That Link Is Illegal

buzzdecafe writes with a snippet from a Declan McCullagh piece on news.com today: "The University of California at San Diego has ordered a student organization to delete hyperlinks to an alleged terrorist Web site, citing the recently enacted USA Patriot Act. School administrators have told the group, called the Che Cafe Collective, that linking to a site supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) would not be permitted because it violated federal law."

More news and background....

[tiltowait]

here [dmoz.org].

Some illegal links

[buzzdecafe]

Here is the FARC site [farc-ep.org]

And here it is in English [farc-ep.org]

Re:USA Patriot

[Henry V .009]

I don't think that you understand our first ammendment. It is perfectly legal for a book publisher to publish a book by Hussein, or for a news organization to run bin Laden's videos. A newspaper can even run unibomber essays if it wants.

Perhaps you can be a bit clearer about the difference between "vehicles of communication" and "speech."

Is a "vehicle of communication" anything like a volkswagon van?

Re:USA Patriot

[netphilter]

I think you're forgetting the fact that the government DOES see the bin Laden videos before the media is allowed to show them. This is so they can make sure that there are no "hidden messages" in the tape that allow the terrorist to communicate. I'm not necessarily defending the school's view on this. I think that it's a pretty gray area. On one hand it is essentially free speech. On the other hand by linking the terrorist web site you've allowed them to communicate their views to an entirely new audience (vehicle of communication). I defend the school's right to say that they aren't going to allow this based on the fact that they believe that it is providing terrorists with a means to communicate.

Re:It's a university computer...

[mustangdavis]

Now, another question I have is: Why does UC San Diego allow student organizations use a subdomain under ucsd.edu ? It's asking for trouble...

This is an easy one! I've been a sys admin for 2 public universities ... so obviously I have the answer ...

It is illegal for the Universities to have public domain names (.com, .net, etc ...) pointed at their servers!

Reasons:

• It is illegal for public institutions to directly compete with private industry ... ie the university can't allow these organizations to point .com domain names at their servers since they are taking potential business away from the private sector
• Since Universities are not allowed to compete with ISPs, they make things easier to monitor by only allowing their domain name to be pointed at their servers. Hence, no outside domain names are supposed to be pointed at their servers. This prevents cheap grad students from starting a business in their office or cheap undergrads in dorms from starting a server farm.
• More could be listed .. won't waste your time putting them here

Every university that I can think of usually PREFERS if the student organizations use the University domain name for their sites. It makes them appear as being official and allows the University to regulate the content of the sites (instead of suing their own organizations or revolking their charters) ...

Re:USA Patriot

[Henry V .009]

My god. You have managed to be massively ill-informed. The bin Laden videos are shown on Al-Jazeera(sp?) TV before anybody in our government gets a chance to look at them. Hell, you can even get it on cable here. There is no one in government who later authorizes what is and is not all right to show on American English-speaking television. That would be suspiciously like an office of censorship.

Sure, there were a couple of videos picked up by special forces that got pre-viewed by the government, but that's about it. The media has it's own sources.

Re:UCSD

[Obfuscant]

...they didn't want Bin Laden's statements printed or broadcast. Only the New York Times refused. The powers-that-be in the US want only one side and one side only of the story to be put out - theirs.

That is not why the feds quite rightly asked that Bin Laden's statements not be broadcast. It has nothing to do with his opinions. It has everything to do with his access to a means of communicating messages to his agents anonymously.

In case you've forgotten World War II, it was quite common for specific instructions to agents to be sent over broadcast media disguised as innocuous personal messages. It is still common.

Why should the US media want to be used as a communications medium for someone who has already killed several thousand US citizens? Why, it's NEWS, that's why, and it's their RIGHT to be that conduit.

Re:Great! - like the School of the Americas

[Lechter]

American Agenda for FARC: (via the School of the Americas [soaw.org]

• Train Latin Americans to follow in alumnus Manuel Noriega's footsteps and establish abusive military dictatorships (we can always "take them out" later wen we need the political capital)
• Train Latin Americans to kill impoverished families seeking their basic human rights
• Sell Latin American thugs stinger missiles (we know they'll use them to crush communist revolutions [though we call them Unions here in the US]. They would never resell them to "terrorists")
• Sell Latin American thugs A-37 dragonfly jets (they won't resell these to terrorists either they'll use them to fire rockets in to "dissident" families' thatched huts)

Since we're already pretty far off the topic of potential legal challenges to the USA PATRIOT Act, I'll carry on the topic of "terrorists." The fact is that the US has an excellent history of backing up truely vile regiems (the afforementioned Noriega) until there's political capital to be gained from going to war with them. We're doing the same thing in Iraq: when the Iraqi's were fighting the Iranians (back when they were terrorists not allies against terrorists) we had no problem with Hussein trying to take over his neighbors (we didn't like Iran then), gassing dissident groups within his country, or buying weapons of mass distruction (from Lockheed-Martin). There's two sides to every story here...

...we now return you to the previous conversation on freedom of speach in the digital age already in progress...

University provides network, doesn't own machine

[Ichoran]

A bunch of people seem to be under the impression that UCSD actually owns the machine that burn is hosted on. As far as I know, this is not correct; burn is on a student-hosted machine, but uses the university network for internet access.

Re:UCSD

[crawling_chaos]

FARC had a ban on drug growing for years, with the right-wing paramilitaries making money from the drug growing.

Puh-lease. And I bet you think their shit doesn't stink, either:

• But then the FARC discovered drugs, not consuming them, which is prohibited in the rebel ranks, but taxing them BBC News [bbc.co.uk]
• "The narcos brought the paramilitary because they didn't like the FARC controlling the market," Salon link [salon.com]

And that's leaving out links from obviously biased sites like the DEA or the Washington Times. Both sides in Columbia are inextricably tied up in the drug trade. They have to be, it's the only way they can fund their fighters. War crimes are expensive.

Re:Lost, please return

[Ian Wolf]

My post agrees with you, that is what I can't understand.

The Sedition Act was passed in 1798 and was a blatant violation of the first amendment pushed through Congress by the Presidency of John Adams. Fortunately, the Sedition Act was struck down, rather quickly. The Patriot Act's whole concept of "Vehicle of Communication" is simply a slightly better veiled Section 2 of the Sedition Act, hence my statement...

We've come so far to go full circle.

You obviously skipped direct to the quote and didn't read...

Fortunately, the following didn't last too long.

Section 2 of the Sedition Act (July 14, 1798)

I'm not blowing off steam, just amazed that you jumped all over me for sharing your point of view.

Re:More news and background....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's UCSD... it's not expensive.