The University -- the Protector of the Bill of Rights ????

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

I am not suggesting that CMU violates law but rather that
it does seem that blanket elimation of trees may violate
constitutionally protected free speech and the University
should defend that right rather than violate it. I wonder
what books should and will  be banned to under 18 students?


Dave




To quote one of the EFF Staff:


This is odd, because the alt.sex hierarchy is, essentially, for the
discussion of sexual matters, which is constitutionally protected.




> From comp.org.eff.talk, forwarded FYI


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Date: Thu,  3 Nov 1994 12:00:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Joseph Kuszewski <lizard+ () CMU EDU>
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To: RBBs <restrictbb+official.computing-news () andrew cmu edu>
Subject: Sexually Explicit Bboards


During the next few days, the university will be withdrawing some netnews
bulletin board subscriptions from the public computer systems.  This
action is in response to a new university policy which is outlined below.


The university's policy is to carry a very wide range of bulletin boards
for the community, with no monitoring of the bulletin board contents.
However, Pennsylvania laws prohibits us from carrying bulletin boards
that are known to be used for the distribution of sexually explicit or
obscene material.  It is against the law for anybody to knowingly
distribute sexually explicit materials to people under the age of 18,
or obscene materials to people of any age.


Issues of free speech are always important to a university.  Therefore,
the only criterion that will be used when considering the withdrawal
of a bulletin board is that either the intended purpose for which it
was established or its primary use (majority of the posts) makes it
illegal for Computing Services to provide access to the bulletin board.
Because the university does not monitor the contents of bulletin boards,
there is always the chance that sexually explicit or obscene material
may be posted and available.  Any reported incidents of such materials
will be handled on a case by case basis.


Computing Services will implement this policy on Tuesday, November 8th by
removing the following bulletin board trees:


alt.binaries.pictures.erotica
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*
alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless
alt.sex
alt.sex.*
rec.arts.erotica


Bob Kuszewski
Computing Services