|
|
| Author |
Message |
rcurl
|
|
Indecent Files
| 
Jul 6 17:49 UTC 1995 |
I was asked by a user how to read a "script" without having it run. I
suggested cat or more, which he said didn't work. To learn more about
this, I asked if I could try to read the file. At first he was reluctant
to tell me, but eventually did (partly because it was not his file in his
directory). It turned out to be a very cleverly ansi-animated ascii
example of school-age men's bathroom sexually explicit graffitti: the user
that wrote me wanted to see the ansi commands to learn how the effect was
implemented (clearly, a very educational goal). Through this experience I
learned about the command cat -v <filename> (by looking at man cat..as
they say, RTFM). However *that* is not the subject of this item.
There must be an *enormous* amount of "school-age men's bathroom sexually
explicit graffitti" throughout cyberspace, and not just on
cyberspace.org's Grex. This is the "indecency" with which the Exon bill is
concerned. As I recall, there was a lot on the walls of Pompeii (now being
carefully preserved). It is "human nature", albeit not a very admirable
trait. The question is - what should Grex "do about it", if anything?
My natural inclination is not to do anything about what people do in their
own private files (even if read permitted), or how they exchange this
information among themselves. I'd prefer, though, if the public face of
Grex got represented by the open, civilized, discussions in the
Conferences, and not by the smut buried throughout the ostensibly private
filespace. But we don't exercise any significant control over that, and
anyone wishing to could probably do some browsing and create an "Exon
file" on Grex (as on practically any other bbs).
What do you think? Do we want to undertake the Hurculean task of cleaning
the Grex-Augeas Stables? And , if so, can we find our Alpheas and Peneus?
|
| 123 responses total. |
kaplan
|
|
response 1 of 123:
|
Jul 8 16:46 UTC 1995 |
Wouldn't this question better be discussed in the coop conference?
I think as long as grex is not officially handing such stuff to people
we're OK. We shouldn't try to control content that people find on the net.
|
robh
|
|
response 2 of 123:
|
Jul 8 17:40 UTC 1995 |
Yeah, the Coop conference would be a better place for this.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 3 of 123:
|
Jul 10 19:12 UTC 1995 |
Not a better place, but an appropriate place (say robh, if it had been
posted there, wouldn't you have linked it here?). It was posted here
because it came up as a *helpers* issue: I was confronted with the
dilemma. What should helpers do about it?
|
davel
|
|
response 4 of 123:
|
Jul 11 02:07 UTC 1995 |
Rane, you asked a much more general policy question: should we try to
clean up this kind of thing. If the answer is no, then presumably helpers
are free to help, or not to help if they have objections. I wouldn't
help someone debug code intended to crash a system, even if I knew the
particular method used wouldn't work on Grex, for example. But the
general question you raised *definitely* belongs in coop.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 5 of 123:
|
Jul 11 16:22 UTC 1995 |
Obviously I have no problem with it being linked to coop - at which time
it won't matter where it began. There is a policy question here, as
davel notes, and there is question of how helpers should deal with it,
since they often look a user's directories in the course of helping. Let's
stop discussing where it belongs, and start discussing the topic (and
would any fw thinking this item should be linked somewhere, please do so).
|
robh
|
|
response 6 of 123:
|
Jul 11 23:10 UTC 1995 |
I've already mailed th fw's of Coop about linking it.
I really don't think Grex helpers should be dictating what's
appropriate behavior on grex and what isn't. If there's
any confusion, one can always start up an item in Coop, or mail
the staff, to discuss it.
Whenever a help-seeker asks for help on something illicit, I
tell them it's illicit, and that's all. (I recently had a
fellow who needed help because the GIFs he was uploading for his
home page weren't working. No problem, kid, you're not supposed
to have them anyway...)
|
nephi
|
|
response 7 of 123:
|
Jul 11 23:38 UTC 1995 |
I hate it when I get behind on the conferences . . . well anyway,
Helpers 30 is now linked to Coop 72.
Enjoy!
|
gregc
|
|
response 8 of 123:
|
Jul 12 00:22 UTC 1995 |
From a philosophical standpoint, I feel this is none of our business and
users should be free to do what they want as long as they don't attempt to
"force" this material on other users. Their lack of taste is not our concern.
From a *legal* standpoint, I think it would be even worse for us to try to
patrol this sort of thing. If we designate this behaviour as a Bad-Thing
and attempt to control it, then we are in effect, accepting responsibility
for it's presence on the system. If we then happen to miss an instance of
it and someone get's bent out of shape about it, we could wind up being
accused of
"not doing our job" and being responsible for the missed item.
I think it's better to take the viewpoint that this is the user's
responsibility and not get ourselves mixed up in it.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 9 of 123:
|
Jul 12 06:50 UTC 1995 |
The "catch 22" (dates me, that does ;->) is that others can (and will)
do the patrolling for us, and hold us up to the world as a purveyor
of indecency. We can't say "what? indecent files here?". That would
be pretty dumb. So, from a practical legal standpoint, you are
damned if you do and damned if you don't. But I am not sure which way
it is better to be damned.
|
mju
|
|
response 10 of 123:
|
Jul 14 05:45 UTC 1995 |
There is a difference between actively seeking out indecency,
and refusing to do anything about it when it's shoved under
your nose. Even if you have a general practice of ignoring
such things, if someone makes it obvious to you that there's
something here that doesn't belong, we become responsible for it.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 11 of 123:
|
Jul 14 07:10 UTC 1995 |
That states what's bothering me, perhaps better than I did. If
the indecent "graffiti" is here, even if we ignore it we acquire
a responsibility for it. I've noticed that schools (eventually)
scrub the indecent graffiti off the men's room walls and stalls,
even though *they* didn't put it there. I think they do it because
it reflects poorly upon the intended character of the institution.
Do the indecent files, publically accessible, here, reflect poorly
upon Grex?
|
cicero
|
|
response 12 of 123:
|
Jul 14 07:40 UTC 1995 |
Isn't this really the same old "should there be some kind of censorship on
Grex" question that seems to come up every few months here? I don't see what
the big deal is about. Sen. Exon is an idiot, and his bill is
unconstitutional, and very unenforcible. I think we should maybe relax a bit
and quit worring about upsetting the prudes out there. I also wish we would
all quit being so high and mighty with our attitudes. Saying "We shouldn't
censor even if it is sopmoric and crude (IE something which =I= would never be
a consumer of), because we shouldn't judge others no matter how little taste
they have" Well I for one am willing to admit that although I am an
intelligent and articulate person with sophisticated sensability, I have, in my
life, read and viewed crude and indecent things and have enjoyed the
experience, and I bet a bunch of others here have too. There is a time and a
place for everything-including smut. I am REALLY not going to pass judgement
on these things, and I am not going to be party to censorship. If Grex ever
decides that it needs to start legislating the morality of it's members and
users, I will be gone from here in an instant, and I will not come back.
|
kt8k
|
|
response 13 of 123:
|
Jul 14 10:59 UTC 1995 |
When the "thought police" begin to tackle the job of censoring the net, my
bet is that they will be so daunted by the task early on that they will only
be able to make an example of a few hapless systems. Is there some way to
avoid being made an example? Censoring grex in any way is not worth
considering for the above (and many other) reasons, IMHO.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 14 of 123:
|
Jul 14 14:36 UTC 1995 |
Well, I'm glad that *I* didn't say any of the things cicero diapproves of,
ala "censoring". By the way, is scrubbing the graffiti off the bathroom
stall walls "censorship"? I think cicero misses the point, which is that
Grex, as a promoter of low-cost and open internet access, has a public
image, and it would be detrimental to that image to be widely judged as a
purveyor of smut. There are other criteria by which we should want to be
judged. Putting concepts of (perhaps less admirable) individual freedom
ahead of Grex's mission of public service, appears to me to be putting the
horseshit ahead of the cart.
After giving some thought to how to keep individual rights more apart
from public rights, I would like to suggest that the default perms
for users' home directories be 711. The public will then not have
open access to users' home directories, unless they are given specific
filenames to read.
Exceptions would be for staff with root, of course. I'd also suggest
that identify still be able to display users' .login/.profile files,
for the use of helpers (there may be a few other files to which
helpers should have access, such as .cf... files).
|
mju
|
|
response 15 of 123:
|
Jul 14 20:43 UTC 1995 |
It would seem to me that changing the default file and directory
permissions such that new users' files are not pubilcally-readable
is not really in the spirit of promoting the free exchange of
information, which is one of Grex's founding principles (or something
like that).
|
ajax
|
|
response 16 of 123:
|
Jul 14 21:51 UTC 1995 |
That's a fuzzy founding principle: mailboxes accessible only by the owner
also impede info-sharing. I think it's a tough question, with a somewhat
arbitrary answer either way.
|
chelsea
|
|
response 17 of 123:
|
Jul 14 23:25 UTC 1995 |
Grex should in no way even allude to a policy of content control
'cause there is now way, no how we could ever have control unless
we change the whole of Grex. If someone doesn't like what someone
else has in his or her directory then I guess they shouldn't go
reading that person's directory. If someone hears that something
offensive might exist is someone's directory and is bothered by
that then it's time that person grows some tolerance. And this is
as good a place to do that as anywhere.
Grex should strive for the reputation of trusting its users to
do the right thing. I see no reason to think that in the vast
majority of cases that isn't exactly what will happen.
|
tsty
|
|
response 18 of 123:
|
Jul 15 17:56 UTC 1995 |
any helper, of course, has the option of deciding whether or not to
help, for reasons compatible with that helper at that moment.
that being said, i think it would most distasteful to discover that
someone(s) around here would become an active extention of the
Exon, et al., thought police. That son of a bitch doesn't need any
"help."
|
nephi
|
|
response 19 of 123:
|
Jul 19 08:49 UTC 1995 |
I'm sorry, TS, but you've lost me. Who's the "son of a bitch"?
|
popcorn
|
|
response 20 of 123:
|
Jul 19 14:26 UTC 1995 |
This response has been erased.
|
tsty
|
|
response 21 of 123:
|
Jul 20 06:48 UTC 1995 |
correct-o-mundo, Sen (sic) Exon.
|
sidhe
|
|
response 22 of 123:
|
Jul 29 19:37 UTC 1995 |
I don't care particularly who the "son-of-a-bitch" is..
What I read I do not believe..
Why is it, that I propose a censorable cf, and it gets met with
loud and obnoxious "NEVER!"s, but now this is even given
the dignification of a response! Private-file censorship??
WHat precisely have you been smoking??
|
rcurl
|
|
response 23 of 123:
|
Jul 29 20:20 UTC 1995 |
No one has suggested private file censorship - yet. What has been
suggested, given the potential liability to Grex of publicly exposing a
lot of smut in users' files, is to create users home directories with the
default permission of the user only (i.e., 711). This has no effect at all
upon the content of any user's files, nor the permissioin status of any
user's files. In addition, the user could, if they wished, change the home
directory permission.
I have discovered, as a helper, that many users already have done this
themselves - i.e., depermitted their home directory to others. Many have
also created directories in their home directory that others cannot read.
This is really no different, as has been pointed out, than having mail
files permitted only to the user. Having home directory default permission
be to the user only would do what we do with most of the rest of our lives
- consider our private lives private, and only share them at our own
volition. Users could still have www homepages openly readable, and files
that helpers might want to check (like .login and .profile) are still
readable even if the home directory is not.
I don't consider a degree of individual control over one's private life to
be censorship.
|
kerouac
|
|
response 24 of 123:
|
Jul 30 00:52 UTC 1995 |
I think that is an excellent idea. Several weeks ago on party I heard
someone with whom I was not familiar claim to have read someone else's
mail. It seems that if an old mail folder is renamed and left in the
home directory, it is no longer protected and can be read like any other
file. I dont think that it is really necessary for everyone to have
access to everyone else's files. There are plenty of less computer
literate computer users who might well not know enough to protect their
own files from this kind of snooping. So I think its a good idea.
|
