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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Disclaimers
Message-ID: <339@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 13:43:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.339
Posted: Fri Aug  9 13:43:40 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 08:20:43 EDT
References: <9784@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 32

In article <9784@ucbvax.ARPA> allynh@ucbvax.UUCP (Allyn Hardyck) writes:

>2)  The companies are (politely?) asking that people put it in their messages
>    (I can just see a default .disclaimer file) to prevent becoming part of
>    the latest wave of multimillion-dollar lawsuits by someone taking offense
>    at some random posting.  While a safe move, it seems to me to be a clear
>    violation of personal rights - who are they to say what you put in your
>    letters?  And hold some punishment over your head if you fail to?  ...
     ^^^^^^^

But a posting to the net is hardly the same thing as a private letter,
since it's open to the scrutiny of perhaps thousands of people
nationwide or overseas. A news article is more like an article
published in a limited circulation magazine or perhaps a letter to the
editor in a newspaper. When you post to the net, the organization you
work for is clearly visible in the heading so in some sense you're
posting as a representative of your company. There is a certain
feeling among people posting to the net that they're members of a
quasi-anarchistic society of free spirits bound together by the
electronic media. This illusion is easy to maintain if you're posting
from academia but much more difficult to maintain if you're posting
from an account at your place of employment. Contrary to popular 
belief, someone DOES subsidize the storage and transmission of net 
articles and it seems to me this fact must be taken into consideration 
when we write articles and post them to the net. I've never written a
check to pay for my numerous postings to the net; have you?

As a consequence, I try to keep my foul mouth, hot temper, whacko
political orientation, and belief in 40 foot orange orangutans from
the planet Mungo under control when I write an article. :-)

                                -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly