> Responsibility: It should be clear who is responsible for a home page
> and whom to contact with comments, corrections, etc.
Yes. But, there's another element to "responsibility" that troubles
me. I unwaveringly oppose both formal censorship and informal stifling
of speech. Yet, I can see far to many situations that place me in
an uneasy balance between my personal/professional beliefs and my
responsibilities in maintaining sun.soci. My personal view is that
any homepage on our system that does not violate the law or
explicit University policies is permissable, even if that homepage
is offensive.
Some examples:
1) Descriptions of how to commit an illegal act generally fall under
protected speech. Should the university defend the right to
publish such speech on a homepage, or should it restrict it?
If the former, where does liability lie? If the latter,
where do we draw the line in restricting or discouraging speech
content?
2) "Offensive" content: What are the limits, if any, to homepage
content that, while legal, may be offensive? Examples include
sexual material (eg, texts suitable for college students but not
for juveniles, "racy" stories, material that, while legal in
DeKalb, IL may be illegal in Memphis, TN); political content
("hate speech," religious content; White Supremacist/KKK content)
3) "Questionable" material: Computer virus source code; anarchy files
4) Links: What problems of liability might arise if NIU homepages
themselves have no files, but only links to inappropriate files?
All of the examples are a few I've faced this year.
jt