Re: [ga] Blockage/delay of postings

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

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.

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)

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

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.]

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? 

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.

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.  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.

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?

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

On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> Because of complaints about so-called "fake" postings, the listadmin has 
> taken steps to block certain messages that are suspected of being fakes.
> 
> Because these steps require some human scanning of messages, some messages 
> may be delayed in getting to the list.
> 
>                          Harald A
> 
> --
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
> Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no
> 
> 

-- 

A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin@law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
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