response 50 of 111:

May 28 17:05 UTC 1999

(dang slipped in, I detect a trend here in responses.)

response 52 of 111:

May 28 18:06 UTC 1999

It might be someone's contention that nuclear weapons could lead to a 
nuclear war, which would destroy all life on the planet, and with it, 
Grex.  Therefore, Grex ought to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons.  
Any one of us here could think of 1000 such agendas for Grex to support, 
and could think of a similar argument by which Grex could support any 
such political agenda.  (Abortions could lead to 0 babies being born, 
therefore the end of Grex; telephone company mergers could drive up our 
costs, therefore the end of Grex; increased parking meter fees could 
lead to someone blocking Grex's driveway, so that no staffer could 
reboot the system for a month, therefore the end of Grex.)  They're all 
silly examples, intended only to lead to the phrase "end of Grex", and 
thus to an excuse for Grex to take political action.

The arguments in this item are about as silly.  We can and do live with 
censorship.  The commonest example is credit card numbers.  Users cannot 
post credit card numbers on Grex, and yet we've survived, and prospered 
pretty well.

The real reason for driving Grex into political action, and dragging 
every user of the system into supporting the ACLU's political agenda as 
a condition for using the system, is that some people here find the new 
law to be distasteful.  To use Grex is to support Grex.  Every user here 
is a part of the reason I am here.  I wouldn't be logging on to a system 
with 100 users -- just those who pay money -- for very long.  Thus, 
those who log in here are by that definition "supporters", and to some 
extent, they have to buy into Grex's endorsements for agendas.  Ask 
those who won't eat Domino's Pizza because of Tom Monahan's Catholic 
activities what I mean, if I haven't yet made myself clear.  Even one of 
the ACLU lawyers pointed out that some people will see opposition to 
this law as support for free access to pornography by children.

I do despise the ACLU.  No doubt about that, and I've said so many times 
over the last 13 years while I've been on-line, here and on M-Net.  They 
have a very politicized liberal agenda.  Where is the ACLU on defending 
people's right to own guns, or practice religion even in public places 
like schools by common, popular religions like Christianity?  They don't 
support such rights, they oppose them.  They oppose other rights, too; 
they pick whose rights to support and whose to oppose, and stomp some 
people pretty well into submission.  

Enough of that.  I'm not interested in debating the benefits of the 
ACLU.  I do not see the acronym "ACLU", though, and put on the blinders 
like a lot of people here do, and leap to support their agenda, 
whatever it is.  As much as I dislike the ACLU, from what I know in this 
case, I maybe hope they prevail on this one issue.  I just hope they do 
it without Grex, which shouldn't be involved in politics.

response 54 of 111:

May 28 18:13 UTC 1999

#52 slipped in.  But I question the assumption that most of us are just
thinking blindly, foaming at the mouth becasue, hey, it's the ACLU.  Not only
does the fairly thoughtful discussion we've been having here bely that, but
it's also a bit insulting to assume that most grexers can't think for
themselves.

response 56 of 111:

May 28 18:34 UTC 1999

re #52: You are truly missing the boat, with your analogy to nuclear
        weapons. It would be more analogous to your complainting that
        the NRA shouldn't oppose a law that banned all handguns, as some
        of its members might not oppose such a law.

        When I have asked you for specifics with regard to the ACLU --
        actual cases where you disagreed with their actions -- you failed
        to name a single one. Forgive me, but I think your reaction is
        knee-jerk. You don't like the ACLU, because it is "liberal." You
        oppose anything that the ACLU wants to do, because it is the ACLU.
        You would have Grex bite off its nose to spite its face, because
        you think it would also spite the ACLU.

        Name the people here who are your obverse -- who propose that
        people should blindly follow the ACLU. Can you name even one?

response 58 of 111:

May 28 19:13 UTC 1999

Is there a lot of desire here to debate the merits of the ACLU?  I did 
list a couple of the reasons why I describe the ACLU as having a 
political agenda, as requested by Aaron -- yet he's asking for a couple 
of reasons why I describe the ACLU as having a political agenda.  Some 
days you can't get the simplest of points across.

Rane, I'm reasonably sure you understand my point.  Do you really want 
to debate it here and now?  The ACLU's name on anything rings loud bells 
in my head, but even so, I'm not rabidly against everything they do, 
regardless of what it is.  *I wished them well in this case.*  It's 
still a political agenda which Grex should avoid.

response 60 of 111:

May 28 19:35 UTC 1999

I would like to see Grex join this suit.

I'd also be willing to help with legal liason/public relations.

response 62 of 111:

May 28 19:54 UTC 1999

I guess it is also worth noting, on the "graphics" front that Grex
hosts webpages, some of which have graphics.

response 64 of 111:

May 28 22:00 UTC 1999

It is unfortunate that Engler conservatives tend toward the religious
right, as opposed to the traditional political right. However, I have
seen little sign that the Court of Appeals would uphold a law this far
"out there." Also, given the First Amendment issues, this would be
subject to review by federal courts, even if upheld by Michigan's Supreme
Court.

response 66 of 111:

May 29 02:59 UTC 1999

I think the answer to Steve's question is that if we were found not to
have standing, then that would give us any real protection.  Standing
can obviously change with time.  I suppose a ruling that our activities
weren't effected by the bill could be useful as a defense in a later
lawsuit, as long as it accurately described what we did, and what we did
hadn't changed.  However, if anyone did prosecute us later, it would
certainly establish our standing very soundly at that time.

Dave says we may not have standing because although the law as written
wouldn't effect us, the way it is likely to be enforced probably
wouldn't.  Unlike Dave, I'm not an attorney, but that sounds kind of
implausible.  Under those rules we could have laws on the books that
work like "oh yeah, as written it's wildly unconstitutional, but it's
OK because we don't really mean that way."

I'm not sure that it makes any difference whether or not there is
actually any "obscene" material currently available on Grex.  I would
think that our standing would be more based on the basic methods of
operations here.  Given that we have over 25,000 users, given free
accounts without any kind of validation and allowed to post in
unmoderated forums, any sane person would conclude that, of course, this
kind of material is going to appear on the system regularly. 
Furthermore, we can easily show cases of people trying to deliberately
do damage to this system - we have a couple people every week try to run
fork bombs or fill up the disk.  If this law were in effect, there would
be another avenue available - anonymously post some obscene material and
report us to the proper authorities.

We've discussed in the past how Grex would cope with CDA-like laws. 
People had suggested that we could restrict access to adult conferences,
like "singles" to people who had been validated as adults.  But that
would be completely ineffective against a hostile user posting obscene
material in the "teletubbies" conference (ok, so we haven't got a
teletubbies conference.)  In fact, we have to validate *all* users, so
that if someone does post obscene materials, we can hold them
responsible.

The procedures necessary for validating the identity (for liability
protection reasons) and age (to decide what parts of the system they
would have access to) of all new users are not obvious, but they
probably aren't simple, and probably can't be automated.  Currently we
have over 200 newusers a day.  Could our volunteer staff manage to
validate 200 newusers a day?  The reason we qualify as a tax-exempt
organization is because we have charitable and educational missions. 
For us to persue these missions effectively, it is important that the
barriers to entering the system be low.  A complex validation process
for all new users would cripple our ability to serve those missions,
even if we could marshal the resources necessary to pursue it.

In short, this law basically outlaws Grex.  I don't believe that we
could operate under its terms.

This is why John Perry is wrong.  This is not advocacy.  Suppose that
the law wasn't immediately overthrown.  Suppose that Grex got prosecuted
under this law.  Then we would be defendents instead of plaintiffs, but
the situation would basically be the same.  Our only possible defense
would be that the law was unconstitutional.  Would you say then that we
shouldn't defend ourselves because that would be advocacy?

Cyberspace Communications has a long record of doing our best to be good
citizens and operate within the law.  If this law were upheld, we'd be
at a quandry - either we make drastic, crippling changes to the way we
work, we shut down, or we run as an outlaw system, in defiance of the
law.  In practice, I think some staff and board members would go ahead
running an outlaw system, others would severer themselves from the
system because they feel they can't stand the legal exposure.  Maybe
another group would try to build a system that would operate within
these restrictions, but I don't know anyone among the current leadership
who seemed inclined that way the last time we talked.

This lawsuit is being brought because we don't want to be outlaws, even
if, as Dave says, chances are good that we wouldn't be prosecuted.  We
want to be able to pursue our mission without violating the law.  I
don't think pursuing this suit would be a deviation from our mission.  I
think it is a necessary part of our mission.

response 68 of 111:

May 29 07:37 UTC 1999

David Cahill says there's some chance we might not be considered to
"have standing".  Ultimately that's certainly up to the courts, not us,
to decide, but it sure looks to me like this law could easily be applied
to us, and that we "ought" to have standing.  The two issues David
mentioned were "obscene" and "images".

For "obscene", I assume David is talking about Sec.7(6)(a), which
references "1984 PA 343 MCL 752.362".  Unfortunately, (6) has that
annoying phrase "unless ONE OR both" apply (caps mine), and Sec.7(6)(b)
says "proves the person displayed the matter to 1 or more specific
minors and knew his or her status as a a minor".  Lest we be tempted to
apply plain english semantics to the meaning of "knew his or her
status", sec.7(4) explicitly extends this to include "or recklessly
disregards a substantial risk that the person...under 18 years of age.".
In the context of grex, I think this could be translated to say that the
state could decide to prosecute if they receive a complaint from the
narrow minded biggoted parents of a minor who was caught reading
sexually explicit material on grex, even if that material isn't
"obscene" as defined by 1984PA343MCL752.362.

For "image", I presume David may either be mentioning something
contained in 1984PA343MCL752.362, which is probably irrelevant if it's
hard to prove, or may be referring to sec.3(b) "Sexually explicit
performance" or sec.3(d) "Sexually explicit visual material".
Unfortunately, the bill also contains sec.3(c) "Sexually explicit verbal
material" which seems to define exactly the sort of material one might
find in a conference on grex.  Besides the conferences, we also have
"party" on grex, which introduces the possibility of "cybersex", which
if I read sec.3(b) right, might actually count as a "sexually explicit
performance".  The definitions in sec.3 appear to overlap, so I suppose
a given material could qualify under multiple definitions in sec.3 and
might even count as multiple violations of different parts of sec.5.

When sec.5 references "verbal" material, it introduces an additional new
concept which isn't well defined -- it requires that the verbal material
also be "harmful to minors".  This seems awfully vague to me, but if I'm
to believe the above commentary quoted above regarding the law, the
legislators believe any sexually explicit material is "harmful".  I have
no idea how the courts would actually evaluate this; -- I suppose it
depends in part on who has hired Feiger for their side.

One part of the bill appears to be a provision aimed at providing an
exception for ISPs, but this provision is very oddly worded.  This
exception is in sec.5(6), and apparently turns off sec.5(3) and (4).
However, there is almost identical language in sec.7(3) and (4), and in
these sections, there is no ISP exception.  Since grex isn't a
traditional ISP, it doesn't appear to me that it's sufficient protection
for grex.  The two key phrases are "in good faith", and "without
knowledge of the nature".  I can think of the following cases for grex.
 (1) someone puts sexually explicit jpegs on their grex web page
        (a) the jpegs are on grex -- since we don't allow images,
                (of any sort) presumably that's covered under "good faith".
        (b) the jpegs are actually on another site -- since the images
                are actually stored elsewhere, that's ok by us, but
                if the weg page referencing them is on grex, I'm not
                sure state prosecutors are smart enough not to go after
                us.  Probably we'd end up in the clear, but this could be
                messy.
 (2) someone sends or receives sexually explicit mail or "write" or
"talk".
        Since we don't and can't monitor such, presumably this would
        again be covered.
 (3) someone reads a usenet news group via lynx, such as
        "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female".
                Again, this appears to be safe for us.
 (4) Grex decides to host a news server, and one of the news groups
        we decide to carry is "soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm".
        I believe this newsgroup has very few pictures, but a
        lot of the material probably qualifies as "sexually explicit
        verbal material".  I think this would put grex at great risk,
        since that's a group we'd be explicitly deciding to store and forward.
 (5) private web pages, such as
"http://www.cyberspace.org/~vector/bitch.log".
        This looks to me like more "sexually explicit verbal material",
        and as such might present a risk for grex.  Since it's not
        something we decided, but we do state that grex is "not for
        illegal purposes", that might pose some defense "good faith",
        but on the other hand, since we know it's there, are we required
        to get rid of it, now that we know it's there?  Do we need to
        go and regularly review all published web pages on grex for
        sexually explicit material?  Could we get away with just
        stating that we forbid access to grex from "michigan minors" and not
        actually validate people coming from michigan?
        Any of these changes would I think be an extremely unwelcome
        change to grex.
 (6) Conferences such as "flirt" and "singles".  These probably contain
        yet more "sexually explicit verbal material", which is worse
        yet originated by grex users, some of them minors.  These certainly
        pose the most central risk to the essential "grex" concept,
        since it attacks our core purpose.
 (7) Someone creates a channel in party, "#cybersex", and proceeds to
        do the obvious.  This is something like the sexually explicit
        talk, except it could now be publically accessible to anyone
        on the system.  Presumably, we "could" (and the law may believe
        that we "ought") to monitor such things, but this is certainly
        a degree of public supervision grex staff would be loath to do.
        Note that commercial computer networks, such as AOL, *do*
        have a permament staff who monitor unwelcome activity,
        so the courts might well find us negligent if we fail to
        provide an equivalent amount of monitoring.
        These certainly appear to pose a risk to grex as well,
        and given the transient nature of party, I'm not sure
        how far "good faith" would really carry us, especially
        if we aren't willing to convert ourselves to a police state.

If we were a traditional ISP, we had relatively little locally
originated content and it was relatively static, and our customer base
was mostly for-pay "identified" people, we might be at relatively little
risk.  But, we have a *lot* of locally originated content, some of it is
very transient, and we have very little handle on the identity or ages
of most of our users.  The ISP exception, at least as it's spelled out
in the bill, doesn't really seem to afford us all that much protection,
and in order to be anywhere close to "safe", it looks to me like we'd
have to make some very unwelcome changes.

response 70 of 111:

May 29 16:25 UTC 1999

Marcus' comments are all quite relevant, but they still don't address
the question of defining SEAHTC. He seems to be saying something like
"I know it when I see it". But that would be one person's opinion. 

I'm pursuing this point because I don't think that sexually explicit
material is ever "harmful to children". They should learn the facts of
life very early so that they are just part of their knowledge, essentially
from birth. Our species evolved under that condition (you can't get
very nonexplicit in a cave). Such material could be, in my opinion,
in poor "taste", or irrelevant to anything that matters, or inane,
or stupid, or discriminatory....like a lot of other speech could be....
but not because it is sexually explicit. 

response 72 of 111:

May 29 23:55 UTC 1999

If I had posted something that you afterward aired around as being
sexually explicit and harmful to children, I sure as hell would resent it
- even if it your right to do so (since I wrote it for public
consumption). But it would be misinterpreting and putting a false
significance on what I wrote, for which I would have to report you to the
Misrepresentation Inquisition.

I don't understand how anyone that believe in freedom of speech could with
good conscience put their own interpretation on what others will read into
something said here, and hold it up as stuff that "could possibly be
construed as being harmful to children". To me, the very idea is
sickening. Let those that are *determined* to make such accusations do
their own dirty work. 

response 74 of 111:

May 30 05:32 UTC 1999

How can you be sure of that? Is the law so clear that a sentence can be
analyzed under its rules and unequivocably determined to be illegal? 

Would it tend to convey that Grex is full of stuff that might fall under
the law according to some if we provide even a small collection of
examples? Should they not be balanced by a proportionate collection of
material that those same persons would consider as not being illegal?