response 53 of 111:

May 28 18:10 UTC 1999

Yes.  Any user has the capability to extract something from a conference and
do whatever they like with it.  I'm not sure what Grex's usual policy is,
but
it seems to be that it would be more meaningful to provide specific examples
than to merely say more vaguely, "um, yeah, we have some stuff like that out
there."

I'd like to suggest that such examples, if we provide them, *not* be limited
entirely to the sexuality conference.  As albaugh said in #38, the point is
that grex *as a whole* is threatened, with or without the sexuality
conference.  And let's face it, we talk about questionable things
everywhere.  ;)

Look, I'm not even a dues-paying member (yet!  that will change when I get
my act together, really!), so I'm not sure how much y'all should listen to
me over those who know what they're doing and the board members and such. :)
I'm not sure what our current policies are, or how this will affect them.
And I think jep has a point, that getting into a habit of political advocacy
may not be wise for an organization such as grex.  That said, I think this
is something grex needs to fight, and I would be willing to help in whatever
way I could.

Oh, and like dang, I was active on grex as a minor, and I really benefitted
from it.  I think this is a good place for teenagers to test out their ideas
and get into discussions with others and ultimately come out of it wiser
people.  But good luck convincing the government of *that*.

response 55 of 111:

May 28 18:22 UTC 1999

I agree, most Grexers can think for themselves.  They can act for 
themselves.  That's what they should do, and we should encourage.  Grex 
doesn't need to be involved.

Many people here *do* accept the ACLU as "right first, ask questions 
later".

response 57 of 111:

May 28 18:41 UTC 1999

While I think the ACLU is one of the most important citizen based
organizations in the country for defending Bill of Rights against all
those that would want to take away our rights - that is not why I
support entering this suit. This goes right to the heart of what
Grex was founded for and what it is - an public, open, conferencing
system. It *is* Freedom of Speech. We disppear if freedom of speech
disappears, including freedom of even a little bit of speech that some
very narrow interest groups don't like. 

I'm sure John knows that what the ACLU is defending is the freedom of
the minority from being oppressed by the majority, in regard to the
religion-in-schools issue, and I am also sure he knows that sure-as-shootin'
(apropos adage...) non-Christians in school that promote Christian
activities in the classroom, would be put at a disadvantage. ACLU does
not take a general position on guns, however. 

This is not a matter of anyone's "political agenda" unless you call
defending the rights given us by the Constitution a political agenda. I
see using that term for the basis of our government and freedom an
attempt to put a negative label on things we value most. Freedom of
speech a (subversive) "political agenda"? Well, yes, it certainly is
in China. 

response 59 of 111:

May 28 19:14 UTC 1999

I think Grex should join the lawsuit.  Of course, I'm chair of the
Lawyers Committee of the Washtenaw ACLU, so what can you expect?   8-)
        Mike Steinberg, the Legal Director of the *State* ACLU is a
friend of mine.  He called me asking about Grex, and I've sent him
e-mail back.
        A couple of thoughts:
        1.  No one from Grex is required to *sign* the complaint.
Ordinarily, plaintiffs don't.  Their lawyers sign the complaint on
their behalf.  However, Grex should insist on *seeing* a copy of the
draft complaint.        
        2.  I'm not really sure Grex can meet the "standing" requirement
because I'm hard pressed to see that Grex is really threatened by
this new statute.  The fact that we don't allow graphics means that
we are physically unable to transmit the only kind of pornography
(kiddie or adult) that is currently prosecuted:  *images*.  Yes,
the new law technically covers text, but images are where the action
has been for the past decade or so.  Trust me--I was the "porn king
" for the Michigan House of Reps and helped write the *very* restrictive
porn statute referred to in this new statute; by "restrictive" I mean
that it is almost impossible for *anything* to be pornographic under it.
The prosecutors lost a couple of video-porn cases shortly after it
was enacted; since then they've given up.
        I'd be glad to join a legal liaison committee. 

response 61 of 111:

May 28 19:53 UTC 1999

re #58: John, I might feel better had you explained your views on the ACLU
        when we were discussing it in an item devoted to that purpose. 
        Instead, while grudgingly conceding that you could not point to a
        single case the ACLU had taken were you opposed their position,
        you took the "just because" approach to explaining your opposition.
        It is easy to bandy about terms like "liberal," but what do those
        terms mean? Perhaps you can now describe for us a few cases which
        involved the ACLU, where you felt that the plaintiff's rights truly
        should have been subverted, and explain why you feel that way.

        Start, if you will, with the proposed suit over on-line speech
        restrictions, presently under discussion.

re #59: Somebody from Grex would be required to sign interrogatory answers.

        I was not aware that you could not obtain standing on the basis of
        a plain-text reading of a statute. Is that really what you are
        arguing?

response 63 of 111:

May 28 20:57 UTC 1999

Grex should certainly join this lawsuit.  I'd like to see Arbornet join it
too, being that M-net has been around many years longer than Grex and is
arguably more well known.  Sad thing is, if the Michigan courts are now,
as I suspect, stacked with conservative Engler appointees, killing this
bill may be an uphill battle.

Grex will benefit from being part of this lawsuit.  It will get publicity
and more people will hear and know of grex.  Perhaps the board should
issue a press release announcing grex'x participation, and of course
announce it on the web page and put links to the various sites with info.
about the case.

response 65 of 111:

May 28 22:42 UTC 1999

Question:
        If, as dpc suggests, we were told that we didn't have standing to sue,
because this law didn't affect us, would that shield us from prosecution at
all?

I'm puzzled by Rane's contention that Grex's board or whatever would be unable
to extract text from items in any of our conferences showing material that
might put us in violation of the law.  It's certainly not practical to have
a human sitting there reading and deciding whether to censor every response
that gets entered, but that doesn't make it impossible to go back after the
fact and find a few examples.  This being a public access system, our board
members are allowed to read the conferences.

response 67 of 111:

May 29 05:56 UTC 1999

Re #65: Steve, to whom do we give the authority to designate content of
some conferences on Grex as "sexually explicit and harmful to children" 
(SEAHTC)?  You? Me? The President? Volunteers to offer their own
responses? It certainly would not be fair to give this authority to just
one person: it should really be a committee, in order to obtain the
judgement of a cross section of Grex. If they conducted their business in
Spanish, we could call it the Spanish Inquisition. Then, when the
committee has done their job, will we publish the Grex Reading List of
material dubbed SEAHTC, to see if Grex users agree with the committee?
That list would then become another item on the list, would it not? 

It is my opinion that we should leave it to an outside party to choose for
themselves what they deem SEAHTC, rather than have us do something *that
we don't even think should be done*. It should not be too hard to find
some right-wing demagogues to do the job for us. Maybe someone here will
volunteer? 

response 69 of 111:

May 29 14:42 UTC 1999

Don't forget ASCII-porn...

response 71 of 111:

May 29 17:49 UTC 1999

If there's no clear definition, we can't just come up with a bunch of stuff
and say, "we have this and it's harmful to children."  What we can do, and
this doesn't take a huge committee, is say, "here are some examples of stuff
that people have posted here, and we thing some of it could possibly be
construed as being harmful to children."  We're not looking for a complete
inventory.  We're not looking to prove taht that stuff is harmful to children.
We're just looking for examples of things that might potentially get us into
trouble if this law stands.

response 73 of 111:

May 30 01:21 UTC 1999

Ok, so we should just assume that because we consider it rude to say that
something could possibly be construed as being harmful to children under the
definition in this law, we should just assume that the state will have the
same scruples?

Those that are determined to make such accusations have it in their interest
to not point out rediculous examples of what this law would ban, until after
the law has held up in court.  In selecting such items, we would not be saying
that we think they are harmful to children; just that under this law, they're
something that wouldn't be permitted, even though they should be.

response 75 of 111:

May 30 06:58 UTC 1999

Definitions is a dangerous area to wander into.  As speakers of a human
language, we are all more than used to pretty vague non-rigorous
definitions of all sorts of things.  A simple example might be that of
"cat".  Most of us are introduced to this concept as young children, and
we are pretty much given "definition by example".  "See, there's a cat.
Look at the tail.  Cat.  No, don't pull on the tail.  Oooohh, did you
get a boo-boo from the cat?  No, don't hit the cat."  If asked to define
"cat" as an adult, most of us would probably try some sort of definition
like: "furry meat-eating mammal with 4 feet, pointed ears, sharp teeth,
reflective eyes that can see in the dark, and retractable claws".  We
are then left explaining such anonalies as the neighbor's 3 legged cat
which was genetically blind from birth, declawed, and then hit by a car
when chased by a dog.  Ok, so maybe it still has fur and pointed ears,
but then there's the mexican hairless cat breed, and of course the
various wild cat strains that have rounded ears.  We might then appeal
to science for a definition of "catness", and we might have better luck,
at least until we start looking at the fossil record to see what the
first cat looked like.  Even science could be in trouble if next week,
the very shy dwarf antartic sabertooth tiger is found, where it's been
peacefully eating penguins for the past 100 million years, and dodging
man for the past 10,000 thousand years.  Now, a cat is a relatively
simple concept -- imagine the difficulty of trying to define a more
complicated concept, such as "love" or "insanity".

In the legal system, of course, these vague non-rigorous definitions
quickly lead to trouble.  People are always trying to get skirt around
the edge of the law, so all the vague every-day problems of regular
language quickly lead to insoluable quagmires in the semantic jungle of
everyday life.  Lawyers make a lot of money off this whole mess, of
course, but despite all these difficulties, most people agree that law
ought to have a single unambigous meaning, and so considerable effort is
put forth to try to attach a consistent meaning to things.  One common
approach is to try to put an unambigous definition right into the law,
and so, for instance, we have this definition of a motorcycle in
Michigan law:
 "A motorcycle is a two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle which has:
 * A gasoline engine with more than 50 cubic centimeters (cc) piston
   displacement and two brake horsepower; and
 * A top speed over 30 miles per hour on level surfaces.
 A motorized two- or three-wheeled vehicle which meets or exceeds these
 specifications is classified as a "motorcycle" even if it has a working
 pedaling system."
Ok, seems pretty straight-forward, right?  We can look at a vehicle, see
if it matches the above, and if it is, it's a motorcycle.  Clearly, a
Ford Taurus is not, nor is a domestic cat.  On the other hand, a 1999
Yamaha Royal Star Tour Classic, or a 1997 Harley-Davidson FXD clearly do
qualify.  Then, there are stranger objects.  For instance in 1768, a
crazy frenchman built a 3 wheeled steam tractor.  Since it was powered
by wood, and not gasoline, it apparently wouldn't qualify as a
motorcycle, which seems fair enough.  On the other hand, the
three-wheeled Davis automobile, made in Van Nuys, CA 1947-1949,
apparently does count as a motorcycle, even though it has an enclosed
body and looks rather more like a car than a motorcycle.  (There are,
apparently, 4 of these strange vehicles in Michigan, more than in any
other state in the union.) On the other hand, you can purchase an
electric motorcycle from eCycle, which, since it doesn't have a gasoline
engine, apparently wouldn't qualify as a motorcycle in Michigan.  You
can also obtain a propane powered motorcycle from "ATV-USA", although
I'm not sure how street legal these would be.  Or, you could certainly
convert most any motorcycle to burn propane; the technology is not hard,
and in Calfornia, it seems there would even be a tax advantage.  In
michigan, the result would appear to be in a sort of legal limbo.  A
diesel engine might be more of a challenge on a motorcycle, since diesel
engines have a narrower RPM range and are usually heavier.  A truely
scary concept would be a gas turbine powered motorcycle; I heard they
make really small gas turbines for certain military drones.  A gas
turbine introduces the exciting prospect of roasting pedistrians who are
careless enough to cross the street behind your "motorcycle" at a
traffic light, or of suffering a flameout from sucking in a stray
McDonalds food package on the highway.  Rocket assist could also be
entertaining, especially for passing on narrow country highways.

Getting back to SEAHTC.  I agree, the phrase "harmful to children" is
wondrously ill-defined.  The legislators did make an effort in the bill
to define what they meant by "sexually explicit" in sec.3 of the bill.
There are several sources for definitions that would matter in this
context.  The first definition that matters is what an irate parent,
upset at what what their child has found on grex, might define as
SEAHTC.  This definition is most vague, because there are likely to be
individually as many different definitons are there are parents in
Michigan.  Nevertheless, this definition is important because it defines
the first increment of pain for grex.  The next definitions that matter
are whatever the state police (or other law enforcement agency) use, and
whatever the state prosecutors decide to use.  These agencies are likely
to pick a definition that is more consistent.  These agencies, being
political animals, are also likely to involve a certain amount of
"public policy" (or governmental agenda) in deciding what definition to
use, as well as in generally deciding which cases to pursue.  The agenda
is likely to include some mix of responding to complaints (oil the
squeaky wheel) and doing what will read well in the newspapers ("being
tough on crime").  The final arbitrator of what SEAHTC means is, of
course, the court system itself.  The courts are, however, not likely to
work very hard at redefining SEAHTC.  Instead, they are likely to rely
on what the legislators said when they composed the law, as well as
arguments of the prosecutor and defense, which may include references to
past decisions, or other random material, in deciding what the "fairest"
definition of SEAHTC is.  Historically, the courts have had a tough time
deciding what is actually obscene.  A good part of the problem here is
that this is very much a subjective impression -- what is obscene to one
person, may be a matter of everyday speech to another.  (For example;
much of the material on the Nixon tapes can't be broadcast on TV/radio
because it contains a very high percentage of "the 7 words you can't
say".) SEAHTC is likely to be even harder for the courts to decide.

I don't think exactly what SEAHTC gets defined as actually matters all
that much to grex.  Unless SEAHTC is defined so narrowly as to be
practically impossible, even by someone deliberately trying to create
it, it seems to me that grex runs a significant risk.  The more narrow
the definition, perhaps the less the risk for grex, but the harder it is
to determine the definition, the more expensive and problemmatical it
becomes for grex.  The penalities are pretty stiff here; I don't think
anyone on the grex staff or board wants to see any user on grex become a
convicted felon because of their activities here, and I'm even more sure
that nobody on grex staff or board wants to be held responsible as well,
and also become convicted felons.  There are also the matters of the
court costs, and legal fines, which could well be higher that the fines
directly provided for in the bill, not to mention the possible jail
time.  Basically, we don't want to go there, and that applies even if we
managed to win every case that ever happens involving grex.  (Going to
jail for a case you ultimately win on is still a big drag.) That means,
this bill puts us under heavy pressure to develop a local formulation of
SEAHTC that is not just a strict interpretation of whatever the courts
decide it means, but instead to develop a very elastic expansive local
definition that is basically the *union* of all the possible definitions
an irate parent might decide to apply to grex, to avoid even the least
possibility or risk of a felony investigatino of grex.  And that is the
most dangerous part of this bill; not what it directly implies to us,
but what it might inspire us to do to ourselves, to avoid the least risk
of being prosecuted under this bill.

response 77 of 111:

May 31 13:52 UTC 1999

time, once again, is my problem in this conference.  I was writing a response
(after reading all the responses since my last post up there) and got logged
off the system for being idle.  I've not masteres the art of off-line writing
and uploading my response.

IAE, mor my part I hope Grex joins this suit, but I hope _many_ others are
solicited as plaintiffs.  The don't have to have servers in Michigan (do
they?).  Once they're are on the internet and conducting
"business"/communications in Michigan they could become subject to this law,
or am I way off base on that one (that might be where the fed supreme court
may come in as well).  Even so, there are lots of ISP's and other systems
operating within Michigan who should become party to this not just to deflect
liability from Grex as a plaintiff, but to demonstrate a much stronger case
for freedom of speech than a few thousand people, mostly in Ann Arbor.