🚀 go-pugleaf

Roy Brander (branderr@cuug.ab.ca) wrote:

: The longer that USENET keeps up  a reputation for being mostly responsible,
: the longer we all have before The Law "notices" us and decides that
: this medium must be brought to heel by requiring anybody providing
: a BBS-like message posting service to personally read and approve
: everything posted.  Don't believe its impossible.

WHAT?! This is going to happen sometime, if not now, then later. Dont believe
its impossible? Are you KIDDING? There was MORE THAN 1,000,000 posts on the
usenet per month every month this year (I think, check news.lists). How
are you going to check that? Only the govt could setup something big enough
to check that - and since no one else could, we'd have to rely on THEM
to decide what should be censored and what shouldnt be.

We already live by this regarding what comes through customs, and we all
know about that, and how racism, sexism and homophobia work with customs.
Things are better for locally published stuff, but still bad.

Now you want to see this happen with the usenet?

I am so stupid. I just realised NOW that just cause someone's on the net
doesnt mean they believe its original core tenets: freedom of speech in news,
and privacy in email. I can see even now there ARE people who are on the net
who WOULDNT agree with this. Might take a small thing like a publication
ban to get them to change their mind, or the War On Drugs(tm) if yer Amuriken,
but thats all it takes.

And this isnt just with newbies from the Fidonet weenie boards - this is coming
from people who's names I've seen on the local groups for over 5 years. 

_NOW_ I am scared.

/kc

-- 
Ken P. Chasse -- Sysadmin, Sonic Interzone   "Carrying netnews does not a 
Public Access email/Usenet -- 416-968-7292    publisher make." - something
spooge@sizone.pci.on.ca --  Toronto CANADA    I'd like to see. Support it.