CDT, RSACi, and "public service" groups (3/3)

[Declan McCullagh]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:53:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
To: Jonah Seiger <jseiger at cdt.org>
Cc: fight-censorship at vorlon.mit.edu, chris_barr at cnet.com
Subject: Re: CDT, RSACi, and "public service" groups

Jonah,

Thanks for responding. The "yet to be determined category" CDT suggested
during that conversation with RSAC is of course the same "public service
site" category I mentioned in my previous post. 

I'm still curious to know what exactly was discussed and what was proposed
during that July 10 conference call, which happened a few minutes after I
had lunch with RSAC's Stephen Balkam. Can you fill us in? Though to be
fair, I should say Balkam told me the following week that the "public
service site" discussions were on hold. (I'd have to look at my notes for
his exact wording.)

So would you rate your site with RSAC-PS? 

-Declan


On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Jonah Seiger wrote:

> At 3:12 PM -0700 7/24/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Jonah Seiger wrote:
> >
> >> We do not believe ratings are appropriate for news sites or sites that are
> >> geared toward public discussion of political/social issues (CDT has refused
> >> to rate our sites with RSAC).
> >
> >Of course that hasn't stopped CDT from, as I understand it, proposing
> >a "public service site" exemption to RSAC, similar to the "news site"
> >exemption.
> 
> This is not even close to accurate.  We have not proposed anything.
> 
> We have told RSAC that we will not rate our sites with their system because
> we do not believe that ratings are appropriate for politically
> oriented/social issues sites or news sites.
> 
> When we discovered that RSAC was considering a news rating, we were
> concerned and asked them to tell us what they had in mind.  As part of that
> conversation, we asked whether CDT and the other sites we produce (which
> are not 'news' sites in the same way the New York Times) would also fall
> under that classification, or some other yet to be determined category.
> 
> My guess is that this fact got garbled in the translation to you from
> someone at RSAC (or perhaps you were just too eager find what you were
> looking for).
> 
> >RSAC-PS raises the same troubling questions as RSACnews: what is a "public
> >service" group? Who decides? Is CDT? Focus on the Family? The
> >fight-censorship archives? The Cato Institute? The Washington Post? The
> >U.S. Congress? The Democratic Party? NAMBLA? Jim Bell's Multnomah County
> >Common Law Court?
> 
> These are exactly the same questions we asked RSAC.  Ask them, not us --
> this is their idea.
> 
> >The above is what I understand to be the case. I emailed CDT a week ago
> >about this but haven't heard back. I'd appreciate clarification.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> 
> Jonah
>