Re: [ga] Blockage/delay of postings

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

At 08:43 05.01.00 -0500, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
>This is really a bit vague for my taste when announcing what, in the wrong
>hands, could turn into a manual, standardless, censorship policy which
>appears to have no provisions for outside review.

We're working on that....consider everything happening this week as 
preliminary action....


>One could reasonably hope to be told, as an initial matter,
>
>1) how many mail address are being blocked (and in general terms what
>criteria are used for selecting them)

In the monthly posting from the listadmin.

>2) whether the system has a maximum delay period (i.e. if the
>moderator/censor takes a holiday, or catches the flu, what happens?)

We'll have to find a way to do that. At the moment, it depends on the 
availability of the listadmin.

>3) whether the legitimate owners of those mail addresses have been
>contacted and consented to this process; [I'm assuming here that what this
>note refers to is so-called 'forged' messages, that is messages posted by
>A with B's name in the "From:" line.  But on re-reading the note below, I
>find that it doesn't define what a "so-called 'fake' posting" is, so I'm
>not even sure of that.]

Intentionally.
The posts that some have called fakes, and others don't want to call fakes, 
(that's where the "so-called" came from) are the ones that generally start 
off with "This is NN posting as....".
They HAVE been complained about; that's the fact we can document.

>4) Whether all "rejected" mail will be posted to allow it to be viewed by
>interested parties?  Also, will it be bounced to the sender, or alleged
>sender?

There's a legal problem with posting rejected mail, it seems - in the cases 
where rejected mail contains illegal material, such as slander, under 
French law the site admin may be held responsible for the slander if he 
knowingly allows the message to be archived.
I'm trying to work through this issue with the listadmin.

They won't bounce.

>One could also hope for periodic postings listing the number of messages
>censored and the alleged sender and subject line.  I personally would
>prefer that there be a page somewhere listing them in full text in as
>close to real time as possible, but I can imagine scenarios in which the
>moderator would be reluctant to host the publication of, say, potential
>libel.

Indeed.

>While I have no reason to believe that the parties involved in this
>filtering -- whoever they are [we are not told!] -- are anything but
>well-intentioned, and am certain that Harald is not interested in being a
>party to any viewpoint-based censorship, it would be trivial for the
>initiators' successors to abuse this sort of discretion.

The involved parties are me, Roberto and the DNSO listadmin.
Once we get formal rules into place, there may be more people involved.

>Lawyers are
>trained to write rules that are able to withstand Justice Holmes'
>proverbial "bad man", and (in the US) never more so when free speech is
>invovled, so this makes me nervous.

And lawyers are trained to find out how to work around those rules. And 
some nonlawyers seem to be adept at turning rules intended to promote 
openness into denial of service attacks; there are more angles....

>In fact, on re-reading this note, its not even clear to me if the list has
>suddenly been moved to an all-moderated status or if some sort of clever
>procmail-style diversion that only affects some messages has been used.
>Will my posts go straight through, or be reviewed first?

Some posts will go straight through. Others won't.
And the rules for which go where will change in response to attempts to 
circumvent them, unfortunately.
One consequence of having people who do not agree with the policy.

>More information, please.  If this pushes my button this much - and it
>does! - imagine how some others are going to react....

As soon as we have it ourselves....

                       Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no