🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1994Apr3.103918.13971@sizone.pci.on.ca>,
Steak? <root@sizone.pci.on.ca> wrote:
|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.

Nonsense.  Computers are really good at doing greps.  It wouldn't take much
more than an hour's fiddling to produce a modified "Usenet Death Penalty"
program that could globally nuke almost everything that refers to the case.
Doesn't need much of a machine either.  A Sparc II with an NNTP or V.32bis
feed could do it quite handily.  Heck, even a 3b1 could do it.

|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...

Who exactly?  Even from the "oldies" (like me) I don't see that.  What I do
see is many people who do believe in free speech, but also believe in even
more important rights - like life and liberty.  Sometimes freedom of speech
is in conflict with other rights.  And I would think that even a cyberweenie
should agree that when the choice is between a fair trial and absolutely free
speech, that fair trial wins.  Always.
-- 
Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_
Phone: Canada 613 832-0541  Ferret list: ferret-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
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