Re: Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News

[Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>]

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> The mere fact that a privately-owned discussion group becomes popular does
> not mean that it becomes a public forum.
> Say I start a poetry mailing list to discuss Blake's writings. I have
> three people on it. One becomes obnoxious and emailbombs the list since he
> disagrees with my interpretation of "A Memorable Fancy." Do I have the
> right to kick him off? How is this different from a private poetry reading
> in my home?

A gentleman whose name I don't have once wrote:  "Freedom (if it is worth
something and to be preserved) is not the freedom to do whatever you want
to do, it is the freedom to do what you ought to do."

One could look at it both ways, of course.

But in all fairness, let's look at a seemingly unrelated example for
perspective:

Say I work in a software shop, and my boss, who has a big monitor and a
really good 1280 x 1024 video card, makes a large document with all kinds
of fonts, including very small ones, which he can see clearly on his
system.  He gives the .DOC to me to review, however, I have a cheap VGA
card and 12-inch monitor, and can't see much of the text clearly.

My boss gets on my case, and rides me because I'm stalling on the review,
since I can't see the text clearly.  I point out that he's not being fair,
but other people at work join his side and tell me that "He's the owner,
he has the right to do whatever he wants, including terminate your job",
and so forth.

(But he's still an asshole, you see).  You do understand that, yes?