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\centerline{CENSORING REC.HUMOR.FUNNY}
\bigskip
	This is an explanation of the Stanford University dispute
arising from the censorship of the ``newsgroup'' (or computer
bulletin board) rec.humor.funny by the Academic Information
Resources organization and the Stanford Data Center.  We also
discuss the academic freedom issues involved, especially as
they relate to the older issues of removing books from
libraries.

This explanation is for people not familiar with newsgroups.
\medskip
\noindent NETWORK NEWSGROUPS
\medskip
	To understand the issue, you have to know something
about network newsgroups and how they are analogous to
magazines.

	1. There are about 500 national ``newsgroups'' coming
into the Stanford University Computer Science Department's VAX
computer named Polya.  You may think of them as magazines to
which the library aspect of Polya subscribes, but they are all
free.  Many Stanford computers receive about the same list.
Many other universities, laboratories and companies also get
them.  Yet other newsgroups belong to computer ``utilities''
like the {\it Source} and {\it Compuserve} and cost money to
use. In these commercial environments, newsgroups are continuous
with databases, most of which cost money to use.

	2. A Unix user of one of these computers can give the command
{\it rn}, and the computer will show him the first new item in the
first newsgroup to which he personally has ``subscribed''.  He
can read items or skip them or move on to the next newgroup.  One
can add or remove newsgroups from one's personal list.  Some
people spend a lot of time at this, but no-one can pay attention
to all the newsgroups any more than one could read all magazines.

	3. One can also send items to a newsgroup by electronic
mail.  Computer newsgroups enable many more people to contribute
their views to discussions than does any print medium.  Moreover,
this actually occurs.  The number of contributors to a newsgroup
is typically much larger than to any print magazine.  This
represents an extension of democracy.

	4. There are two kinds of newsgroups, unmoderated and moderated.
Electronic mail received by the computer program maintaining an
unmoderated newsgroup automatically remails it to all the subscribers.
Moderated newsgroups have human editors that select what will be
included.  Both kinds flourish.

	5. Because the newsgroups are received in batches, it is
doubtful that every newsgroup received on Stanford computers has
been selected by anybody.  Maybe some of them are not read by
anybody.

	6. The cost of receiving newsgroups is very low.  The installation
sets a policy on how long the items are kept, and this is implemented
by a program that usually is automatically activated nightly.

	7. The subjects of newsgroups include the following.

\itemitem{a.}Technical discussions of various scientific and engineering and
philosophical topics.

\itemitem{b.}Political and social controversy.

\itemitem{c.}Material of interest to subgroups: feminists, gays, Jews, sex,
drugs.

\itemitem{d.}Material concerning users of particular kinds of computer and
particular programming languages.

\itemitem{e.}Recipes and jokes.

\itemitem{f.}Things for sale.  Product announcements.
\medskip
\noindent THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY
\medskip
	Brad Templeton, who runs Looking Glass Software in Waterloo,
Canada, has operated as a hobby since 1986 a moderated newsgroup
for jokes called rec.humor.funny.  Templeton selects jokes for
humor and explicitly abjures ``political correctness'' as
a criterion.  Jokes that might be considered offensive are
encrypted in the R13 cipher, i.e. letters are rotated by 13 in
the alphabet.  If a joke is classified as potentially offensive,
the reader can skip it without decrypting it.  There is also an
unmoderated humor newsgroup rec.humor, which often has jokes that
Templeton wouldn't include, and a newsgroup rec.humor.d that
anyone can use to comment on jokes in rec.humor or
rec.humor.funny.  Templeton is not involved in operating either
of these.

	My opinion is that Templeton has done well for someone
who has compiled 900 jokes from those submitted to him.  There is
a book of them for sale.

	Late in 1988 Templeton was attacked by an M.I.T graduate
student in civil engineering named Jonathan Richmond.  The attack
first appeared in some other newsgroups, and later in the
newspapers in Waterloo.  The attack was triggered by the
following joke.

{\narrower\medskip\noindent
A Scotsman and a Jew went to a restaurant. After a
hearty meal, the waitress came by with the inevitable
check. To the amazement of all, the Scotsman was heard
to say, ``I'll pay it!'', and he actually did.

The next morning's newspaper carried the news item:
``Jewish Ventriloquist Found Murdered in Blind Alley''.\medskip}

No Jew to whom I have told this joke was offended.  Others have
verified that the joke doesn't offend Scots.

	According to Templeton, this is a joke he would normally
encrypt, but he forgot that time.  His apology for this didn't
satisfy his critic(s).

	The upshot in Waterloo was that he no longer distributes
rec.humor.funny through the University of Waterloo computer and
the University only receives G-rated jokes.
\medskip
\noindent THE STANFORD FLAP
\medskip
	Early in December, a programmer at SDC pointed out the
controversy to John Sack, just as an item of gossip, making no
suggestion that Stanford do anything to prevent Stanford people
from reading rec.humor.funny.

	However, the matter gurgled through the Stanford computer
bureaucracy, the upper reaches of the Stanford Administration and
Stanford legal counsel.  The matter was kept confidential among
these officials for no reason that was ever made explicit.  Perhaps
it was just habit.  After a month and a half, Ralph Gorin, head
of AIR and John Sack, head of SDC, jointly announced that rec.humor.
funny was to be purged from the computers under their control.
The announcement was made by replacing rec.humor.funny, so that
some innocent joke fans found the announcement the next time
they asked for a joke.  Some of them thought the announcement
was a joke.

Here are some related facts.

	1. There are many computers not under their control
including those operated by various research groups in the
Engineering School, the Computer Science Department and the
Center for Studies in Language and Information and the Music
Department.  None of these other organizations have taken any
action or seem inclined to do so as yet.  rec.humor.funny has
been added to the gang-of-four computer operated by the Qlisp
research project.

	2. This bit of censorship is a random thrust in the dark.
A number of other newsgroups are often in far worse taste than
rec.humor.funny ever is.

	3. The effort to remove rec.humor.funny has taken several
hours of programmer time by people who have no personal taste for
this particular job.  The costs are in purging the library---not
in maintaining it.  It would be especially difficult to maintain
effective censorship except by cutting Stanford off entirely from
this new mode of communication.  Material from banned newsgroups
would begin appearing on others.

	4. Stanford has a legal right to do what its administration
pleases, just as it has a legal right to purge the library or
fire tenured faculty for their opinions.  What it has a moral right
to do is limited by considerations of academic freedom.  While the
Stanford officials concerned got a legal opinion on whether anyone
could sue them for doing this, they apparently didn't consult the
Academic Senate, the Director of Libraries or any faculty except
those who are also administrators about whether there was an academic
freedom issue.
\medskip
\noindent PRESS COVERAGE
\medskip
	The quality of press coverage so far has depended on the
care taken by the reporter, how many sources he questioned and
his familiarity with computers.  I shall list some errors made by
different reporters in the hope that future reports will contain
only different errors.

	1. Supposing that the rec.humor.funny concentrates on
racist jokes.  It doesn't, and jokes that anyone might consider
to have that character are a small proportion.  A ``best-of''
book is available from Templeton for anyone who prefers to
sample the jokes on paper.  He put the ethnic jokes in the
last chapter, so anyone who objects in general can skip them.

	2. Supposing that the jokes constitute a fixed file.
New ones come in every day or so, and the old ones are purged
every few weeks to economize file space.

	3. Supposing that Stanford computers ``broadcast'' the
jokes.  They are available only to people who ask for them.

	4. Supposing that there was a complaint at Stanford.
No-one complained.  The woman who mentioned it at Stanford
cited the controversy as interesting, and has signed the
protest against their suppression.  Even later, no-one has
cited a specific joke as a candidate for censorship.

	5. In Waterloo, some reporters at one paper launched
a campaign against Templeton as a racist.  Nothing he could
say would budge them, and since then he refuses to talk to
journalists at all.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, this hasn't
happened.  Reporters have done their best to be fair,
and their writing that the file consists of racist jokes, is
an honest error, apparently through supposing that where there
is smoke there must be fire.  They have also mistakenly said there
were complaints.  When informed about this, they promise to
correct the error should they do a follow-up story.  All have
understood that there is a civil liberties issue and have
featured the protest against the censorship.
\medskip
\noindent THE PROTEST
\medskip
	There has been extensive discussion on the Stanford
University internal computer bulletin board su-etc.  Many have attacked
the AIR decision, and no-one has fully supported it.  The following
protest statement has been circulated through computer mail
within the su-etc community and the Computer Science Department.
It has about 120 ``signatures''; i.e. I have received
electronic mail subscribing their names from that many people.
\medskip
\centerline{Statement of Protest about the AIR Censorship of rec.humor.funny}
{\narrower\medskip\noindent
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.

We therefore think that AIR and SDC should rescind the purge of
rec.humor.funny.\medskip}
\vfill\eject
\noindent MY OPINION
\medskip
	In this section, I may go beyond what some participants
in the above protest are committed to.

	Newsgroups are a new communication medium just as printed
books were in the 15th century.  They are an important step towards
universal access through everyone's computer terminal to the whole of
world literature.  Moreover, they make expression of opinion to large
audiences accessible to many more people than any print media.  AIR
and SDC setting up an index of prohibited newsgroups is in the same
tradition as the Pope's 1599 Index Liber Prohibitorum.

	Stanford should consider the newsgroups received by its
various computers as analogous to books and magazines in its
library.  Costs require a library to be selective in the books
and magazines in its library.  Costs don't seem to be a factor
here as long as there are a mere 500 newsgroups.

	Stanford should maintain the library part of the
tradition of academic freedom in case of newsgroups.  The issue
is the rights of readers rather than, as was asserted in
justification of the censorship, the right of Templeton to have
his humor read.  Even though censorship appeared early in the
history of printed books, it would be a bad idea to begin
the history of electronic communication with censorship.

	Members of the Stanford community would still have the
right to read rec.humor.funny even if its content were obnoxious.
I have mentioned that it is not out of courtesy to Templeton who
has been unfairly maligned.

	Should Stanford persist in its foolish decision and even
attempt to enforce it Campus wide, it will acquire somewhat of a
reputation as a boobocracy, but doubtless it will survive this.  This
may be another sign of a more general censorious trend, but maybe it
won't get worse.

	 Perhaps this is part of a more general battle to
maintain freedom of expression in university communities.

	The last two paragraphs express a somewhat gloomy view of
the situation.  However, the statement by John Schwartz and Iris
Brest published on 1989 February 8 justifies a more optimistic
assessment.  Applying the corresponding principles of academic
freedom to the present issue would lead to a reversal of the
rec.humor.funny decision.

\bigskip
- John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
\vfill\end

	Repressing rec.humor.funny is a part of a general
campaign against personal expression that are regarded by
university official opinion and much faculty opinion as
derogatory to blacks, women, homosexuals and other groups
regarded as victims.  Universities have been drawing up
lists of proscribed statements, and denunciations for
violation have been solicited.

	Here is my conjecture is how this has come about.  The
educational establishment, especially high schools is dominated
by graduates of the 1960s counterculture.  Many of them have
rubbed their charges' noses into their opinions on every issue.
This has produced a nonconformist reaction, most of it rather
ignorant.  Naturally, this causes them to redouble their efforts.

	Every ukase prescribing certain expressions carries with
it a statement saying that this doesn't mean that the University
wishes to interfere with people's rights of free speech.
However, such statements have not carried with them any examples
of speech with which the University disagrees but which they
don't claim any right to suppress.