Newsgroups: comp.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Prodigy Special Offer hits my mailbox...
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 91 20:41:46 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.204146.20712@looking.on.ca>
References: <1991Feb6.141621.9765@javelin.es.com> <T42Zw2w163w@bluemoon.uucp> <1991Feb11.061828.20234@looking.on.ca> <JMC.91Feb10231839@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU> <BZS.91Feb11105310@world.std.com> <1991Feb12.223147.24215@looking.on.ca> <7909@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>

In article <7909@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) writes:
>Part of what we're working out here is exactly what censorship means
>in the context of cyberspace.  And we still don't know.  So it's too
>early to say whether or not Prodigy is "censoring" -- we haven't
>worked out what censorship means here.  

Nor will we ever, since it's not really an issue here.  It depends on
your definition of censorship.  By mine, it is impossible for Prodigy
practice censorship, since that is the province of the government or
organized crime.   By your definition, it is censorship if somebody refuses
to let you use their property to express your opinions.  The two definitions
will have trouble meeting.

>From what I have read here, Prodigy appears to have hidden policies in
>addition to their stated policies. 

Hidden only in the sense that they don't advertise them.  Everybody involved
in the online biz is pretty aware of what they are.

>It's difficult for me to seriously defend these practices; in other
>electronic media they have been outlawed in the USA.  Without those
>laws, our telephone companies would strictly control what equipment is
>connected to the public telephone network (Carterfone decision).  As

Prodigy is not a government approved monopoly, nor indeed a monopoly of
any kind.  At the rate it is losing money, (revenues estimate $55 million,
expenses well over $100 million) it may not be anything in the near future.

>with any public business, a commericial BBS has responsibilities to
>the public; just what those responsibilities are, and if they should
>be defended by law is not yet clear.  

That is an interesting issue.  But Prodigy is not trying to be a BBS.
That's the source of all this problem.   I guess I sympathise with them
because in a sense every Prodigy discussion area is like rec.humor.funny.
I edit that newsgroup and have defined its editorial policy.  And I have
refused, rather adamantly in the past as some of you know, to allow
anybody else to dictate that editorial policy to me.

Likewise Prodigy, which is not trying to be a BBS, has an editorial policy,
and it's entirely up to their management what that should be.

-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
