The Theory of Open Access, and Less Open Societies

Dec 8 04:14 UTC 1998

The situation with IIT KGP, the Indian university associated with 
the IP address we banned last week, opens up a difficult ethical 
dilemma.
 
In item:47,131  levi writes:

#131 of 131: by Levi (levi) on Mon, Dec  7, 1998 (22:44):
 Well KRJ, iam the one who possibly informed you in the party  
 that IITS doesnt
 alow their students to telnet to other sites . 
 Well there are 5 IITS in India
 and that's policy of each institution. Moreover the folks who log in from
 GE.COm  ips also do it without any legal permission from either the Indian
 companies they work or for that  matter the GE network . In fact its illegal
 to use the GE network for telnetting to cyberspace or arbornet. but since
 most of the Indian students cant afford to have an email , they use this as
 an email facility.

------

Well.  Now we have to think about what happens when Grex's ideals 
of free speech & open access collide with a site management which
does not share our beliefs.  

My guess, as I mentioned in item:47,129 , is that the IP address which 
has been the cause of grief for Grex is a bootleg telnet gateway 
which some crafty student has set up to get around IIT's rules.

We can't predict what will happen.  Perhaps IIT KGP's administrators, 
who we have embarrassed, will vigilantly close down that gateway, 
and 1500+ Grex users will lose their e-mail.  In a worst-case scenario, 
I suppose the school administrators could try to find out who's been 
telnetting to Grex, and our users would get some sort of spanking 
from their school.
 
But India is a democratic country, and I don't believe anything really 
bad will happen to our users -- perhaps our soon-to-be former users --
there.
 
On the other hand, consider China.  We have already seen some users, a 
handful, connecting from China.  We believe, according to Western 
press reports, that the political controls are pretty draconian there, 
and we also see press reports that the Chinese are trying to maintain
tight controls on Internet access.

Imagine that this recent episode had happened with a bootleg Chinese 
gateway.  Several hundred pro-democracy activists use it to get 
un-monitored e-mail; one or two clowns use it to fork-bomb Grex.
What happens when Grex starts trying to make official contact?
Can we end up sending some of our users to jail?  It's just hypothetical,
this time.
 
Back to IIT KGP.  Let's assume for a moment that nothing happens to the 
presumed-bootleg gateway there.  The administrators may not know or 
care enough to close the gateway.  So, 1500+ Indians continue to telnet 
to Grex, exercising what we feel are their rights to open access to the 
Net.  And then Mr. Fork-Bomb tries another attack on Grex.
 
Do we then close off the access from IIT KGP, knowing that we are taking
away e-mail and etc. from thousands of good Grex users, and knowing that
their site administrators would (officially) be just fine with us taking
away that e-mail service?

I am genuinely perplexed by the ethical dilemma we have stumbled upon here.

response 2 of 20:

Dec 8 05:52 UTC 1998

If people elsewhere are living dangerously, then what happens to them
cannot be our fault *unless* we are in on it and participating. Grex
is not going to solve all of the worlds problems of freedom and I
certainly hope nonone on Grex is thinking of getting involved in fighting
for international freedom and democracy *beyond what we are already
doing with respect to net freedom*. In this case, whatever is going
on with IIT and their students, or others, was bound to come out in some
form. We would only have a (momentary) ethical struggle if someone from
there had approached us to ask for secrecy. They didn't. 

response 4 of 20:

Dec 8 20:36 UTC 1998

I don't think it's our issue if they're using "illegal" means to access
grex.  We should make it clear that we *welcome* legitimate use of our
facilities, and that our *only* issue is with that small % of folks who
would abuse grex.  At the same time, the internet *is* a big place, and
we can't afford to police all of it to please ourselves.  We can, with
some effort, sit down with someone in Ann Arbor, and ask them to
moderate their behavior, but this just isn't possible with someone from
India, or Indonesia, or Denver, or Edmonton.

response 6 of 20:

Dec 8 22:40 UTC 1998

the eternal problem with establsihing a formal code of conduct is that,
for all intents and purposes, it is functionally unenforcable in an
open environment. both grex and the m-b0x have similar functional
situations, open environment. 
  
the extreme to which grex had to go recently  - simply to protect itself - 
really pushes open environment to the wall. on the m-b0x, which has
a different version of open environment, they ahve been cracked and
wiped twice within a 7-day period. that's one helluva lot worse
than a load average of 77, although i think that above some threshold,
thre is zero functional difference between destructive events.
  
both systems provide a degree of anarchy-opportunity. the m-b0x has
a buncha site bans in effect - for destructive behaviour exhibited
by the minority. 
  
a site ban, for cause, for a while, ain't all that bad in the larger
scheme of things. i have never appreciated group punishment for the
offense of a single member. that, however, *presumes* that the rest
of the group has some 'say' over the offending member. 
  
since neither grex nor the m-b0x (the victim(s)) has any say on the
groups or its members, site ban after several emails to some leader or
representative of/from the offending group  remains the sole source
of protection.

response 8 of 20:

Dec 10 14:00 UTC 1998

Very interesting idea.  When we deal with international laws and politics,
particularly with China, things get sticky.  I've long held that the minute
grex gets on a Chinese gopher, we'll get swarmed.  So far, this doesn't appear
to be an issue.  There have only ever been a handful of Chinese users, and
I believe it's safe to presume that their participation on grex was at best
somewhat illegitimate.  

The difficulty comes with what rights are granted by our country and by
theirs.  I suppose that it's possible if a large group of bootleg users from
China illegally finds its way onto grex, things could actually fall under the
jurisdiction of the federal government.  Are we granting textual asylum to
these people, granting them all the "rights inherent in existance in
cyberspace?"  It's an interesting thought.

I find it amusing to learn that many Indians may be illegal.  On occasion,
I have run into particularly nasty ones that are far from typical of the users
we get in majority and had to threaten them with things I didn't intend to
do to get them to run off.  My usual tack involved reporting their activities
to people of authority.  I am, of course, completely unable to do this, and
I had usually mentioned it as a joke.  It sent them running.  

response 10 of 20:

Dec 11 21:29 UTC 1998

a thought provoking observation 

response 12 of 20:

Dec 12 03:09 UTC 1998

Agreed.

response 14 of 20:

Dec 12 13:52 UTC 1998

or their governments in other cases.

I kinda like the idea that we may someday play a role in acting as an
information conduit that will assist in freeing up a society somewhere
someday.  Not that I think it will be any of Grex's official business nor
should it be.

response 16 of 20:

Dec 12 17:30 UTC 1998

Start working on that ASCII Statue of Liberty so it'll be ready!

response 18 of 20:

Dec 28 22:24 UTC 1998

very interesting ideas.
i say permit access as much as possible, restrict after abuse.  
attempt to contact users first and warn them they need to leave
the country if they're not supposed to be on here, we can't
be responsible for their actions.

response 20 of 20:

Apr 13 03:28 UTC 1999

We're all nuts!