Carnegie Mellon University Bans Sex from the Internet
- Artist/Author/Producer: Usenet news groups dealing with sex
(i.e. alt.binary.erotica.*)
- Confronting Bodies: CMU SysAdmin Vs. Student Body
- Dates of action: November 1994
- Location: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA., USA
- Description of the Art Work
-
- Description of incident
- CMU's Vice President of Computing Services, Bill Arms, made the
decision to pull internet bboards pertaining to sex
(i.e. netnews.alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*,
netnews.alt.sex.stories, etc.) from being access by users with
accounts on CMU's computer network, Andrew. This was done in
haste and without obtaining proper feedback from the student
body. The decision was based on fear of breaking Pennsylvania's
state pornography and obcenity laws.
- Results of incident
- The bboards were indeed banned to Andrew users although a few of the
text only bboards were not banned. It was mostly the bboards containing
encoded binary picture files of erotic material that were banned. A
student free speech protest was held the following week. Local and
national
news media (such as Time magazine) covered the incident.
Despite a letter from the ACLU condemning the decision and outside legal
advice that a Univeristy is exempted from pornography/obscenity laws
(because libraries are exempted and a university can be considered a
library) the administration did not reinstate the bboards, and only made
statements maintaining that they were in the right. The administration
has set up a committee to make a final decision about the bboards and
promised that the hearing woould be made public. So far this promise has
been violated already with a gag order on commitee members.
The administration still appears stubborn about the issue and
unresponsive to student concerns.
Source: Dillon Lin. I am a student at CMU, other info includes the
campus newspaper, Tartan. There is a WEB site on Andrew as well as local
bboards discussing the incident.
record no: s33
