🚀 go-pugleaf

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--- begin abstract ---
[Week ending July 5th, 1992

========================== KEY ================================
The words after the numbers are a short PARAPHRASES of the
articles, or QUOTES from them, NOT AN OBJECTIVE SUMMARY and
not necessarily my opinion.
===============================================================


Notes 1 to 4, while not directly addressing the subject of rights in
electronic circumstances, are of interest as they discuss the
historical background of and present political attitudes toward the
United States' Bill of Rights.

1. The Bill of Rights does not contain cast-iron guarantees. The
American Founders believed in a strong yet limited central government
and so were careful to keep to phraseology which allowed of individual
states' own interpretations.
    <1992Jun30.162510.22754@anasazi.com>

2. There is no conspiracy to quash teaching of the "correct
interpretation of the Constitution and the natural rights of man" due
to its supposedly being "antithetical to big government and the
liberal agenda." At the most there is evidence of the inadequacy of
the American schooling system.
    <1992Jul1.211845.13410@amhux2.amherst.edu>

3. The Federalist Papers, while not being "the preamble to the
Constitution," are cited by Supreme Court Justices since they an
insight into the arguments of some influential and important thinkers.
    <uwseNB5w165w@coriolis.UUCP>

4. The Framers of the Bill of Rights were not far-sighted saints. They
were willing and able to accept slavery, did not advocate the
enfranchisement of women and non-whites, and did nothing to protect
people from the excesses of state governments as well as the federal
government.
    <1992Jul2.114549.13751@athena.mit.edu>


Notes 5 and 6 support the deletion of the NSFNet's Acceptable Use
Policy in the interests of free trade and the avoidance of commercial
monopolies.

5. The solution to the problem of the NSF "essentially providing free
rides to direct [commercial] competitors via government subsidy" is to
scrap the AUP entirely. This would "open up a world of competition,"
eliminate any chance of a monopoly position on commercial traffic, and
generally be a ">good thing<."
    <m0m2uEb-000A35C@ddsw1.mcs.com>

6. While the goal of only subsidizing academic or research use of the
network was laudable in its early days, it is inappropriate now that
the government seems to be adopting the goal of a nation-wide network
structure.
    <9207011437.AA26039@feldspar.bbn.com>


Notes 7 to 10 are on miscellaneous subjects.

7. The US Senator Gore has just announced a bill that would "ensure
the widest possible application of high performance computing and
networking."  While I applaud the goals of the Bill I am somewhat
pessimistic about its chances of being more than an election promise.
    <9207012156.AA00183@pcpond.cis.upenn.edu>

8. USENET is not as isolated as some people seem to think. For
instance, during the attempted coup in Moscow the information posted
to USENET was used by Voice of America and CNN.
    <130dp3INNeo@rodan.UU.NET>

9. "In the US, people are trying to stamp out speech they find
offensive.  So they label it "harassment", claim that it
"discriminates", and ban it from the workplace, schools, housing,
etc." A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses this
problem, and is here reprinted with the permission of the WSJ.
    <1992Jul3.221144.20089@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>

10. "Since virtually every place where people associate is a workplace
for someone, even if it's just the people who maintain the
establishment, prohibiting "offensive work environments" requires
suppressing free speech in almost any place people could gather to
discuss issues."
    <1992Jul3.232416.23672@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>

- Elizabeth]

--- end   abstract ---

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Disclaimer: This CAF-News abstract was compiled by a guest editor or a
regular editor (Paul Joslin, Elizabeth M. Reid, Adam C. Gross, Mark C.
Sheehan or Carl M. Kadie). It is not an EFF publication. The views an
editor expresses and editorial decisions he or she makes are his or
her own.


--
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
 =kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =