Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: Germany / Clarinet Ban
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 1995 18:55:18 -0500
To: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu> Date: Sat, 30 Dec 1995 15:38:27 -0800 (PST) From: Brad Templeton <brad () alto clari net> Alas, we were also pretty shocked to see some ClariNet e.news newsgroups listed in the set that Compuserve announced it was banning from their servers in fear of German censorship laws -- but mostly because Compuserve isn't one of our subscribers, and they don't have any of our groups. We've asked them why they listed them, and not yet heard back, but I think this is actually a very good example of how capricious and dangerous such laws are. They send people into panics, banning anything that looks dangerous, even things they don't even have! If anybody needs a lesson on why laws like the German laws (and the upcoming U.S. decency act) have a chilling effect far beyond even their broad intent, this is it. Had Compuserve carried our electronic newspaper newsgroups, banning these ones would have been silly. Here are the "lurid" headlines from the last few days of clari.news.sex, a newsgroup that contains only professional reporting on sex-related issues... Vatican: Sex education not okay Suspended Teacher To Return Australian Govt Porn Committee Calls For Action Beijing seizes one million porn, illegal books Time for the annual best and worst lists China customs crack down on pornography imports CompuServe suspends online sex topics CompuServe bans sex groups, sparking free-speech row The most recent headlines from clari.news.gays as you can see are equally non-lurid Failed Robbery Led To Gay Slay Killer To Sell Story Gays In Military Judge Quits Lesbian Wins Job Bias Suit I wonder if the Germans thought this was worth banning or CIS made up the list on their own. Either way, the the idea that anybody might, in fear of such laws or under the orders of such laws, ban legitimate professional (and entirely non-lurid) coverage of issues like these is really scary, and we hope our many legitimate subsribers in Germany don't fall prey to this. While the fact that CIS didn't actually have our material makes this less interesting, a big part of the story is that somebody was driven to remove stuff without even knowing what they were removing.
Current thread:
- IP: Re: Germany / Clarinet Ban Dave Farber (Dec 30)