CDT, RSACi, and "public service" groups (2/3)

[Declan McCullagh]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:27:07 -0400
From: Jonah Seiger <jseiger at cdt.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>, fight-censorship at vorlon.mit.edu
Cc: chris_barr at cnet.com
Subject: Re: CDT, RSACi, and "public service" groups

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





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