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| Author |
Message |
mary
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Grex under Public Act 33
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Sep 4 18:22 UTC 1999 |
If the appeal fails, and the Michigan Public Act 33 of 1999 becomes
enforceable law, how should Grex respond? What would the users and
members like to see done to keep our activities lawful? Should we change
our policies at all?
Most of the specifics of this law really won't be known until the final
version makes it through the courts. But the hot issue of Free Speech on
the Internet is probably going to be confronting us again and again, no
matter the outcome of this specific case.
It's probably time we talked about worst-case scenarios a bit and
got a sense of how the Grex community would prefer to see us handle a law
which would require verification and/or censorship.
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| 96 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 96:
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Sep 4 18:22 UTC 1999 |
See, Dave. It's that easy.
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pfv
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response 2 of 96:
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Sep 4 18:35 UTC 1999 |
Don't tip yer canoe and complain about it.
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other
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response 3 of 96:
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Sep 5 00:15 UTC 1999 |
should the appeal succeed:
1. baff should immediately consult with the aclu folks to determine the
effects the success of the appeal might have, in their official legal
opinions.
2. immediately after such a consultation, should the aclu attorneys suggest
that grex or it's members, staff or board are at risk, grex should close to
the public for 24 hours, while supplying brief information via the terminal
server to dial-in users, via webpage to telnet and web users indicating the
reason for the shutdown.
3. during the shutdown, the /b partition should be disconnected, and bbs and
party disabled (temporarily) **ONLY IF IT IS DETERMNED THAT THOSE ELEMENTS
OF GREX ARE WHAT PUT US AT RISK**, and a mass email should be delivered to
all grex users informing them of the actions taken and the reason why, and
suggesting that those who have alternate email addresses should inform the
people with whom they communicate that their grex addresses may be unavailable
for a while.
4. if possible, a limited version of bbs, with one conference, and only cfadm
s being allowed to enter new items should be implemented to host a controlled
discussion of the events and to allow the grex community at large to attempt
to determine the direction we'll go, while maintaining sufficient control over
the content so as to make certain that ongoing liability is minimized as much
as possible. this means permitting cfadm to arbitrarily delete responses or
portions thereof which may put us back at risk.
given what seems small likelihood of he appeal succeeding, i don't anticipate
this course of events occurring, but in the time available until a ruling is
issued, it would behoove staff to undertake technical measures to implement
these suggestions or something similar. if the process begins now, there is
a fairly reasonable amount of time to address it.
mainly, the suggestions above are intended to both protect the baff and
membership of grex, while maximizing the extent to which membership is able
to determine the fate of grex under vastly strained conditions. if the staff
sees their way clear to preparing such an implementation, i think it would
be the best possible way to serve the interests of both those who may be
subject to criminal prosecution under the law at issue, and those who have
contributed time money and effort over the many years grex has existed.
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mary
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response 4 of 96:
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Sep 5 11:51 UTC 1999 |
100% agree.
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mdw
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response 5 of 96:
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Sep 5 12:35 UTC 1999 |
It might not be at all practical to restart grex on short notice in
"limited service" mode. There are many other services grex provides
that might turn out to be "risky", and because grex is designed around
the idea of giving people general purpose computing access (ie, unix),
it may not be at all simple (or perhaps even possible) to turn off those
services and still provide access. Even if it were nearly certain this
were necessary in order to comply with the law, I'm not at all convinced
that redesigning grex in this fashion is worth it. Just because it's
possible to perform a self-lobotomy doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Given the apparenty small chance of success of such an appeal, this does
not seem like a good use of our time.
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cmcgee
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response 6 of 96:
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Sep 5 13:50 UTC 1999 |
IF it's not a good use of our time, then what would your suggestion be? Shut
down completely while the Ann Arbor locals make a decision? How do the locals
get information about time/place of discussions of what to do?
Or are you suggestion that if the State prevails, that we shut down grex
completely?
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other
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response 7 of 96:
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Sep 5 14:41 UTC 1999 |
cmcgee addresses the point my suggestions are based on. practicable or
not, they are intended offer grex's full membership input in determining
grex's fate.
i neglected to mention disabling newuser, and that would make sense as
well, under the circumstances. and turning off all outbound services
except email. essentially, it turn grex into a dual purpose system.
1. allowing people access to their email
2. determing grex's fate
under such an extreme situation as this stupid law represents, you can't
reasonably expect to not have to take extreme measures to do what is
reasonable. that's really the thrust of this.
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janc
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response 8 of 96:
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Sep 5 20:01 UTC 1999 |
You could really be discussing two responses here - the long term
response and the short term responses.
Long term, it's the law or us. Grex is fundamentally incompatable with
this law. Either the law has to be killed or Grex has to be killed.
Medium term, we could just ignore the law and keep going as we did
before. We'd be a bandit board, running in defiance of the legislator.
That fact alone would change the atmosphere around here drastically. I
can't believe you could continue that way very long without a crash
coming eventually. Still I think it is the only real option if we can't
defeat the law.
Short term there needs to be an interregnum. Anyone who doesn't want to
be part of a bandit system needs to be given a chance to pull out, and
needs to be given time to think about it.
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mary
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response 9 of 96:
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Sep 5 20:19 UTC 1999 |
If Grex were were forced to live under a law such as this I don't think
I'd want to stick around very long. There are a couple of changes we
could make to bring us into compliance (as I understand the law). One
would be to verify all users and not allow anyone under 18 years of age
access to the system. The other would be to appoint moderators, who would
have the opportunity to censor all content before it was publicly posted.
Another (non-compliant) option would be to simply not do anything at all
and run the risk of prosecution. I suspect if we did this we'd get a very
limited set of not very qualified people running for the Board, and it
would be just a matter of time before Grex died. Which of these nasty
options would I prefer to see happen? None.
I'd rather see Grex shut down and any assets given to the ACLU, if they
are a qualifying non-profit agency.
So I can't really get my heart into this part of the discussion.
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don
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response 10 of 96:
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Sep 5 20:49 UTC 1999 |
Probably the easiest technical implementation of a limited-usage plan would
be to take some of the spare parts to make a new, low-performance computer,
and copy sendmail, a "cat var/spool/mail" script, and a fresh install of
picospan and backtalk. Initiate disk quotas (just enough for a user's
configuration files, so 10 kb should be plenty). Set up a single conference
with the kind of restrictions mentioned above. When shutdown time comes, shut
down grex after the /etc/passwd and other user files get copied over to the
new machine, edit the passwd file so that everyone has a menu-type shell with
access to sendmail, cat v/s/m, and picospan, and connect it to the phone lines
and the ISDN.
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pfv
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response 11 of 96:
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Sep 5 21:01 UTC 1999 |
That's "simple"??
Waht in the world would that point of all THAT be..?
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albaugh
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response 12 of 96:
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Sep 5 22:04 UTC 1999 |
Grex probably couldn't allow out-going e-mail by anonymous users. The
only way for grex to get itself off the hook is by putting each of its
users *on* the hook for making them responsible for what they do/say.
And that isn't very fair to adults who want to speak only to adults,
and can't control whether minors are accessing speech intended only for
adults. That puts grex back on the hook to support separation of
adults and minors in certain forums. But ostensibly that could be done
easily enough, if you're validating users to begin with.
So the question is: Is grex willing to run in a mode of pre-validating
all of its users, including verifcation of age? If not, there aren't
any technical decisions or solutions I can think of that make a
difference anyway.
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pfv
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response 13 of 96:
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Sep 5 23:06 UTC 1999 |
And, don't forget that existing logs - or confs - are also
"liable".. So, either there'd need to be one HELL of a
pogrom/purge - or the old materials would also need fencing off.
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don
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response 14 of 96:
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Sep 6 02:21 UTC 1999 |
re 11, I was just suggesting a more technically feasable way to crunch grex
down to limited-usage. Simply building a small computer to act as a mail and
picospan server isn't going to be too hard considering the staff would have
months to do it.
re 13, easily accomplished by (maybe there's an easier way, but I haven't read
the man page in a while) "find /b -type f -exec chmod 700 {} \;"
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mdw
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response 15 of 96:
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Sep 6 04:48 UTC 1999 |
I think Mary in #9 does a nice job of summarizing our options if the law
were upheld in its entirety. It's worthwhile to follow those options
through in terms of what they mean for a "limited service" system.
Those options are, again, validation, censorship, or pirate board.
Of the 3, validation is technically the easiest. "newuser" can be
easily configured not to create live accounts. This merely leaves the
administrative hassle of validating the age and identity of users on the
system. For users in the A^2 area, this is relatively easy. We can
require that each user present himself, in person, either at a board
meeting or other such opportunities as we may provide, and have on their
person government issued photo id with proof of age, such as a driver's
license, passport, etc. For additional insurance, we could have each
person sign a contract with grex acknowledging that some of the material
on grex may not be suitable for minors, that they agree not to show any
material on grex to a minor under any circumstance, and that if a minor
should somehow happen to see illegal material as a result of their
actions, that they agree they are completely liable. For users located
elsewhere in the US this gets harder, primarily because of the
difficulties of establishing age in a fraud-proof fashion. Possibly we
could work out a form that could be signed by a notary public. If the
courts decide to uphold the law, no doubt we can ask their assistance in
designing a validation scheme that will reduce or eliminate grex's
liability. With this scheme, we can safely plan on a *much* smaller
system, probably with very few of any foreign users (because of the
difficulties involved in validating the age and identity of people
living overseas, and making sure they aren't actually a michigan
juvenile corresponding to us via "hacker" friends in bulgaria.)
Censorship is technically much harder. PicoSpan doesn't have any hooks
in it to support before-the-fact censorship. In addition, having a new
"low performance" computer doesn't actually help in the slightest here.
The question is not how poorly it performs, but rather, does it enforce
a restricted policy that ensures you can't publish anything in any
fashion without it being pre-approved. This means unix access is right
out, as well as web pages and ftp. Mail may or may not be safe (this is
a question we'd have to ask the courts, if they uphold the law.)
Essentially, we'd have to do a ground up redesign of *all* of the
software that's on grex to properly implement censorship, and we'd have
to make sure it's secure and vandal-proof. This is actually a very
tough job -- just ask AOL or hotmail. Having done all this, we still
have the problem of "who does the censorship", and what material do they
censor. On the bright side of things, we'd almost certainly be looking
at a much smaller system, since many people who enjoy grex as it exists
today would likely not find this new system much fun.
The bandit system has obvious problems, and I don't think it merits much
discussion. Suffice it to say that finding qualified people willing to
risk running such a system would be a problem, and again, we're looking
at a much smaller system, one that would probably frequently change
name, ip address, and physical loation.
Having examined the options in more detail, the next problem is a
question of strategy. If we spent a lot of time deciding on "a
solution", it becomes relatively easy for the state to say "look, you
must have known the law was right, and that you were going to have to
live under it." On the other hand, if we don't spend any time preparing
for this, and the courts still uphold the law, then we may be able to
beg more time and other consideration from the courts, by arguing "look,
we had every reason to believe you were going to strike this law down,
and so haven't spent any time preparing for this. We need more time and
help to prepare for this eventuality, and if you can't give us that,
it's going to hurt us." Basically, if we really believe this law is
unjust and unlikely to survive the court challenges, then strategically
speaking, it's worth our while to be living as if that were so, and only
putting the minimum effort necessary to prepare for the chance that it
isn't so.
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cmcgee
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response 16 of 96:
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Sep 6 14:41 UTC 1999 |
Nit 1. "If the courts decide to uphold the law, no doubt we can ask their
assistance"
Once the courts make a ruling on the specific case, it would be _very_
unusual for them to become consultants on how to implement their ruling.
We would be left to implement our best guess as to what was now legel.
Working with the county prosecutor would be our safest tack.
Nit 2. the word is precedent, a thing or person that precedes or goes
before another. Like precede, to go before. Precedence is the right of
preceding others in ceremonies and social affairs. Courts set precedents
with their rulings.
Back to topic.
This discussion seems to assume that Grex will have the same level of
staff, with the same energy level, and that Grex-as-it-becomes will be
given the same priority in the lives of that staff as it has now.
I doubt that.
I also doubt that the membership level will stay the same, thus putting us
in financial peril, probably more quickly that we'd get into legal peril.
I too would prefer to see an orderly end to Grex, and rational dispersal
of its assets, than dribbling away of the organization.
Having coached one group like Grex through this process (anyone remember
Wildflour?) I don't think we'd survive more than a year as a stripped down
service.
My suggestion, worst case, is that we give everyone 30 days notice that we
are shutting down Grex; keep email going for that full 30 days, with an
automatic reminder each time you send email that you need to give your
correspondents your new address; and automatic notice like the vacation
notice, saying that this address will no longer be valid after such and
such a date.
Then we set up a moderated conference to discuss the shutting down
process, and allow people to grieve. Once the 30 days is over, we're
history.
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janc
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response 17 of 96:
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Sep 6 16:33 UTC 1999 |
That's about it. Except that if some set of people wants to try
continue running Grex as a bandit system, I can't see stopping them,
even though I might not be ready to join in such an enterprise. Still I
think I'd have more interest in supporting a bandit system than a
censored or moderated system. I can't see a censored/moderated system
continuing to get the level of support we need to keep running.
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scg
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response 18 of 96:
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Sep 6 16:39 UTC 1999 |
Question:
If a bunch of us with the power to shut Grex down or bring it into
compliance instead resign, and effectively leave Grex running on auto-pilot
in an illegal manner, does the resignation help our legal position at all?
I have a hard time imaging anybody taking an, "I just set the system up to
run in an illegal manner, but I don't have anything to do with it," defense
very seriously.
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don
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response 19 of 96:
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Sep 6 20:27 UTC 1999 |
re 15, I meant the low-performance cpu to be activated if we lose the ruling.
That cpu would house limited email and one picospan conference. When we figure
out what to do/win an appeal/stage a coup on the State of Michigan, we can
modify the original grex to the way we need and put it back online.
re 18, you wouldn't be prosecuted due to no ex post facto. However, grex would
be very hard to run auto-pilot. People will have to give up their membership
(because members would be the next target of the prosecutors), and all
accounts payable and recievable would have to be some sort of direct deposit
and direct withdrawl (ie, people would have to wire transfer donations, and
there would need to be some special way for DetEd, the ISP, the landlord, and
the ductape supplier to get their money automatically). There would never be
any modifications on grex (staff would also be disbanded), partyadms, cfadms,
and fair witnesses would all have to be disbanded; and once a single piece
of the grex cpu broke down, everything would be history.
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scott
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response 20 of 96:
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Sep 6 20:30 UTC 1999 |
Setting up security for a new box would probably be a lot of work.
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scg
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response 21 of 96:
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Sep 6 21:22 UTC 1999 |
As I understand the ex-post-facto stuff, you can't be prosecuted for violating
a law that didn't exist at the time you violated it. Certainly, if you were
to set up a system in such a way that it was very stable and let it run on
auto-pilot, while going away and forgetting about it for several years, and
in the mean time losing your access to it, you could make a reasonable
argument that you weren't still involved in the running of your system. That
strikes me as very different from running a system up until the last possible
moment before it became illegal, and then walking away and leaving it running
rather than shutting it down. In the latter case, there's a clear intent to
have your system violate the law, and computers can't violate laws without
humans at least pointing them in the right direction.
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mdw
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response 22 of 96:
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Sep 7 02:12 UTC 1999 |
I doubt the courts would be willing to become paid consultants (although
courts *are* capable of rather bizarre acts -- ie, overseeing school
busing, getting involved in bankruptcy procedings, etc.) However, if
the courts should claim that (a) the law is to be upheld, and (b)
there's some way to run grex that will not violate the law, then I
should very much hope we have the opportunity to ask them to describe
how this apparent impossibility is to be managed. Even if we don't have
the actual opportunity to question their decision, it's very likely that
the courts will explain their legal reasoning process as to how they
reached their decision, and may actually volunteer a solution as to how
grex could be run and still comply with the law. Despite all this,
courts *are* capable of bizarre acts, so it's possible (but highly
unlikely) that they might do a complete about-face, rule the law applies
as is, and offer no additional explanation or guidance as to how we
might operate and yet comply with the law. This is the worst-case
scenario, but it's certainly there, and it's obviously what the state
hopes will happen.
The "let's just all resign and let grex run on auto-pilot" argument
sounds suspiciously like "but officer, honest, I wasn't driving that
car, I jumped out 300 feet ago, and gosh no, I have no idea how the
brick got on the accelerator pedal." There's also the tiny problem of
how the rent gets paid.
The original m-net (even before it had the name) ran on an atari 800.
This certainly was a low performance system, with limited e-mail
capability (*really* limited--well, to be honest, almost non-existant;
you could leave a comment for the sysop when logging off and that was
about); and one conf--er, message board. The way I read the law, all
you would need to do is enter a post that has one low resolution
uuencoded gif that was "sexually explicit" to set the stage for a
violation of the law. Low performance doesn't help in the slightest as
a defense against this law. There are only 2 things in the law that
help: exclude minors, or exclude the ability to publish sexually
explicit material.
So far as the "30 day shutdown period" -- I think that highly depends on
the courts. If they allow us a graceful shutdown period (and why not
try for 3 months instead of 30 days?), then sure. If they don't give us
this time, I suppose it depends on how brave the board is, but I sure
wouldn't blame them for deciding not to be brave.
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albaugh
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response 23 of 96:
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Sep 7 04:40 UTC 1999 |
The financial angle is interesting: Right now, ~100 people are keeping
grex afloat by paying the bills, so that untold numbers can use the
system in all its mission statement glory. There in fact might be some
members that only contribute because grex serves others without
requiring payment, and who would stop contributing if grex had to
change due to the law. But thoeretically it is the members that would
have the least to worry about if the law came into effect - members are
already validated, and so are "on the hook" already. The real issue is
whether there would be a baff that cared to keep grex going under the
law, regardless of whether members kept paying the bills.
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richard
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response 24 of 96:
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Sep 7 22:12 UTC 1999 |
this law would only apply to those sites operating in michigan right?
why not just move grex over the border to Ohio? Some of the Grexohio
people can act as staff and some of the local A2 phone lines can be kept
and board meetings can still be held in A2. Grex would just be incorporated
in Ohio.
Surely it would be better to re-locate outside Michigan than to either
shut down completely or make unreasonable changes that would ruin the
spirit of grex.
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