response 175 of 203:

Aug 25 06:20 UTC 1999

I had trouble with the wording, in fact I had to change my vote (when I
re-read the wording carefully and understood what rescind meant!).

I'm certainly not dumb either.

response 177 of 203:

Aug 25 15:07 UTC 1999

You don't need Robert to tell you what the resolution meant. The motion said,
"Do you want to stop the board from shutting down?" ipso facto.

response 179 of 203:

Aug 25 18:37 UTC 1999

... ipso facto stoping the board from shutting down.

response 181 of 203:

Aug 25 19:36 UTC 1999

The resolution to suspend operations did not mention that it only
applied to a particular court hearing.  Maybe the Board would like
to pass a *new* resolution stating what will happen in the future
if we lose a round in court.  I would hope that this resolution
would receive public discussion before it comes before the Board.

response 183 of 203:

Aug 25 20:41 UTC 1999

The law is only run by the state justice department, and michigan is in a
single timezone, and the legal definition of date/time is the date/time in
the specific timezone where the law is governed *or* where the law is broken,
both of witch are the same in this case.

response 185 of 203:

Aug 25 22:46 UTC 1999

Re #184: Only the part about time zones is paranoid.  The parts about
'destructive litigation' are, unfortunately, pretty realistic.  The legal
system tends to favor the person with the deepest pockets, at least if they
play their cards right.

response 187 of 203:

Aug 25 23:50 UTC 1999

Everything is semantics.  But there's semantics and semantics.  It's one
thing to argue semantics to try to clarify what is being said.  It's
another thing entirely to argue semantics to try to twist people's words
around, or worse yet to try to confuse and delude them.  Of course, we
have an entire profession dedicated pretty much to semantics -- the law,
and in common law the ability to twist people's words around is in fact
an important skill; it's pretty much exactly the way in which existing
laws (or customs) can be extended to cover new situations.  This isn't
automatically a bad thing.  But it's not automatically a good thing
either; it's certainly one of those things of which lawyers are
overfond.  The reason I said this was semantics above, is because by
arguing semantics, it's very easy to fall into the trap of neglecting
the forest for the pine needles.  It's very probable that each member of
the board had a slightly different idea what they meant by the board
resolution; it's likely my opinion of what the board really meant is
different from theirs; and it's likely that the board's opinion of their
resolution is slightly different today than it was at midsummer.  I
think it likely Dave's opinion of what the board meant is distinctly
different from what the board meant.  I suspect each user who read and
voted on the resolution formed their own opinion of what was meant by
the board, and that opinion may have been remarkably different from both
Dave and the board.  A lot of those differences in meaning do not
matter.  So one pine needle is on the north side of a tree, and the
another needle is on the south side.  Big deal.  They're both going to
make sugar until they fall off, decompose, and discourage vegetation
from stealing nutrients from the tree.  The best way I know to avoid
getting caught up in minutia, and never reach anywhere interesting, is
to step back and look at what your goals are, what the overall picture
is.  When you're looking at details, you need a way to figure out which
details matter -- which ones make a functional difference to the overall
picture.

Now, with regards to this resolution, it's silly to argue what the board
meant regarding january, when they passed this resolution.  We all know
that they didn't mean a thing, and that they probably didn't even think
about it, because they sure didn't bother to mention january.  Now that
the preliminary hearing is past, we know a lot more about january.  We
know that there are 3 possibilities regarding what the courts might do,
and we have a fair idea of the probabilities of those chances.  We know
that it it is very unlikely that the courts will choose to uphold the
michigan act unaltered.  It is therefore a moot point what the board
might decide in this case.  The second and still unlikely possibility is
that the court might decide to emulate dr. frankenstein, and twist the
legilature's words around to mean something that they believe is
constitutional, serves the public interest, and maybe provides a lawful
avenue in which for grex to continue.  Since we don't know what shape or
how fast the monster will be, it seems to me most unwise to make any
binding commitments regarding what we do in this case.  We do have an
idea what the board might have done if Dave's resolution had passed, and
the law as altered by the courts had strongly implied that grex shut
down and make changes before continuing operation.  We know that at
least one board member would have likely considered himself to be in an
untennable position, and would have resigned.  (More likely, though, is
that the alteration would be more subtle, and the grex board might well
feel it has adequate basis to make a "different" decision, that
presumably wouldn't be bound by Dave's resolution.) We also know that
the 3rd and most likely possibility is that the courts throw the entire
act out.  In this case, it's a moot point, both as to what the board's
resolution, means, *and*, what Dave's resolution means.  The only
functional item left, in this case, is what effect did Dave's resolution
have on the users.  And *this* is the item that concerns me the most.

I think it's quite interesting that different people had different
opinions on how hard it was to understand Dave's resolution.  To me,
this indicates that different people had different models of the
situation in their head, and that Dave's wording was very much oriented
around one particular model.  People who shared that model apparently
found it easy to understand Dave's wording.  People who had a different
model experienced trouble.  It can be a challenge to word something so
that it is easy for many different people with different models to
understand.  But the wording in Dave's resolution was not I think guided
nearly so much by an interest in clarifying what was meant, as by a love
of parliementary procedure -- I can remember past discussions, on the
proper use of positives & negatives, with respect to resolutions.  Or,
at least, I hope that is what guided Dave's resolution, and that he
wasn't in fact actually trying to slant it to confuse people into voting
for it out of ignorance.

I don't think anyone would have paid *that* much attention to timezones.
If anything, the system would have been shut down a bit early, not to
deal with timezones, but simply in order to avoid the chance that random
acts of nature (dead car batteries, traffic jams, things at work, a last
minute phone call) would have interferred with our ability to shut
things down at the "last moment".  It probably would have depended a bit
on exactly who shut things down.  I can see STeve getting there early
and camping out to be sure to shut things down at the last possible
moment.  I probably would have shut down several hours *after* the
deadline, which is why I would probably let someone else do the dirty
deed.

response 189 of 203:

Aug 27 00:27 UTC 1999

I think this post-vote analysis of why people voted for what reasons is
ridiculous, and seems to be coming from grex baff types, which I find
disappointing.  The notion that this motion was confusing, employed double
negatives, I find insulting.  The vote was 14/16 to 27, end of story.
Look to the future, and drop all this.

I have stated that I agreed with the board's decision, at the time it was
made.  I have also said that I disagreed with the decision to not publicly
announce the board's resolution.  Lastly, I voted FOR this motion, mainly on
the basis that the "danger zone" came and went, with the board's resolution
in place.  I might have voted differently if the "danger zone" were upcoming.
My "yes" vote means that I expect "what to do if law becomes reality in the
future" to be discussed *now*, including deciding how to *not* deny public 
access to grex in that event and deciding how *to* publicly announce what 
would happen, in advance.

response 191 of 203:

Aug 27 03:13 UTC 1999

Several people said the motion was hard to understand and required
careful reading.  Welcome to real life.  A lot of the issues that come
up for votes are actually pretty complex.  Writing simple statements
that explain them clearly is often impossible.

I really think that this is a complex issue.  To really evaluate it you
need to understand a fair bit about:
  (1) the content of Michigan Act 33 of 1999,
  (2) the implications of this law would be for grex and its users,
  (3) the basis of and precidents for our legal challenge of this law,
  (4) the operation of the federal court system,
  (5) the operation of Michigan police and prosecuters,
  (6) the Grex board's temporary shut-down policy,
  (7) Dave's motion.
I don't think I have a great handle on all this, and I don't think
anyone else does either.  We know different amounts about different
parts of this, and have different values driving our decisions, so we
come to different decisions.

Still, the relative closeness of this vote doesn't really shake my faith
that the board made the right decision.  You could over-simply Dave's
motion to "Should we let the Board shut Grex down."  I suspect some of
the people voting read little more than that into it.  A resounding "NO"
when such a statement is presented to random Grex users would be what I
would naturally expect.  I thought Dave's motion would be quite likely
to pass, just on that basis.

But the board was supported by a solid margin.  To me this means that
most of our members actually are following these things pretty well, and
are not just voting kneejerk reactions.  Though obviously some of the
people opposing the board's policy have thoroughly thought through their
positions, and are strongly committed to them, I'd bet I could convince
many of rest that the board wasn't as mad as they appear at first
glance.

As board members, we have a dual role - we need to listen to our users'
ideas, but we also need to try to sell our users on our ideas.  This
sounds contradictory, but isn't really - you can't sell your ideas to
people without listening very closely to what they want.  If this vote
was closer than some of the past ones, then it doesn't necessarily mean
the board members have to doubt their position.  It might just mean they
have to argue it better.

response 193 of 203:

Aug 27 05:04 UTC 1999

I think what was meant by "unplannable" is that it's likely that the law
would be changed, if it did go into effect.  Because of that, it's
impossible to know exactly what affect on Grex it would have, and thus very
hard to plan for it.

response 195 of 203:

Aug 27 12:40 UTC 1999

Why would you write it with a negative conotation?

response 197 of 203:

Aug 27 14:54 UTC 1999

Indeed.    8-)

response 199 of 203:

Aug 30 11:22 UTC 1999

I am not a member of the bored, and I'm not even a paying user. I don't
have cash in any bank anywhere and I don't trust mailing even a money
order so I will probably have to hold membership off until I can make it
to Ann Arbor again some day. 

But I have a website on your hard drive space and enemies to cajole over
your party line. I'm about to move the website offline to a top-secret
server which means it will be inaccessible until I find another freenet or
until I can find a break in the unmoving black

        *** Host is not currently available ***

-responding mass that is supposed to be nether.net ... I surmise that it's
inaceesible due to every port being occupied by finnish-based robots set
on auto-connect over T1 lines, and that nether.net is doomed to always
feature the same unmoving unkickable 47 users ...

Anyways, that's off optic. Er, Topic. This thing about the illegal
content, what is that ? I downloaded it and it seems to me that if you
feature a strong enough legal disclaimer that must be linked through
before a remote user can read your various files, stating that you are not
responsible for j--- sh--, then what's to worry ? 

an example is my disclaimer at www.grex.org/~eyenot/disc.html

NOBODY can get through that without being dead, the pope, not a 'real boy
or real girl' , not 'the owner of a beating heart' , without their entire
family and their lawyer present for every second of the online connection, 
and only if they are not a resident of the planet earth, connecting
through a Tandy with no mouse, an unworking monitor, and the keyboard
unplugged, and are willing to testify to all of this in court with
verifiable proof. Oh, and they have to be both over the age of 18 and over
the age of 127. Etc. Etc.

The only exception is ME and it's stated that through that disclaimer is
the only way to ever reach any of my pages, and if somebody has found a
way to access my pages otherwise (such as by using a web browser and
knowing the filename of the document) then they accept full responsibility
for having hacked into my webpages thusly. And at the bottom I have the
link to my website and I state clearly "you can't enter this link unless
you have read the tnire disclaimer above and unless you meet all of the
legal requirements of entering this page" and also included are the old
standbys related to non-membership with the CIA, FBI, or any other legal
agency...

I just don't understand how a person could ever claim that somebody else
is responsible for another's electronic actions. This includes straight up
hacking and spreading of viruses. It should be noted concerning viruses
that the most famous spread of a virus known was the hook-and-tail style
'tapeworm'-form virus that was spread through the internet's UNIX system
by Robert Tappan Morris Jr. (RTM) son of RTMorris Sr. who was one of the
pioneer designers of what we know today as "UNIX", and that had that virus
not been spread there would be FAR more malicious and destructive acts to
account for due to people accessing holes and imperfections in the UNIX
system that just a day's worth of busy phone lines or today's descriptions
of 'people accessing your Hard Drive through your web browser'. First of
all UNIX will Never be perfect so long as it exists, and there will always
be exploitable loopholes due not only to the nature of the hardware it was
designed upon originally but also due to the needs of administrators and
the accessibility of the base code. Second of all, the legal
responsibility of what a person experiences on the internet finally shall
rest SOLELY on that person's shoulders ! They turned on their computer,
they hooked up. If they found a webpage displaying sexually explicit
material, and they didn't want to see it, then the only possibility is
that they were Tricked or Mislead or Uninformed about what the link or
page might contain, and in that case they know now that they shouldn't
ever enter that site and they can bookmark it in their AVOIDS list if they
have to. 

Otherwise, they read, viewed, scanned, speed-read, purveyed, unobfuscated, 
gleaned, glanced at, noticed, or otherwise perceived or experienced
perceiving the contents of the page knowing full well what they would and,
unless they have bene 'living in a hole', COULD contain.

If people having been posting proper disclaimers, maybe the administrators
should get on that -- firstly I would not at all mind having to subject
everybody who tries to link to a page of mine to first view a documnent
placed by the GREX admins that uses a .cgi to link them to whatever
username they were trying for originally. The document could state the
basic idea that the user is entering an area where such and such content
is known to be, and that the danger exists that somebody's virgin senses
will be suscepted to such and such a content (my website features vulgar
abstractions and absurdities, some of them in depiction of sexual organs
or acts but not in any coherent way) and that they are entering the area
under the knowledge that they may at any time be the victim of such
dangerous content. 

You know that grex web page that links to a grex users' pages page that
links to individual users' pages ? I wouldn't even mind if a person had to
always go through that before encountering ANY GREX web site. In fact,
wouldn't you be legally protected if you forced all users to link NEVER to
their own pages but always to www.grex.org ? I would ! If somebody wanted
to navigate to my page then they will have to. This leaves the question
'what if they have the filename, can't they link to it directly?' This
leaves the question of where they got the link from, and if it was from
the webpage's author then I would think the page author is liable. If it
wasn't, it could have originated from anywhere, even a room full of
monkeys and keyboards. 

This leaves the question of explicit content in party and in conferences.
In party ? Ummm you can place a small disclaimer at the message that
prints for all people entering party. For conferences, you can post a
disclaimer as well, and both of these require membership to GREX which
I do believe contains a message or disclaimer concerning explicit content,
but I can't really remember. Pretty sure nobody else does, too. 

In any case anybody seeing something explicit here can be notified before
the fact that they will be seeing something explicit, even if the
administrators are 100% sure nothing explicit will cross the visitor's
eyes. 

As far as the web pages, I'm just going to offload mine over the next
couple of days because nobody can EVER say what a law is gonna demand
tomorrow or the next day and nobody can EVER know for sure whether or not
they are breaking the law in every city of every county of every state in
america let alone every city in every division or state or what the ----
ever in every country across the globe ! You can't ever know who the heck
is gonna read what is on your web page and whether or not it will be
determined to be illegal, and you can't ever know if it will pertain only
to your local jurisdiction or if the foreign government will demand
compensation or what !! YOU JUST CAN'T KNOW !!

And as long as a system is so sensitive to the judo-political effects of
the world, it's not safe to assume any data there is not illegal to
anybody anywhere in the world.

Anyways.

 ___
(_o-)
  `"'