The chat page is closed for three hours a day on weekdays, and there seemed to be a bit of a misunderstanding. What follows below is a chronological account of the correspondance between me (Chris), and Craklie. The overall message is how not to behave on the internet (this applies, of course, to both of us). Craklie's name has been changed to conceal their identity.

One night I received the following message:

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 23:00:01 -0800
From: Craklie <(user_name showed here)@cruzio.com>
To: seidel@mendel.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Disappointed

Wow, that was pretty rude to block our rooms off for 8 hrs. longer than 
the message said. Oh well, they're really your rooms. Is this going to be an 
ongoing happening? Could you please post the hours of operation so we can 
plan accordingly? 

Thank you.

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 23:20:30 -0800
From: Chris Seidel 
Organization: UC Berkeley
To: Craklie 
Subject: Re: Disappointed

Hello Craklie,

	The rooms were only closed for the hours posted on the closed page. A
computer program does it automatically. I have a log file
with some 50,000 accesses to the rooms since they opened at 2:00 pm
this afternoon. It's up to you to get your browser to load the correct
page, and if it won't because it thinks it already has it in it's cache
in the "closed" form, what can I possibly do about that? The files
here are available according to the hours specified. I can't be
responsible for the behavior of people's browsers, do you expect me to
be? 

	I also have to say I find your message terribly presumptuous.
I'm not providing a paid service. I don't work for the users of this
thing I created. It's just a program I wrote that people like you run
for free on the computer here. And then when it doesn't work the way
people think it should, whether it's their fault or not, I get e-mail
telling me I'm rude. What is up with that?

-Chris

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 23:44:06 -0800
To: Chris Seidel 
From: Craklie 
Subject: Re: Disappointed

I thought I had troubleshooted all (my) browser problems by clearing the
cashe, and rebooting several times. That's about the extent of my
knowledge. The only thing left to assume was that your server was still
"out to lunch" (I think that was the phrase you used).

I just downloaded Netacape 2.0 for the Mac two days ago, and am just
growing accustomed to it's own set of problems. Thank you for your response
(although a little inflamed) as this helps me further narrow down where the
problem lies. My own server company here in Santa Cruz has noted problems,
thinking in the San Jose area. Maybe this had an effect.

If I jumped to conclusions it's only that I've had many network problems
recently, not necessarily related.

I'm afraid I can't answer your question on what's up with all the people
emailing you saying you're rude. I did not call you rude myself, so I can't
speak for those who did.

Peace,
Craklie

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 00:05:12 -0800
From: Chris Seidel 
Organization: UC Berkeley
To: Craklie 
Subject: Re: Disappointed

Hello Craklie,

If I seem inflamed it's because I am annoyed when I receive an unsigned
message with no greeting that has as it's first line:

>Wow, that was pretty rude to block our rooms off for 8 hrs

So in response to your second message:

> I did not call you rude myself, so I can't
>speak for those who did.

If the line above is not referring to me as rude, I'm afraid I don't
know what is. 

I have no intention of engaging in some kind of flame war with you.
I think it's just that this program has become something of a nightmare
for the reasons I stated in my last message. I think people don't
realize that (at least as far as this chat page is concerned), it is
just a program I wrote for my homepage, that I thought some people would
find useful. Now it sucks up alot of time, creates thousands of files in
my account, and puts me in danger of losing my account altogether
because it is having an impact on the computer here. I should mention
that this program really has no business being on this computer in the
first place. Can you imagine me trying to justify to the head of the
Biochemistry Department why thousands of people I don't know need to
have cybersex or even just talk on this computer, which is supposed to
used for research, and specifically, why they have to have it in my
account? And yet when the slightest inconvenience occurs, like me trying
to limit use of the program during peak hours, so as to avoid notice, I
get indignant letters like yours with first lines like, "Wow, that was
pretty rude...."

People don't seem to realize that a program like this runs on this
computer at no charge to them. Your net provider is certainly not
donating a penny to any computing time here at Berkeley, I can assure
you. I think people should have access to free computing, but when they
start taking it for granted it takes away the motivation to just create
things for no reason. And then people complain when things go
commercial.

By the way I lived in Santa Cruz for seven years before moving here to
Berkeley.

-Chris

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:20:12 -0800
To: Chris Seidel 
From: Craklie 
Subject: Re: Disappointed

Did I say that? I guess my skateboarding language slips out once in a
while, like words like dude, dope, and the shit are "good".

Why don't you just shut it your site down then and save yourself some headache.

I'll find another chatroom to do what I do, which is counseling teenagers
for free. -

Here is my misconduct:

Sorry for any inconvenience,

Chris Seidel

If you come back to visit later you might have to re-load this page to get it in it's "open" form, other wise you may have problems like this overly polite person:

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 23:00:01 -0800
From: Craklie <(user_name showed here)@cruzio.com>
To: seidel@mendel.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Disappointed

Wow, that was pretty rude to block our rooms off for 8 hrs. longer than 
the message said. Oh well, they're really your rooms. Is this going to be an 
ongoing happening? Could you please post the hours of operation so we can 
plan accordingly? 

Thank you.

I was still logged in when I received the following request:
-----------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 12:16:13 -0800
To: Chris Seidel 
From: Craklie 
Subject: Re: Disappointed
Status: RO
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011

Please take my email link off your page, it is not public information.

Thank you.

I logged out and went off to teach, and when I returned and logged in to check my mail, I received the following message:

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 13:39:23 -0800
To: Chris Seidel <seidel@zenith.Berkeley.EDU>
From: Craklie <angel@(deleted).com>
Subject: Re: Disappointed
Status: RO
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011

Game over.
After purusal of the Berkeley computer code of conduct governing computer
use, I just spoke with Detective Patty Preciado of the Berkeley Campus
Police who informed me of the steps to take to report your misconduct. I
also have a call into Officer Jim Howes of the Santa Cruz Police
Department.

I don't have time to deal with this childishness, and am not at all amused
by it, but time will not prevent me from pressing charges. Therefore, I
repeat, remove my email letter, and my email address link from your home
page IMMEDIATELY.

Thank you.

I posted a closed page explaning why things had shut down. Since Craklie had not wanted me to use her/his e-mail address I put the following explanation:

Basically, I posted this person's e-mail address on one of the pages here for two hours, which apparently upset this person so they have spoken with the police and threatened to press charges against me. I am unfamiliar with the legalities regarding this subject, so until I learn more, I'm taking the conservative approach.

My exam was now 12 hours away, I was studying and had not slept, so I continued to study and made a point of staying off the computer until after my exam on the following day.

Lo and behold, thankful to anything in sight, I passed my exam, the biggest road block I've yet encountered in my field. The lab celebrated. I snuck away to log in and restore the chat server program, now able to face the situation from a much calmer and less vulnerable frame of mind.

I received the following message:

From (user deleted)@cruzio.com Thu Mar 14 10:34:49 1996
To: seidel@zenith.Berkeley.EDU
From: Craklie 
Subject: Blowing it Badly.
Cc: (a bunch of e-mail addresses of people who had sent Craklie letters)

Chris Seidel:

Boy you are really getting into this nonsence. All I asked was you remove
my email address and you respond with reposting it (complete with clue) and
posting my letter again? I find it to be very strange behavior to adjitate
others and carry on. To risk possibly getting your school server privileges
removed. I gave you opportunity to remedy this and just stop this
ridiculous nonsence. Your choice to close your chat site was a further move
on your part to get a bandwagon going.

It's hard to believe that you have never had any constructive criticism of
your chat site before. It's so inferior to all the hundreds of others out
there.  Your behavior is scary to me. I don't understand it, therefore I am
am compelled to go ahead and file a report since I have not been able to
remedy this myself.

With your encouraging others to send me hate email, there could be more
severe implications than getting your priviledges revoked, should any
damage be caused to me or my equipment.

You're blowing it.

Craklie


For all of you I'm cc'ing, I think you should not believe everything you
read on the net. Get some facts before you send hate mail. Perhaps Mr.
Seidel can provide you with my other correspondence which would show my
attempt to snuff this situation, and end it once and for all. His
correspondence to me doesn't relay any special concerns for you, his
"chatters". In fact, quite the contrarily makeing some insulting, assuming
remarks dealing with cybersex.

PS: A great free, and high tech chatsite I found is at
http://chat.netcentral.net

Peace

I had thought Craklie's name seemed familiar and remembered getting a message from him/her about a week previous to the exchange above:

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 96 20:02:21 0800
From: Craklie <user_deleted@cruzio.com>
To: seidel@mendel.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: (no subject)
X-Url: http://mendel.berkeley.edu/~seidel/ChitChat/chat.html

Hi, great chat place. One suggestion, it would be more convenient to 
have the chat button above the message input box. The messages don't 
automatically scroll down to the marker, so you have to scroll down manually. 
I find myself scrolling to the box, then have to scroll 
more to hit the chat button, It would be great to have it above, or level
 with the message box. 

Just my two cents!

Thanks

Here is my last letter to Craklie. I received no response.

Date: Mon, 18 Mar 96 04:20:32 PST
To: Craklie <(user)@cruzio.com>
From: seidel@mendel.Berkeley.EDU (Chris Seidel)
Subject: Re: Blowing it Badly.

Hello Craklie,

Allow me to respond and explain myself, at least partially.

>Boy you are really getting into this nonsence.

Actually I'm not at all interested in this nonsense. Rather, you have
successfully intimidated me, and I'm interested mostly in exorcising my
rights such that I can avoid someone such as yourself causing me further
grief. I don't want to cause you grief. I just want you to stop threatening
me.

>All I asked was you remove my email address and you respond
>with reposting it (complete with clue) and
>posting my letter again?

I did not respond to your request by reposting your letter. I responded 
by deleting your letter and e-mail address so that it would not 
appear on the closed page again. Several hours later I logged in to 
check my mail and I found your combative letter in which
you stated that time would not keep you from pressing charges 
against me. I responded by simply closing down the site, without 
any explanation to anyone. I had no time to deal with the situation. 
Sometime later I posted a closed page, with the explanation and clue that
you mentioned. It did not have any of your letters linked to it. Late that
night I had received mail asking what was going on, and I was very upset 
that you were coming after me so, thinking that if you're going to press 
charges against me for posting your address, then the damage had
already been done earlier, so I had no reason to hold back from doing it
again, especially since this time I felt your letter had a distinctly 
adversarial tone, and contained an actual declaration of your intentions 
towards me. I had submitted to your request, and yet you declared to me 
that you were engaging the police against me on your behalf. In that
situation, I felt that I would certainly not sit back and silently let 
someone take action which would deprive me of my freedoms, either by 
removing my privileges, or by having me put in jail.  Computers are an 
integral part of any scientist's work, so it's more than just "privileges" 
that are at stake for me.

>I find it to be very strange behavior to adjitate
>others and carry on.

If by agitating others you mean telling the truth about what is happening 
to me, perhaps you should learn some of this strange behavior, as i was 
able to read a response of yours to someone whom you had cc'd this letter 
to with an additional section that you didn't include in this letter to me, 
and I saw that you had lied about the number of times you had requested me 
to remove your link, and that you greatly exaggerated various aspects of 
my behavior. Your penchant for exaggeration is evident even in several 
aspects of this letter.  For example when you say "In fact, quite the 
contrarily makeing some insulting, assuming remarks dealing with cybersex."
You know that that is blatantly false. I said nothing of the sort. I
mentioned that people "had" cybersex in my account. Nothing else about it. 
No descriptors or desecrating remarks, no further content on the subject 
was offered. Yet you are informing people to the contrary. The same is true 
for other remarks you have made in this letter.

>To risk possibly getting your school server privileges
>removed.

I'm not gambling anything. I believe that what I did was perfectly within
the confines of the law, even if it wasn't the most rational thing to do. 
Which is why I complied with your request to remove your letter when I 
received it. If I thought I was doing something wrong, I wouldn't be doing it.
Thus I feel I haven't risked anything, and if I have, then I've simply held 
to my beliefs which I would expect anyone to risk things for.

>I gave you opportunity to remedy this and just stop this
>ridiculous nonsence.

Your polite phrasing belies your true intentions and is certainly incongruous 
with your actions. You pursued a hostile course of action in the absence of 
any opportunity for me to do anything. Threatening someone is not usually 
construed as giving someone an opportunity, unless one works for the mob or 
some such organization.

>Your choice to close your chat site was a further move
>on your part to get a bandwagon going.

This is something you are making up. I'm tempted to say it's a megalomaniacal
exaggeration. You needn't flatter yourself in this regard. I mentioned
previously that I had no intention of getting into a flame war with you, 
thus I really have no need of gathering up bandwagons against you. I closed 
my site because when I read your message from several hours before, I had 
the impression that at any moment a police officer was on their way to serve 
me a warrant, and having not thought through all the legal ramifications of 
allowing internet communication in my account, I was simply protecting myself.
No thoughts of you, or of retaliation were involved.

>It's hard to believe that you have never had any constructive criticism of
>your chat site before.

What makes you think this? I have had plenty of constructive criticism of
this site. Some of it from you yourself.

>It's so inferior to all the hundreds of others out
>there.

That could easily be the case. I'm not much of a programmer, and make no claims
as to the quality of something on my homepage. For how very inferior it is,
you seemed to find it useful for some time. And isn't it funny how one's
circumstances reflect what one sees in the world? I'll quote to you directly 
from your first letter to me:

From: Craklie <(user)@cruzio.com>
Monday March 4
"Hi, great chat place. One suggestion.........etc."

I know, you were just being polite.

Given your familiarity with all the hundreds that are out there, you seem
just the person who could put all those observations together and make a 
really good one. (I had only seen one other chat page when I designed this 
one, and all I know about programming could be learned in a week from one 
of those how to books). Perhaps you could even customize it to fit your 
work of counseling teenagers. Perhaps you could teach your teenagers that 
creating things on the web is easily within their reach.

>Your behavior is scary to me. I don't understand it, therefore I am
>am compelled to go ahead and file a report since I have not been able to
>remedy this myself.

It seems you would fare better if you could learn to understand people better.
Alot of people have expressed to me that they find your behavior towards
me scary. I think I understand your behavior better than you understand mine.
I think I can understand your frustrations with a person such as myself. I
am more at a loss to understand the antagonistic tone of the terse missives 
I have received from you thus far. But that is neither here nor there.

>With your encouraging others to send me hate email, there could be more
>severe implications than getting your priviledges revoked, should any
>damage be caused to me or my equipment.

Again, this is in your imagination. I did not encourage anyone to do anything
towards you. If you were to examine my files you will find no rhetoric enciting
anyone to take any action against you. There is nothing defamatory in any of 
the comments I have made about you publicly. I have not encouraged anyone to 
send you any kind of mail. I understand you have received some fairly harsh 
letters, but they are between you and the person who sent them. I did not 
tell anyone or suggest to anyone that they send you anything. If you feel 
someone has harrassed or threatened you, you would probably be wiser to pursue
them in court rather than me. I posess no ill intentions towards you.

>You're blowing it.

Well perhaps you'll teach me a lesson Craklie. I have already learned a few
things. If I had the situation to do over again there are things I would do
differently. This situation, unless you pursue it as you have said that you 
will, is over for me. I'm sorry if I upset you, for that was not my intention.
I found your behavior cocky and inconsiderate in response to you coming down 
on me for something that was not my fault (the inability to retrieve a page),
so I threw in some sarcasm and described you as overly polite on one of my
pages. It's a pity you didn't see the humor in it,  but that's understandable.
Two hours of your letter under public display appeared to be too much. Now 
we appear to be entangled in a legal battle. When I lived in Santa Cruz 
people I knew were always trying to reach a higher awareness and when they 
said peace, they really meant it. I don't know what kind of person you are, 
but I am the kind of person that takes things seriously and doesn't like to
hold grudges. I think this situation is dead, and that there is an easy 
resolution in front of us.

If you feel otherwise, I hope you'll let me know so that I have time to
consult my legal counsel.

Best of luck to you, and Peace,

-Chris