I had a friendly and informative discussion with the University's legal counsel Rosemary Augustine yesterday. The University's conclusion regarding [email protected], Assamnet's old home, was based on a new Responsible Computing Policy document (effective on January 18, 2005). It has two policy points:
1. Do not use University resources for partisan political purposes. (For example: Even our University's President Hank Brown, a former US Senator, took leave of absence for part of a day, two weeks ago, when he went to lobby a private group to vote in coming State referenda in a certain way. This story was published in the Faculty and Staff newspaper Silver and Gold on August 25, 2005: http://www.cu.edu/sgrecord/ . Since people express partisan political opinions on Assamnet, it is not consistent with the University's new computing policy.) 2. World Wide Web pages hosted on University computers should be used in a manner consistent with the instructional, public service, research, and administrative objectives of the University. (According to my discussions with officers on campus, e.g., our Police Chief, they don't see any problems on hosting cultural/artistic/informational Web pages such as limited photograph gallerys or the Wikiassam/RaizkOx/Encyclopaedia type endeavors. However, we are making arrangements to move them from University servers in the very near future.) The University's recommmendations were 1. Remove from computer servers on the University, files related to assam.org and Assam that are not consistent with university computing policy as indicated above. 2. Remove references to university servers from assam.org. There were several such references. 3. Use a non-university email account for all communications posted by me on assam.org. The University supplied email address to me is a university resource and should not be used to express political ideas. 4. Since Assam.org is a privately maintained Web site with no verifiable links to a terrorist organization, the University administration should avoid making any interference with my First Amendment rights to own and operate the Web site as well as express my and others' opinions on the Web site. I carried out the recommendation points 1, 2 and 3 immediately after I was told of them last week. Please read this carefully ----------------------------------- According to Rosemary Augustine, it is perfectly legal in the USA to have postings from all sources on Assam.org or Assamnet due to the First Amendment rights (USA) we enjoy. However, she suggested it is a crazy world and to protect ourselves, we develop a relationship with First Amendment organizations such as ACLU/PEN and/or First Amendment attorneys to address situations that may arise in the future. This was the conclusion of Larry Siems of PEN also a few days ago. If any Assamnetters is willing to help us develop such connections, please contact me. Jugal ________________________________________________________________________ Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
