[This article is an expansion of remarks made by Prabhakar Ragde (an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo) at the CSC Forum on Newsgroup Banning on 15 February 1994. It was published in the UW Gazette on 9 March 1994. A professor emeritus wrote in to say that it was "the most interesting and informative article [he had] read in the Gazette in the past quarter-century." That probably says more about the Gazette than the article.]
[The article is nearly 4000 words long; you may wish to read my original remarks, or a condensed version published in an alumni newsletter. You can find links to these in my page on my interests in the social impact of computing.]
In January, a memo from the President's office announced a procedure by which computer newsgroups containing material that might violate the Criminal Code could be examined by the Ethics Committee and possibly removed. Unknown to the university community, such a process was already under way, and the next day, a memo from the Provost's office announced the removal of five newsgroups. This action, and the reaction to it, raises a number of difficult issues which have not received adequate consideration. I hope that this article will be a basis for constructive dialogue on some of these issues, leading to local solutions that are broadly acceptable.
Also in January, the editor of the Sarajevo daily newspaper "Liberation" gave a talk on campus. Shortly after the Bosnian conflict began, the paper came under attack, because the staff upheld the ideal of a multiethnic, cosmopolitan society. Their modern ten-story building was pounded to rubble by mortar fire. They dragged some of their equipment into a fallout shelter in the basement and continued to put out the paper; they have not missed a single issue. Snipers make it too dangerous to move in and out of the bunker freely, so most of the staff takes seven-day shifts. Every day, a few journalists take turns going out and selling the paper on the street. Some of them have died doing this. There was no need to ask why anyone bothered to put out a newspaper under such circumstances, because the editor told the audience. He said, "We felt it was important to try to preserve our freedom of expression."
The story of "Liberation" may provide some perspective on the current discussion over newsgroup removal. It will be difficult to slide into self-righteous posturing if we keep in mind that the moral high ground is already occupied by those journalists, and others around the world, who are literally dying for their beliefs.
While it is possible, and indeed important, to discuss this situation without using a welter of technical jargon, a brief discussion of the mechanics of newsgroups may be helpful. Computers around the world are connected by a network called Internet or simply "the net", made up of a number of heterogeneous communication links. Through common agreement, the net supports many point-to-point services, such as electronic mail and file transfer. Though some public policy decisions (notably those made by the U.S. Department of Defence) were instrumental in the establishment of the net, it has largely evolved in a bottom-up fashion.
Since it is as easy to send electronic mail to a thousand people as it is to send mail to one person (once the list of recipients is created), newsletters and discussion groups focussing on particular topics quickly formed using this service. It is an unnecessary waste of space, however, to have each of a hundred users on a single computer have their own copy of a broadcast message. In 1979, a few graduate students in North Carolina developed software which would let a participating computer store a single copy of each message in a discussion, to be read by each participating user at their leisure. This created an electronic bulletin board service. Soon after this, UW computers became involved, at the decision of local system administrators.
This service became known as "news", and the discussion groups were called "newsgroups". As the net grew, the number of participants increased, and the speed of transmission diminished. Today, millions of users have access to news, and the volume of information is measured in the thousands of millions of characters. A user who sends a message or "posts" to a newsgroup cannot easily know which computers will receive the message and which users will read it. Newsgroups are used to broadcast not only text, but also pictures, audio files, and software.
Newsgroups are classified into a subject hierarchy; the group "uw.cs.grad" is a local group whose stated purpose is discussions of relevance to computer science graduate students at UW. Some groups are "moderated" (all messages passed by human editors), but most are not, and there is no mechanism for enforcing subject restrictions apart from the disapproval of other readers. It is as easy to post to several newsgroups as it is to post to one, and replies can be initiated by pressing a single key, so the amount of cross-traffic is considerable. It is also possible to post anonymously by using a service in Finland which assigns pseudonyms and redirects mail.
For some types of newsgroups, creation is possible only after a voting procedure. But other types, notably those whose names begin with "alt", can be created by any user. Once created, a group is automatically offered to the system administrators of local computers. Typically all such offers are accepted, and broadcast information begins to flow into local computers whether or not any local user chooses to read the information. On the day I began writing this article, I was offered the newsgroup "alt.de.dummschwatz", which as near as I can tell is devoted to "stupid talk" in German.
There is one more technical point of relevance to this discussion: if a system administrator chooses not to automatically subscribe to a newsgroup, the group can still be read by a user with net access by making a point-to-point connection to a computer at a remote site that carries that group. Currently, every user on campus who can read news also has this power, and instructions on how to make such a connection have been widely publicized.
The decision to remove five newsgroups in the "alt" hierarchy -- alt.sex.stories, alt.sex.stories.d, alt.sex.bestiality, alt.sex.bondage, and alt.tasteless -- was justified (by the Ethics Committee and the Provost) because "from time to time" they carried material that, in the opinion of legal counsel, may violate Canada's obscenity laws. The removal means that any material posted to these five groups will not automatically arrive on UW computers.
It is easy to criticize this decision. First of all, it was made without any call for discussion within the community. The lack of control over the contents of most newsgroups means that illegal material could potentially show up anywhere. The decision is reactive -- it was made in response to a complaint -- and the history of past attempts to remove similar groups raises the suspicion that possible illegality is merely a convenient excuse.
But if the decision is disturbing, so is the reaction to the decision, both on and off campus. Messages posted to general discussion groups such as "uw.general" in the days following the ban seemed more like a mass howling at the moon than a real attempt to engage the issue. They were replete with cheap sarcasm, reductions to the absurd, and ad hominem attacks. The indiscriminate use of "slippery slope" arguments seemed to deny the capacity of human beings to form rational judgements without having all the rules spelled out in minute technical detail.
Even those postings that showed some signs of having been crafted with care tended to focus on legal or technical hairsplitting. Ironically, a newsgroup may not be the best place to conduct a discussion on newsgroup banning. Opinions tend to polarize rapidly, and research has shown that consensus, if it is possible at all, takes much longer to achieve through an electronic medium than by more conventional means.
Time and again, I have seen phrases used as mantras, repeated for their emotional effect rather than their intellectual content. Phrases like "censorship", "freedom of speech", and "academic freedom" are used without any consideration of context. Is this action really censorship, especially if all the material in question remains accessible? Whose freedom of speech is being infringed? In what ways is academic freedom being violated?
Even more disturbing are phrases like "feminazi", "thought police", "Big Brother", and that latest stick with which to beat dissenters, the phrase "politically correct". There seem to be plenty of people who have absorbed the lessons of George Orwell's "1984" and are standing on guard against such a possibility. But what of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", in which the cages that people live in are largely built by themselves? The parallels between the net and soma are sobering.
These reactions are not unique to this situation; similar sentiments have been expressed recently with respect to another flawed decision, namely the Ontario Ministry of Education "zero tolerance" guidelines on harassment. But the banning of newsgroups takes place at a point where social values and technological advances interact, far ahead of the ability of courts, legislatures, and ordinary citizens to deal with it. Careful deliberation is needed, on all sides.
I think it is a mistake to frame this situation (and many other situations where human beings are in conflict ) as a "clash of rights". If we act as if we all have absolute freedom within a box defined by our rights, and there is a dispute between us, then both of us may go away thinking that our rights have been violated. Basic human rights are a safety net, providing minimal inviolable guarantees. In most situations involving conflict, all parties involved have all their rights, and what is needed is some political resolution, some compromise acceptable to all involved.
A common approach to freedom of speech on the net and in this debate could be called "First Amendment literalist" -- all freedoms granted by the First Amendment to the US Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court are rights and some of the ones not granted should also be rights. Furthermore, this is true not only for the US in 1994 but for all societies at all times. Such an approach ignores moderating language found, for example, in the West German constitution or the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The reader is probably most familiar with the example of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which makes all rights subject " only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". Such an approach also ignores the legitimate goal of setting local standards which may differ from place to place.
It is also disturbing to hear students demanding absolute freedoms from a university while accepting passively, even willingly, on co-op work terms and in permanent jobs, a repressive corporate culture in which these freedoms are essentially absent. When the dust clears from the upcoming battles, and some large multimedia conglomerate owns every wire running into your house, it will not hesitate to sacrifice your perceived right to freedom of speech if it comes into conflict with its perceived right to make money. This can be done in ways more subtle than simply cutting off access.
The university isn't a democracy; it's run like a corporation, albeit an odd one that allows some autonomy and some dissent at lower levels. Yes, students don't have a say in what newsgroups are removed. They also don't have a say in who is hired to teach them, who is tenured, how their tuition fees are spent, or even what meal choices they are offered in residence. Faculty often don't have a real say in who is hired as their colleague, or as their administrator.
I don't mean to defend this situation; I think it is wrong. But newsgroup banning is just one symptom of a greater disease. People who are not consulted on these other serious matters should not be surprised when they are not consulted on newsgroups. A Machiavellian administrator might think of no better diversion than to remove a few newsgroups and let people expend their energy having them restored. While the opposition to newsgroup banning is taking place at a grass-roots level, the push for accountability in ancilliary fees -- in my opinion a far more important issue -- is being made mostly by those involved in student government.
One of the great dangers of new technologies is that they are often accepted without much critical scrutiny. Ursula Franklin, in her book "The Real World of Technology", writes: "Many of the political decisions related to the advancement of technology and the provision of appropriate infrastructures are made on a technical level, far away from public scrutiny. But these decisions do incorporate political biases and political priorities which, in a technical setting, need not be articulated. As far as the public is concerned, the nature of the decision, and its often hidden political agenda, becomes evident only when the plans and designs are executed and in use. Of course, at this point change becomes almost impossible." This is exactly what has happened with the net.
In this case, the perceived inevitability of technological change is being used to justify evasion of responsibility and accountability. The net can be used to violate obscenity laws, to violate publication bans, to promote racial hatred, to utter death threats, and to casually violate copyright -- without any accountability on the part of the possibly anonymous poster, or any responsibility on the part of the passive reader. One hand-washing response seen on the net can be paraphrased as, "We can't do anything about these problems without shutting down the whole net." Ursula Franklin addresses this point in a general context: "Let me emphasize that technologies need not be used the way we use them today. It is not a question of either no technology or putting up with the current ones." There are other alternatives, and we need to find them before the courts, the legislatures, and the people of this country get sufficiently concerned to impose a perhaps imperfect solution.
Analogies comparing the net to the library, to radio, or to the phone system need to be carefully examined to determine not only the appropriate parallels but also the limits to those parallels. Library acquisition guidelines cannot be applied blindly to the net; we need to take into account its dynamic nature. I have heard the argument that the only reason that the library has an acquisitions policy is because of space and cost considerations. But if the UW library were to have its space and budget expanded tenfold, would it subscribe to a tabloid like the National Enquirer? We have all had the frustrating experience of searching for gems in a bookstore that does not carefully screen its stock. There is something to be said for quality as a factor in acquisition.
The net is a broadcast medium -- the most unregulated broadcast medium of which I am aware. Again, the argument can be made that all other broadcast media are regulated and licenced because they are scarce resources. There may be more subtle reasons. As an analogy, consider the existence of nuclear weapons. Most people are not happy with their existence, but they probably prefer having a dozen people with their fingers on the trigger to giving everyone the capability to explode a nuclear device. One can at least hope that the dozen people will realize the awesome responsibility they have and not act rashly. Broadcast does not offer such extreme potential for harm. Yet we as a society have not so far consented to allowing individuals the power of wide broadcast without any accountability. Perhaps it is time to permit this. But the decision is not one for technicians to make.
One "solution" being touted is to have the net declared a "common carrier", thus limiting the liability of those who own the computers making up the net in the same way that the phone company is not responsible for what is transmitted over their lines. Again, the decision to award common carrier status is made by government agencies, and I suspect they will need to be convinced that responsibility can be adequately determined.
Another common "solution" to potential problems caused by the free flow of information on the net is often stated as "if it offends you, don't read it" -- that is, the responsibility is placed on the reader to avoid looking at postings. This misses the point of laws on obscenity or hate literature. They are not there to protect the sensibilities of some innocent bystander, but to protect society as a whole by preventing the creation of an inhospitable climate in which individuals or groups of people cannot feel free to participate fully. Some situations can be handled by existing rules -- for instance, the display of pornographic pictures on public terminals falls under sexual harassment guidelines. But what to do about the woman who notices that fellow users are reading violent pornography, or the member of a visible minority who realizes that the person at the next terminal is reading racist propaganda? The two obvious reactions -- to do nothing, or to try to cut off all access to such material -- both seem inadequate.
If I were to try to explain the removal of newsgroups l to an average Saturday shopper at Fairview Park Mall without using technical jargon, it might sound something like this. "Before, the information in question would come automatically onto the University's computers, under arrangement between the University and organizations in other cities. It would stay on file in University computers for a period of time ranging from days to weeks, whether or not anyone wanted to look at it, and then it would automatically be removed. Now, the information has to be brought to the University by an explicit command issued by an individual using a University computer." Looked at in that light, it seems clearer how the administration, in removing certain groups, is trying to transfer responsibility. That might not hold in a court of law, but it might hold in the court of public opinion, which is what the administration is really concerned about.
Nevertheless, I think this decision is inadequate. There is nothing wrong with considering public opinion -- much as we might want to live in cyberspace, we remain citizens of a community and a country, and we have responsibilities to others -- but public opinion is but one in a complex set of factors, not all of which have been fully articulated. This issue is likely to recur in slightly different ways and remain a thorn in the side of the administration until a general solution is sought. At Waterloo, we like to speak of ourselves as being on the cutting edge. Shouldn't we -- together -- be coming up with policies and procedures that can be used as models by the courts and the legislatures, rather than waiting for them to tell us what to do?
Knitting is an important craft and a source of recreation for many members of the University community; nevertheless, it is not something with which the University concerns itself. If someone were to set up a large electronic database of knitting patterns, it would be unlikely that anyone would argue that the University should acquire and maintain this database for local users. Yet if a newsgroup such as "alt.knitting.patterns" were set up tomorrow, it would automatically be subscribed to by UW computers. And if it were publicly removed in a week's time -- perhaps because of fears of copyright violation -- there would be cries of censorship and violation of freedom of speech. Clearly, a rational policy on newsgroups is long overdue.
I think that a broad-based task force should be set up to work out an acquisitions and review procedure for newsgroups, taking into account academic relevance, local standards, and the image that the University wishes to uphold. The lines should be drawn rather broadly, recognizing that recreation, amusement, and political discussion all have a place on campus. No newsgroup should be exempt from review; all must be justified. This task force, or another one, should initiate a complete review of net resources with a view to integrating them into the academic experiences we offer. For example, there is at least one group, "comp.risks" (for discussions on the risks of computer technology) that might be considered as required reading for computer science majors. The net offers access to resources by means other than newsgroups, and these should also be examined for possible benefits.
These task forces should reflect the diversity of the University community. They should contain not only net enthusiasts, but net skeptics; not only people who use the net daily, but people who have never used the net. We could also draw on local expertise such as offered by our Centre for Society, Technology, and Values. All of this should lead to written and numbered official University policies so that present and future administrators and committees can make decisions based on a sound set of principles, rather than reacting arbitrarily and capriciously to perceived crises.
The problems of accountability and responsibility are more thorny, and require further study. One possible initial approach is to subscribe only to groups that are moderated by members of the community -- for groups of national scope, Canadian residents; for local groups, members of the local community. A group doesn't have to be moderated by a single person, so long as someone is responsible for the information coming onto our computers. The sheer volume of information makes it impossible to screen everything; we may see groups whose stated purpose is something like "Jane User's gleanings from alt.volume". The University may consider permitting groups that are moderated by individuals of international reputation ("comp.risks" is one such group) or groups in which the likelihood of violation of guidelines is very small. The use of pseudonyms and the ability to post to local groups from far away might be restricted considerably. All of these steps would be stopgap measures, in place only until a task force could determine workable long-term solutions.
If many groups are taken away, users may be tempted to use point-to-point services to continue reading them, which would saturate our links to other sites. (These links are already perilously close to saturation.) Perhaps the time has come to set priorities and quotas so that everyone gets their fair share of this resource. After all, if you want to teach someone the value of money, you don't give them a blank cheque: you give them an allowance. Possibly people will start sharing information locally, working out caching schemes and order forms. The important thing is that everyone will start working on creative solutions, rather than arguing for restoration of an untenable status quo.
Recently, the federal government announced plans to set up a task force to look at the "information highway", with three major areas of concern: job creation, Canadian sovereignty and cultural values, and universal access at reasonable cost. Of these priorities, the first is a motherhood issue, and the third is something that also needs to be considered in our local context. The second touches directly on many of the issues discussed in this article. We will see echoes of this local conflict repeated across the world until public policy is made at national and international levels, and perhaps even after that.
Let me reiterate: we have the local resources to work out general and long-term solutions to many of these problems. What seems to be lacking is the will to tackle them. Is it naive to think that constructive dialogue and serious consideration of the complexities of these issues are viable alternatives to a fractious debate over rights? I hope not.