiles are far better than Slashdot-type moderation because they are content sensitive, and can be made quite specific, like ignoring a particuliar user, or even news server. Scoring newsreaders can assign a score to each article based on multiple filter criteria, similar to slashdot scores. Killfiles and scoring scale nicely, because they are processed at the client side. What you need is to be able to share ``kill packets'' with other users. Instead of having one huge moderation system, you have a disconnected model. There is no need for there to be one monolithic moderation database which appears identical to everyone, so it would be a waste of resources to try to construct one.
Slashdot doesn't compare to Usenet. I find that you can't have meaningful threads of conversation, and then sense of community just isn't here! Topics keep being thrown in, then some fast exchanges ensue and die out in favor of the next topic. Also, the graphically-intensive layout sucks, and you have little choice in how it's presented, since there is no protocol here other than HTML. Also, Slashdot can't even be viewed properly unless you use non-free software like Netscape or Internet explorer. Last time I tried Mozilla, it blew up on Slashdot. Maybe the latest milestone does a better job, who knows! On the other hand, Usenet participation requires only free software, like tin, trn or slrn.
Also I find that the Usenet technical forums tend to provide very good quality answers (if you are willing to sift through the rubbish a little bit). From time to time you see postings from people like Dennis Ritchie, Chris Torek, Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Andrew Koenig, Doug Smith (of ACE fame) and many others. Yes, these guys are on Usenet, not on some web bulletin board. And they use their real names, not some 3l33t pseudonyms.
If you try, you can find far higher calibre discussions on Usenet than in Slashdot. The most interesting aspect of Slashdot are the links to outside stories. I know people that don't even bother reading the replies to a story, and just follow the links from here on out.
However, if he continued to misbehave, and it was realized that it was him, he will no doubt be convicted of a felony. It sounds as though a flame-war (not police business) escalated into threats of physical violence. That IS the police's business.
This should serve as a lesson to everyone. Your free speach is limited from using fighting words. Physical threats over the computer CAN be criminal if they are believed to be real.
If you use USENET to harass others and threaten others, you are STILL subject to the extension of the law. This is not a regulation of cyberspace, this is the existing regime to protect victims being applied to the Internet. This is in no ways unreasonable.
If he hadn't made any physical threats, nothing would have come from this. This serves as a lesson: use free speach for rational discourse, or irrational insults, but when you cause fear in others, you have overstepped your bounds as an honest citizen using free speach to a potentially dangerous individual intent on harming otehrs.
As I said a few posts up, the power to resolve issues is clearly in the power of people whose comprehension of "online culture" (for lack of a better term on this fine Sunday evening) is lacking.
;) ...and I confess I have no ideas. Does anyone else?
So what do we do? Can we educate the whole world? The prevalence of "tech support horror stories" web pages suggests otherwise. At the institute of technology which I attend, computer classes are required for graduation, but that doesn't mean that all students are achieving an understanding of this (rather artificial, human-created) society. In fact, Usenet can have a vastly different culture than IRC, which is different from AOL "chat rooms" [still a virgin in that area! whee!]
It would be great if those in the judicial system were required to do an in-depth study of the element of the "in-ter-net" over which they may have to pass judgment, rather like there are separate areas for state and federal offenses. Kind of a nice pipe dream (and of course based on my not-in-depth knowledge of the US judicial system only).
I don't really think that's all that feasable, but I really don't have any faith in the Great Bureaucracy known as "Congress" to be able to pass anything effective either, or to have a clue themselves.
We're all sitting here saying stuff like:
* this is awful! How can they infringe on 1st Amendment rights this way?
* this is awful...see what *else* they could do [guilty myself]
* this isn't so different from a non-online restraining order, maybe it isn't so awful as all that.
But dwelling on it really won't do anything for us. I'm one of those academic people who's completely removed from reality
I don't know what's wrong with the server -- I have been seeing the same colors show up on certain stories lately. There's no way on earth the Slashdot people could be going for an intentional effect with those pukey colors, so I've been assuming it's some sort of bug.
People have the right now to be offended.. I think it's the third or fourth ammendment... something like that. It's spelled out very clearly.
And it's in Seattle, too. Wouldn't it be cute if anyone flaming Microsoft was prohibited from posting to usenet on trumped-up grounds of _slander_? ;) and it would be interesting and strange to see intentional attempts to _disrupt_ a functioning newsgroup as actionable. There's a point at which the frontier justice of Usenet fails to be helpful, and IMHO some of the meowers and spammers and such go over the line. You can get a spammer's account yanked (I've killed seven, which isn't even that much), but I don't think there's ever been much chance of getting someone's account pulled for trying to kill a newsgroup. That could be changing.
At the same time, I have to admit that usenet communities can be disrupted by 'speech'. For instance, see Russ Albery's Rant, which relates to disruption of newsgroups by spam and automated spewing by computer programs. There are also groups such as the meowers and alt.syntax.tactical which primarily intend to disrupt communication, and I've seen important useful groups rendered unusable by such attacks.
I would say that as long as the balance of the legal situation is even, it'll be OK. I could really _support_ legal banning of HTML newsposting on the grounds of MIME executables being attached
Lastly I would question the sense of considering 'death threats' (short of Secret Service involvement in Presidential ones, which is their job), considering that many Usenet kooks are mentally about 12 and certain that they bear no responsibility for their wild statements- and considering that there are entire groups, such as alt.flame, in which the _point_ is to cause as much verbal damage as possible. In this context, assuming 'public community' rules is absurd, and counterintuitive. Do you arrest a Bible Belt evangelist for intentionally trying to disrupt alt.satanism or alt.wiccan or alt.atheism? Maybe you'd better, if you're going to be imposing penalties for disrupting Usenet at all.
This stupid ruling will get overthrown of course. Free speech is free speech....unless the poster was writing some blatently untrue and libel....then it would mainly go to civil court. I'm not worried about this at all. The judge must be coming up for re-election or something.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, Internet is way beyond the jurisdiction of any judge.
A Milwaukee judge couldn't order some idiot to stay away from me in Holland, due to this problem.
The order seems to bar him from visiting the person in a newsgroup. At best, the newsgroup is 'public domain', not belonging to anyone, and therefore noone has jurisdiction there.
At worst, the newsgroup belongs to the original creator, and falls under their sole responsibility, and once again its not in the judge's jurisdiction.
Either way, the restraining order could probably be successfully fought in court. (though I'm no lawyer).
--
Anonymous Coward. Proud to wear that name.
"And if you give me any of that juris-my-dick-tion crap, you can cram it up your ass."
If you agree with letting the police and the courts in to stop speech you don't agree with, you have no complaint whatsoever when they try to stop speech you do agree with.
No, it's not all right. Not at all.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
The police apparently looked through all the posts, decided who *they* thought was oh poor downtrodden one, and recommended to him that he file a restraining order.
To my mind... they're not there to take sides. Both parties were doing wrong. End of story...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
"The judge is undertaking to moderate the Usenet group, by saying who can or cannot post there, to bring to an end a six-month "flame war."
The newsgroup was not moderated, the judge should have no legal hold on this newsgroup..
"There is no doubt that an ugly flame war was involved. All sides alleged that the other parties had made death threats and threats of physical violence."
Flame wars are a necessary evil, we allow total chaos to allow all thoughts to be expressed...
The judge pointed out that all parties had used uncivilized, disgusting language that should not appear in a newsgroup.
Hello?! Does this strike anyone else as censorship? Also flame posts are not love letters...
Seattle Police Department was concerned that the flame wars would escalate into real-world physical violence if the police department and the court did not intervene.
This case is not about newsgroups, but about death threats and harassment.
If this guy was going over the edge, ready to commite violence, maybe this was the right thing to do. But as the article pointed out, it was a Flame war, not a one sided conversation. The judge needs to keep his thoughts on the person, and leave the usenet newsgroups alone. He has no right to moderate this group. Law enforcement or Judicial agencies should not post to any usenet group. Any governmental agency should not request and promote any ideas. Personal postings excluded.
Also for First Ever gag order, AOL has had a few with their newsgroups...
Just like the subject says. Anything goes on Usenet; if you think you'll get your po' ittoe feewings huwt, then stay out. Or use a killfile; that's what they're there for.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I hate to say it, but that's nothing.
The neanderthals who imposed the Internet censorship bill on us poor Aussies expect ISPs to also apply the bill to USENET. Don't swear, don't post material that is not G rated, don't post binaries bacause ISPs will just have to cull them (what else should they do, open them all first?)
And it isn't enough to host your servers overseas - you have to filter the content being delivered as well as the content being stored.
The Australian Government has killed the Australian Internet Industry.
Of course I'll read your SPAM, if you can reach that far up your ass to get it.
WSU's Information Technology department has on many occasions stiffled the speech of students... untill they make a noise. My freshman year here there was a "Holocaust Revisionist" site that recieved complaints. From chatting with a few people about it I heard that they were "temporarily restrained", as is in the power of IT officials, from further "harassing" anyone. After they caused a stink they got their website back and produced an official statement from IT.
Following a flamewar on alt.religion.universal-life in which I posted a link to a domain name's administrative contact information (through nsi.com's whois) the targeted party recieved numerous calls that resulted not from that post, but an anonymous post under false pretenses to another newsgroup containing that phone number.
I was found guilty of harassment for providing information on how to access that publicly accessable document. So I assumed the "administrative position" (duck and grab ankles) and gave up my @wsu.edu email for the summer.
My account reactivation was delayed for two weeks because one of the officials (cough**cough**cBoIuGgGhOT!**cough) tought that it was inappropriate use of my unix account to host this student group's site. There was no complaint ever associated with the page. Yet the administration felt that they had the right to restrict my speech in order to "protect" me from "inducing a liability" on to myself (i.e. I would be liable for anything that appeared on that page, any complaints on that page would be complaints against me).
I ran headlong at this one, contacting the Ombudsman and attending a moderated meeting with upper administration. They rolled over and gave me a verbal appology (no official statement). Part of the run-arround was that upper administration acted on "policy" that IT officials had no jurisdiction to invent. IT in fact had no said policy and I have yet to meet with said IT official's boss to discuss the event.
Once again the stink caused the administration to draft some more "policy". Now students are supposed to link to a copyright and a disclaimer off of their home pages. Want to bet noone's done that yet? The new "policy" also is rendered practically useless. It says "WSU does not restrict the contents of electronic mail of staff, faculty, and students or the contents of faculty, staff, and student individual World Wide Web (Web) pages linked to the official WSU Web pages beyond the restrictions inherent in complying with the law."
Interestingly it is a state law that no student of WSU may harass another individual in any way. Harassment, anything that is "anoying, disturbing or perturbing," is definedly quite broad! Here is a good site covering the legal theory surrounding such issues. Basically it supports restricting one-to-one speech to prevent harassment, but determines that one-to-many speech should be protected as free speech.
An importaint distinction should be made that I'm not sure the author covers. Newsgroup postings are a one-to-many medium, but the comments may be directed to (or at) an individual. In this way should criticizing an individual be considered harassment? What about warning others that you think this individual is bad news? "Harassment" says the WSU administration, and a violation of "student conduct."
So... don't like the postings of a WSU student? Complain to abuse@wsu.edu and they're screwed!
Too bad WSU's policy isn't like WWU's or UW's; even CWU's policy is more lenient! Looks like EWU is in the same boat that WSU is in.
Note: if the Australian government employee in question is Anthea, she was, I think, actively involved in the flame war. Kind of important to note.
I didn't mean specifically _Seattle_, so much as the notion that Microsoft basically owns the state government (bought and paid for) and would like to see state police going after people flaming MS on usenet- and that this would be an unreasonable action to take, but might seem acceptable to some. ;)
Unless you're one of the government representatives making excuses for what Microsoft has always done and will continue to do, it was _not_ a veiled insult at you. It was a rather unveiled insult at the integrity of Washington State legislators and representatives >;) really, I have a great deal of contempt for these ayn-rand-thumping maniacs. What is best for Microsoft IS NOT best for the people. I'm sorry you mistakenly were offended at a remark that was not directed at you- suppose I should have been blunter. I'm not sorry about hinting that MS would love to get a tame senator or cop to try arresting people for 'slander', because I am sure they'd love to do that if they had any chance of succeeding. Perhaps they'd like to start on me, by banning me from Slashdot for expressing my opinion of, not things they have done, but what I believe they'd like to do
A judge passing a ruling on a medium he certainly doesn't understand. How can anoyone support that?
Starting a precedent for the legal moderation of newsgroups because the collective AOL-lusers couldn't write a killfile to save their lives, you think is a good idea.
Not to mention its completely unenforcable, I think those who oppose this should create 'Two Buddha' accounts on free Usenet servers and start posting to prove that Usenet will always = anarchy.
Its pretty obvious they didn't want a kill file, and he just flamed the wrong guys. That flamees being clueless twits with a huge bruised egos and a lawyer.
"Buffy dearest, we're just not gonna stand for this abuse, get Judge Smith on the phone."
Don't treat the judiciary as independent and unbiased on this issue. The fact that a national judge tries to limit communication on a trans-national forum should give pause for thought.
The Internet is a new frontier (for them), one which is beyond their current jurisdiction, and since they are accustomed to power, one in which they will try to gain the same might as they have in the physical world. This was just an early shot. In due course, I expect that it'll get quite ugly.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I was a regular poster to rec.skiing.alpine for a while. However, I stopped (more or less) when the flamefest started several months ago. A brief history from what I remember:
The bottom line? Last I checked, the group was dead compared to the way it had been the winter before all of this crap started.
See Ski Grrl's Page for some RSA stuff, if you'd like to.
What strikes me about this aside from the government sticking it's nose in it is the judge has said if this guy posts to the skiing group again, he has committed a FELONY. How does this rate a FELONY?
Oh well, they're being consistent in their inconsistancies. Felony status has been so indiscriminately applied to this offense and that, it's no wonder we've got more "criminals".
If you want to make laws respected, make 'em respectable. This kind of heavy handed stuff transcends the arbitrary into the realm of the whimsical.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
"I'm going to kill CmdrTaco because he pointed and laughed at me for having a penguin stamp on my forehead at the Atlanta Linux Showcase." Answer me this: Am I joking? Am I serious? How do you know? I mean, do you really know what's going on inside my head? Who's to say I won't be waiting outside his home tomorrow with a shotgun? Who's to say I will? The only "facts" that CmdrTaco has here is that I have expressed intent to kill him. Taking my words at face value, I have every intention of killing him. Now multiply that by the number of posts in a flame war. Threatening to kill or cause physical harm is illegal in nearly every country. If you threaten someone, they have every legal right to press charges. Saying "I was joking" isn't any way to get out of it, because you obviously didn't make it clear at the time. That said, I feel the same laws should apply to electronic media, and usenet is no exception. Now what really disturbs me is the "use of strong language" and "off-topic posts" which is not the court's power to restrict or comment on. (oh, and for the record, I consider it a [dubious] honor to be laughed at by CmdrTaco. ) - Pizza
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
This seems totally ridiculous to me... Assuming that either party in the case was a mature adult (which I sincerely doubt based on what I know), if either one felt thretented, or that there could be actual violence.. they could have just stopped posting to the news group or responding to the other... no one was forcing them to go there, and neither of them had any more right than the other to be there... Either one could have stopped it at any time by just not participating in the flame. The government stepping in and telling them that their war of words (no matter how crude it was) was unaccpetable is complete bull shit... I can see how there would be a case if one was actively pursuing the other, and seeking out the other to harass them... but they could have both used the newsgroup without even paying attention to eachothers postings... filtering them if they wanted... it seemed as if they were both willing participants in a disscussion that Big Brother had no right to halt. Note that I haven't actually seen any of these posts... but I think the above applies regardless of the contents of their posts.
Ben
Look, it's a Microsoft employee!
After spending 20 minutes on dejanews reading about the principals, I must admit that this would make for a very entertaining Supreme Court "freedom of speech" ruling. Scott Abrahams appears to be quite a character, as does Robert, the guy that put up rude (but funny as hell) parody websites about him. Personally, I think this has zero chance of standing up to appeals. Barring him from making contact with a person is one thing, but barring him from speaking in a public forumn about the intended topic is way over the top. *Maybe* I could see the judge ruling that he can no longer make physical threats (which, from what I saw in my 20 minute tour, he hadn't done -- just lots of typical lame flameage, you know, of the "blow me" variety).
It may seem like a violation of free speech to kick someone off of a newsgroup, but in this case I think it was the correct decision. For example, imagine if you're at a movie theater, or some other public space, and these two guys start a screaming match. Then they start threatening each other. The police would surely show up and seperate the 2 people, and you wouldn't complain about violations of their right to free speech. That is what happened here, it was essentially a verbal brawl (with the possibility of going further) in a very public location. Since those involved were unable to control themselves, the only choice left was legal action.
If I was the guy who was served with the gag, I'd keep right on posting. Its impossible to prove identity enough for a court of law in a newsgroup. Or he could go through a secondary such as friend or dejanews to post, again making proof near impossible.
I followed a link on someone's post and started reading the thread. It seems one of the flamers took to meeting his UseNet opponents IRL and stalking them. Here's a link.
Bad Command Or File Name
If I'd known if would affect you so drastically, Pitha, I'd never have stamped your head ;)
) oh, and for the record, I consider it a [dubious] honor to be laughed at by CmdrTaco.
Yea, but Hemos gave *me* a frisbee! (grin)
I've read all the comments and agree with most of
these FTIW. This is a pretty extreme thing to have to do. However I had a few dealing with the guy in question and the other side. I stayed right out of the argument I just wanted to keep the aus.snow newsgroup alive. He was determined to do as much damage to as many people as possible. I think there are cases where this is warrented.
Chris
Geez, are you too slow to notice certain patterns?
Your Rights Online stories use a certain colour scheme, Apache stories use a certain colour scheme, Ask Slashdot stories use a certain colour scheme, etc.
Complicated? No.
Yes you are right. I too, as far as I know, have never posted anonymously. The only "hiding" I do is to put some string in my e-mail address so the automatic e-mail gathering programs don't get a valid address. I actually have never gotten spam mail sent to me or "mean" things sent to me (I have posted controversial things). Maybe I too am very lucky, at least about not getting spam. But as for not being flamed in personal e-mail, I think it is because I try to be reasoned and not inflammatory when I write. On the internet, words that a person could say to his mother sometimes get turned into "evil-irrational-flaming." i.e. people sometimes are touchy.
RL
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
Look its a redhat employee.
The felony most likely wouldn't be the act of posting but the act of violating a court order. I think it's called contempt of court.
Last I heard, he had his access pulled.
Then again, I have been usenet free
(and darn proud of it!) for a couple of
years now.
Maybe there is hope yet...
Define ignorance and incompetence and use both words in a proper sentance. Once you do that, someone might actually listen to you. To be fair, I'll even give you two sentances to get you started. You get extra points if you can come up with more on your own.
:)
It's an act of ignorance to assume that all linux users are fucknuts, as well as ignorant and incompetent.
It's an act of incompetence to use overreaching generalizations and stereotypes.
Anyway, I fail to see the connection between one's choice in an operating system and one's ignorance and incompetence.
Come back when you are capable of rational thought
Look it's a guy with an MSCE.
A. Free speech for all, no matter how offensive!
B. Your mail server offends us! Fuck your "frea speach", spammer!
After reading the article I feel as though I now know less about topic under discussion than I did before.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Well, people can still be arrested for being disorderly in the street.
:) I can't see how this is in anyway a violation of any of his rights. The judge basicly said, you were being a nuisance, you were hassling people, we don't want you to do it. He's not banned from the Internet, he's not banned from Usenet, he's just not allowed to post to one little part of it where he was making an ass of himself. It's a reasonable, rational punnishment.
If the authorities wish, they can arrest him for the actual threats, etc. posted to the Usenet, but banning him from posting altogether is exercising their control to an unacceptable extent. The powers that be (politicians, judiciaries, etc.) are authoritarian by their very nature. Give them an inch (of our freedom) and they'll take a mile.
But anyway, what you said makes it sounds as though you would rather him arrested than not allowed to post to one newsgroup! If he's in jail, he probably won't get to post to any newsgroups at all
Dana
When a judge dictates how the computer software industry should be run, it is a great thing (only when it is against Microsoft I imagine).
When a judge dictates how usenet should be run, it is a travisty and the judge doesn't know what he is doing.
Double Standard?
People seem to be getting terribly excited about HOW do they have JURISDICTION and all that. He has jurisdiction because the individual in question lives in his district. Under all the noise and slanted presentation (this appears to be put up by 'Two Boots' himself), it looks like a fairly standard restraining order with the twist that one of the areas he is restrained from is a newsgroup. It's just like if you threatened your ex-spouse and he/she got a restraining order. You might be banned from approaching their workplace, calling them -- many other forms of normally legal, constitutional behavior.
If 'Two Boots' wanted to move somewhere that didn't do reciprocal enforcement of restraint orders, he could start posting again. But he better not go back to Seattle, or the judge will throw his ass in jail. Just like if he was calling up his ex from afar.
And if the newsgroup war was spilling into meatspace stalking, as alleged, then the judge was quite right to do what he did.
Laura
)Ah, so you read the alt.sex.* newsgroups too?
This reminds me of alt.sex.movies of many moons ago before it was a spam farm. There was a guy called "Pig Fucker" on there who loooved to harass everyone. I eventually spoke up once, and he mailbombed my account. Fortuantely I was able ot kill my whole mail file whilst on hold for answers on the phone.
news://www.service.talkway.com/rec .skiing.alpine
I first started posting on Usenet back in '93-'94 or thereabouts; in the rec.arts.anime groups and some of the soc.history forums. Even then there was the occasional jerk but you could just ignore them, and there was *nothing* like the level of spam that exists now. After getting flamed one too many times last year and having to shut down my yahoo account because of all the spam (despite the filtering I tried)--no more. It's worthless now. Sad, because it used to be so very cool. I only use moderated mailing lists and forums like this nowadays. Hopefully, though, the people at Usenet II can make a better version which will reach it's full potential.
FILTERS
Used by most as a way of "filtering out" unwanted content in the forums, it was also sometimes preceded by a short and succint message/header containing the word "PLONK" (which was the imagined "sound" of someones name/alias hitting the killfile).
Generally, people on the receiving end of a few PLONKs would eventually get the idea and leave the forum; if not, anyone who didn't want to read their message content wouldn't have to anyway and they would iccessently ramble on to newcomers and other, more patient people.
Of course, none of this is really necessary anymore since the government and courts of this fair country now make all of those decisions for us.
Now, some of you may ask: "Why do I have to study some stupid, outdated practice when even the courts and governments of the time didn't know (or perhaps even care) about it?"
And I, as a Representative of the Information Council of Order would be forced to respond on behalf of the United States Government:
PLONK!
And it just seems like such a petty thing to ignore the first amendment over.
Also, what is to stop this guy from continuing his mischief through anonymous posting? Or stop somebody else doing the same thing again? I wouldn't be suprised if a legion of trolls descended upon rsa because that group will now appear more sensitive to flames than all the others. This could just open up a whole new can of worms, with nobody really benefitting.
I hope somebody challenges this somehow, because this is not a precedent I am very happy with.
This is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard of! Don't these preppie assholes know how to stick someone they don't want to read in a kill file?
Bret Cahill has been behaving at *least* as badly in alt.politics.libertarian for a few years, and we just ignore him.
I think we need to recognize this for what it is, an attack on our beloved USENET, and treat this judge the way we treated the scientologists.
Anyone in her area ready to picket?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
He wasn't anonymous. "Two Buddha" was just a nickname he used to sign the posts, his real name was always in the From: line. See Retiring the Buddha
Look its a guy with a RHSE.
> The question is whether anyone should have the ability to use the legal
> system to exclude another from posting in a public forum; unlike other
> forms of harassment, a Usenet post is not directed to any particular
> person.
Balls. A usenet post is not directed at any particular person if b the
author deems it to be... if they want to target harassment at a particular
person, they can and will.
Timothy Rue in comp.sys.amiga.misc is a perfect example; he's infamous for
filling the group with crap... posting insulting comments aimed at certain
people (including me... he labeled me as an evil bastard out to get him
after infamousmentioned how much nicer the group would be if people didn't
reply to his trolls.. insane? probably), and going on about his "VIC",
something he seems to see as revolutionary, but which nobody has yet been
able to describe, other than calling it a dodgy script that seems to do
stuff... but nothing useful.
Terry Cooksey is another example... infamous for calling anyone and everyone
an "AMIGA HATING NAZI FAG"... luckily he removed himself from the group, but
it's worrying that people can post this sort of thing with no fear of
reproach.
Killfiles aren't the answer... they're fine if someone just has some
opinions you disagree with, but when someone repeatedly posts complete
abuse, large posts of copyright material (i.e. web pages), source code to
some unidentifiable program, private mail, and basically trolls, inciting
hundereds of replies, mainly also consisting of abouse back to the original
poster... well, if you've ever experienced it (expecially if you've been the
victim of the abuse)... well, you would understand why it's important to be
able to stop the very odd user from posting. Not to mention that not all
clients support killfiling well, if at all, and how newbies or people who
don't know how to killfile won't be able to, or won't know to killfile them
and replies to them before finding the group filled with abuse.
I do agree that removing somebodies freedom of speech is a very serious
thing, but with certain lusers, it's the only solution...
Eh.
...everyone wants to make money from the web.
lawyers want to be on either side of the issue, cuz that's now they make a living.
detectives want to build cushy empires (big office with net of PCs, and underlings to operate them) and get promoted for their "high tech sleuthing" (aka "web surfing")
judges want to hear the cases cuz their names will be read and remembered.
the US air force wants to build a whole sector just for infowar on the net.
all that being said, i actually agree with the judges' ruling. it's not uncommon at all for a judge to restrict someones activities when they are exhibiting irrational behavior.
i seem to recall some idiot in so. cal. who stood on the street corner screaming incoherently all day. his lawyer tried to go for free speech; the judge said no way and restricted the guy from screaming on streetcorners.
note that *I* can still go scream on any streetcorner, should I wish to do so.
at least for awhile...
oh well, the majority of people don't want to listen to someone screaming while they wait for a traffic light. it's a democracy, deal with it.
i can also go post to rectum.alpine.smurfing or whatever and post about how much moosepie skis suck, and how i want everyone to die.
at least for awhile...
This further supports my theory that Americans are becoming paranoid to the point where they interpret all anomalities in there daily life as a indication of that someone is going to kill them.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I've been following the discussion in rec.skiing.alpine and trying to find some independent confirmation of the story.
So far, there has been very little corroboration, and I haven't been able to find any credible news source that has run the story.
It's possible that this entire thing is a hoax cooked up by Two Buddha (the person who's been banned) and his sidekick, who wrote the article on vix.com.
Motivation is somewhat murky, but perhaps it's some kind of psychological ploy to garner a sympathy vote and get the rest of the world lined up against "those bastards on rec.skiing.alpine who didn't give me the respect I deserved" (or somesuch).
So, this guy is banned from posting in Rec.Alpine.Skiing, right?
So... Why not just start up Rec.Alpine.Skiing.Uncensored and tell the government to go to hell?
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
WILL YOU PLEASE AND BE MY FRIEND!!!