🚀 go-pugleaf

on Porter wrote:
> 
> In article <364ed18f.167029981@news.alt.net>,
>    sheenaa@that.alt.place.net (jeanie) wrote:
> 
> >The internet is not a playground for children, forchrissake!
> 
> But that was the whole point of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and CDA
> II that was enacted this year, Jeanie: to make the Internet *safe* for
> 8-year-olds. Of course, it also means adults will have to dumb down to a second
> grade education level, which will put them about on par with the average
> Congressman.
> 
> With the federal government pumping billions of dollars (in my view misplaced
> dollars) into the public schools to upgrade their Net access, you can be sure
> much more stringent laws will be coming soon. Already, schools are being told
> they have to install blocking software or lose any federal money for Net access.


     Jeanie is not only right.  She is ABSOLUTELY right.  The internet
was designed by adults for adults.  But after kids started getting into
the action, Mr. and Mrs. Irresponsible Parent decided that since they
did not want to take the time to monitor what their kids were doing
either on tv or on the internet, the federal government decided it could
rack up the votes by telling the parents they didn't have to worry about
doing something they were too stupid to know how to do in the first
place.  Instead Big Brother would do it.  
     Now everyone who desires to see some part of the internet censored
has their own reason.  Some hate child porn and erroneously believe the
pedophiles are just going to pack their things and called it quits when
their newsgroups are closed down.  Others think that all porn period
should be banned.  Still others would love to see anyone who says even
one derogatory remark against any public official tracked down and put
to the torture.  
     So whether or not you agree with the recent wave of censorship
related to pedophilia, all should take notice of a recent message posted
by Ultimate Anonymity to its members:

> Novemeber 2, 1998 - It appears that under pressure, many ISP's and premium news servers
> (Supernews & Newscene included) have elected to remove many sensitive newsgroups. It is
>  our opinion that this is useless as the participants of such newsgroups will simply take over
>  exsisting newsgroups. Soon, those will be reomved then the process starts again, and again.
>  If left to continue, sooner or later, there will not be any more newsgroups.


     There you have it folks.  Noone could have summed it up better.  So
if someone out there is willing to fight an all-out war against these
sensitive newsgroups, they might want to ask themselves if they are
willing to see all of usenet become a casualty in their war??  
     Kudos to Chris for standing firm.  As long as he continues to
resist this foolish war against usenet, I'll gladly pay whatever he
charges and wait for years for full access.  And I'm sure he knows that
there are many out there who think as I do.  Each time a newsserver
drops some controversial groups, Chris probably breaks out the booze and
parties until he pukes.  For the less servers that allow access to
certain newsgroups the more customers are going to come running to
Altopia so they can get in line. You gotta love it.


P.S.  You don't get very many unanimous rulings out of the Supreme
Court, but concerning free speech on the internet all nine justices were
unianimous- cyberspace must remain a haven for free speech that is
untouched by censorship.  So let Congress keep trying to pass
restrictive laws so that the ACLU can keep kicking its ass.