Re: Pornographic Pictures in Lab

From: George H Pike (gpike+@pitt.edu)
Date: 01/06/95


Paul and others

In defense and in clarification, it was Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
in Pittsburgh, not the University of Pittsburgh, that moved to
unilaterally restrict access to several Usenet groups containing
porographic material. The issue created a certain uproar at Pitt and
policies are being reviewed. A couple of our faculty have been consulted
on constitutional issues. CMU has backed down to some extent, limiting
access at this point to visual (.binary, etc.) files, not print files.
The local spin is that CMU did nobody any favor by their actions,
particulary not Pitt.

George H. Pike
Director of the Law Library
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
3900 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15260

On Tue, 3 Jan 1995, Paul D. Healey wrote:

> I would strongly advise a against content oriented prohibition. The
> definitional problems of such an approach are a true quagmire, and the
> constitutional issues even more so. Then there is the potential for bad
> p.r. (Remember the U. of Pittsburgh?), and so on.
>
> Paul D. Healey J.D. (graduate student and technology lab coordinator),
> School of Library and Information Science
> 3071 Main Library, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52241
> email: phealey@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu Phone: 319-335-6478



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