Selection

[Shaken Angel]

Yes, it's an oversimplification; my apologies.  I really didn't make it as
a serious argument.

If I were to take my argument to its logical conclusion, I would have to
offer every patron, inside the library and outside, root access to every
machine that I currently administer.  And I can't do that, for obvious
reasons.

Selection *is* a fact of life.  I select services by having gradations in
the levels of services I offer to patrons and library faculty and staff.

However, just as I would never dream of installing filters to, say, censor
certain words out of the e-mail that comes in and out of the machines I
administer or tell someone that they couldn't mail a somebody else
because I didn't like them, nor would I elect to filter out World Wide Web
pages based on my moral criteria.

It's like this, at least to me: a "service", whether it's World Wide Web 
or e-mail or whatever -- once it's granted, I can't exercise my moral
judgment to censor what people *do* with that service.

-- john f., miami university oxford ohio