Re: now on cco.caltech.edu and on c.b.a2 later today or tomorrow...

[toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

dmz@cco.caltech.edu (Daniel Zimmerman) writes:

>There were also pieces of Apple II System Software in that particular archive. 

If this is true, then that archive cannot be allowed to remain on CCO. The
last time Matt D. heard rumors that there was Apple copyrighted stuff on CCO,
I got a nice curt email telling me that it had better not be true for very
long or else Apple's rabid lawyers would pay us a visit.

The policy I ended up with was "if the copyright has an active defender, honor
it, otherwise retain the copyright banner and be ready to delete it if somebody
asks that it be deleted". CCO is not in the business of breaking the law, and
if pub/apple2 draws _any_ legal attention whatsoever then you can help us find
a new site that's willing to accept 45.7 megs of Apple II material (which is
what the archive is down to as of tonight).

>I'm not attempting to be your "moral guardian", I am merely following  
>Caltech's policies dealing with the content of the public access files       
>on our computer systems. I have no choice in the matter... If I did, I would
>have left the file up. As for the FTA demo, that is a totally different story,
>because 1) to get the animation you have to be looking for it, and 2) it's just
>a cartoon. 

This bit about Caltech's policies is sad but true. There is a very militant
feminist faction that has managed to put in place some absurdly restrictive
policies about adult material. The letter of the law (as I understand it) is
that if you have any adult material that other people can just happen to see
(this includes leaving your door open while you view a day's haul of a.b.p.e)
you can be charged with violating the institute's sexual harrassment policy
-- I am _not_ kidding, this can be grounds for explusion or other painful
punishments. The whole brouhaha started happening during my senior year and
has probably only gotten worse since then.

However, the letter of the law is also it's loophole. If you have to go to
effort to produce the offensive material (and in my mind un-SHK-ing an archive
should qualify) then we haven't actually violated the policy. Unless they
have managed to reproduce 1984 in the nine months since I graduated, that is.

With this in mind, it seems to me that Dan is being a nobly honest student
but that he really doesn't need to worry about it. What everyone probably
doesn't realize is that Dan got here after the policies were officially put
into effect, and is probably not used to thinking like the upperclassmen yet.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu