response 125 of 203:

Aug 13 22:29 UTC 1999

Re: paragraph 1 of #122: I agree that grex baff could be held "liable" 
if they didn't take steps to remove items posted by persons no longer 
account holders on grex.  But those folks themselves would not be 
liable, so any notion of grex baff protecting those folks (by 
temporarily "shutting down" grex) is specious, I maintain.

response 127 of 203:

Aug 14 21:53 UTC 1999

        Ok, after reading this item I'm going to put in my $0.02 here.

        The law that the government is trying to pass is lame.  If they
pass it, they might as well pass similar laws about TV, newspapers,
magazines, billboards, signs, even speech.  Might as well.  Makes just
about enough sense in my opinion.

        Second, if I remember right, the Internet is owned by the people
who provide the backbone networks--not the government.  Plus, the Internet
extends to many countries.  Therefore, no government has the right to try
to "regulate" the Internet, unless all countries agree with the
regulation.  (If I lived in Germany, I wouldn't want the U.S. to regulate
what my users could do.)

        Third, just because the government may do something lame (i.e.
passing the stupid law) doesn't mean we need to close Grex.  If a law is
unreasonable (i.e. this one or no walking outside after 6PM, or whatever
they come up with) then protest it.  Break it.  If they passed a law here
in Tennessee forbidding you to walk on public sidewalks after 6PM, I'd
wait until 7PM to walk up the street and visit my friend.  There are more
people in the country than there are government, so the people are the
final say in things.

        A lot of this I say because I am a Grex user and I think Grex is
one of the greatest things on the Internet, and I don't want to see it go
because of some government official's stupid decision.  I use Grex just
about every day, I have made friends here.  Sure, you can't telnet or FTP,
but so what?  There are plenty of things you CAN do here, pine, bbs, talk,
write, tel, etc.  I would hate to see Grex go away.  It's special in its
own way.

response 129 of 203:

Aug 15 02:09 UTC 1999

The government doesn't own my car or my house, but it doesn't stop them
from passing all sort of laws that regulate how I can use both.

response 131 of 203:

Aug 16 17:54 UTC 1999

I wrote to Mike Steinberg and asked him whether the ACLU would represent us
if we were prosecuted under the law.  He wrote back, but asked me not to post
his response because of our attorney-client privilege.  (The reason is that
he doesn't feel comfortable talking publicly about the ACLU's strategy in the
case until it's over, because the lawyers on the other side and the judge
might read it.)  I'll try to get a statement from him that's OK to post, but
it may take a little while.

response 133 of 203:

Aug 16 19:42 UTC 1999

Many of you who are local to Ann Arbor may want to carefully read the article
in yesterday's Ann Arbor News about the school board and the substitute
teachers.  This is a stunning example of a board which believed they "couldn't
lose" a lawsuit because their attorneys said they couldn't lose.  When they
lost, they still believed the attorneys who said they couldn't lose on appeal,
and continued their illegal behavior.  

I'd much rather the board believe that they might lose, and take steps ahead
of time to deal with such a possibility. (whether or not I agree with the plan
they came up with, or how they implemented it).  

response 135 of 203:

Aug 17 04:45 UTC 1999

The more I think about this, the more I wonder what dpc's motivations are
here.

This board resolution, as I understand it, was a motion to shut down until
we could figure out what to do, if an outcome of the legal case that nobody
expected happened.  A big part of that figuring out what to do was going to
be consulting with Grex's lawyers, which, thanks to getting involved with this
lawsuit, there are now at least three.  Presumably if those lawyers said it
was ok and we had nothing to worry about, and were able to come up with
reasons for that position that didn't seem completely far fetched, Grex would
be back open very quickly.  Certainly, by this point, Grex's lawyers have had
a chance to tell us to ignore the law if it gets upheld, and as far as I know
they haven't done so.

So what is Dave saying here?  He's repeatedly suggested that he should be
Grex's lawyer, but he is not and never has been.  Grex has, in the past,
gotten legal representation when it's been needed from a few different
attornies, but none of them have been Dave.  Yet Dave seems to be trying to
constrain the board into taking his legal advice instead of asking for legal
advice from the attornies who are already representing Grex in this case. 
What's going on here?

response 137 of 203:

Aug 18 16:44 UTC 1999

I would just like to thank all of the level headed people on grex for keeping
their heads and prudently preparing for the worst while fighting to keep free
speech in the state of Michigan  Thanks guys

response 139 of 203:

Aug 19 15:14 UTC 1999

My motivation is to prevent the Grex Board from cutting off public
access to the System while it figures out new policies.  Since any
court ruling is *months* away, the Board should be working *now* to
figure out its policies, and should have them ready in the remote
chance that we lose the suit down the line.

response 141 of 203:

Aug 19 20:44 UTC 1999

   Dave, do you understand that this motion was very much oriented towards
the (at the time) emminient release of the judge's decision?

   Part of whats bothering me about this whole item and vote is that its
so incredibly useless.  You have helped detract our collective attention
on this Dave, by insisting on this vote.

   It isn't going to pass.

   It's caused people to roll their eyes and groan.

   And it doesn't help the actual situation.  We're caught up in unproductive
yattering which hasn't done anything valid except fill up a little more of
Grex's /bbs partition.

response 143 of 203:

Aug 22 14:34 UTC 1999

RE #142 Is that Sunday, August 22, or Monday, August 23?

response 145 of 203:

Aug 22 18:13 UTC 1999

Question:

I just glanced at old e-mail that I hadn't bothered to read, and found a
message from aruba saying that my Grex membership was about to expire.  I was
a member when this vote started, and was a member at the time that I voted.
Apparrently I'm not a member now.  Does my vote count?

response 147 of 203:

Aug 22 18:20 UTC 1999

Steve's #145 slipped in. My reading of Article 2 of the bylaws is
that if you were a member at the time you cast your vote, then
your vote counts.

response 149 of 203:

Aug 23 12:24 UTC 1999

Here are the totals on this vote. They're slightly unofficial, pending
any changes in the voting eligibility list in the last month. However,
there wouldn't have been enough changes to affect the outcome, so I'm
reporting the results now:

        43 out of 87 eligible members cast a ballot
        16 votes YES (to rescind the Boards' motion)
        27 voted NO (to let it stand)

So the proposal was defeated.

Since non-members can run the vote program - their votes aren't
counted towards the outcome - we always have an unofficial poll of
non-members on any voted-on issues. Of the 141 non-members who voted,
67 voted yes and 74 voted no.