🚀 go-pugleaf

kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>I read the joke chain letter. I don't think it is a chain letter (any
>more than a toy car is car). Thus, I don't think the new prohibition
>even covers the specific material they want to ban.

	Hi.  Please allow me to introduce myself:  I'm the bad guy in this
scenario (i.e. the system administrator).  I believe strongly in rights to
academic freedom; to that end, I've put considerable time and effort into
making the resources of the Internet available to as many people here as
possible.  That belief is one of the reasons we maintain a full news feed
under pressure to limit what we carry (the type of pressure to which
Universities in our system have caved in).
	In light of those beliefs, believe me when I say it's not clear to me
how this situation fits into a violation of those rights.


>[...] Here is what I think they should have done:
>
> 1) Announced that this joke letter is going around
> 2) Ask people to be considerate about what they email to others
> 2) Remind people of the University's rules about harassment

	I don't even think it's necessary to go into much detail; the bottom
line is that the purpose of the letter is to enjoy as large a distribution
as possible.  Mailing it to recipients one or twenty at a time is far less
efficient than posting it to a newsgroup and effecting site-wide (or possibly
world-wide) distribution.  That is, after all, the purpose of news:  to annoy
as many people as possible at once with one's opinions.

	Content aside, since the distribution mechanism specifically chosen
was far from the optimum available, we are now looking at a resource abuse
issue.  The policy on our campus (to which users here are required to agree
before obtaining an account) specifically prohibits resource abuse.  Further,
the same policy prohibits non-academic use of the system.  We have been very
generous to date with our interpretation of what constitutes academic use;
if you can explain to me the academic purpose of that letter, I would be very
interested in hearing about it.


	All that aside, I'm not sure I see any difference between the method
you suggested and the one we used.

	Mike
---
Michael S. McMahon, System Manager             Computing & Data Communications
cwis@unomaha.edu                               University of Nebraska at Omaha