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C00002 00002	The following statement was passed unanimously at a meeting
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The following statement was passed unanimously at a meeting
of the Computer Science Department faculty on Tuesday, Feb 21,
1989.

Statement of Protest about the AIR Censorship of rec.humor.funny.

Computer scientists and computer users have been involved in
making information resources widely available since the 1960s.
Such resources are analogous to libraries.  The newsgroups
available on various networks are the computer analog of
magazines and partial prototypes of future universal computer
libraries.  These libraries will make available the information
resources of the whole world to anyone's terminal or personal
computer.

Therefore, the criteria for including newsgroups in computer
systems or removing them should be identical to those for
including books in or removing books from libraries.  For this
reason, and since the resource requirements for keeping
newsgroups available are very small, we consider it contrary to
the function of a university to censor the presence of newsgroups in
University computers.  We regard it as analogous to removing a
book from the library.  To be able to read anything subject only
to cost limitations is an essential part of academic freedom.
Censorship is not an appropriate tool for preventing or dealing
with offensive behavior.

We therefore think that AIR and SDC should rescind the purge of
rec.humor.funny.  The Computer Science Department has also decided
not to censor Department Computers.