🚀 go-pugleaf

FAQ Freie Rede     Version de 0.00 23.09.96
-------------------------------------------

Als Service ist geplant, die folgende FAQ ins deutsche
zu bringen angepa�t auf Verh�ltnisse in D/A/CH/usw.
Das kann keine reine �bersetzung sein, sondern nur
eine �bertragung.
Ein monatliches Posting ist angestrebt f�r die
Bretter de.soc.zensur und in cl.magazine.mik

Ich habe den Autor der englischen Fassung Dave Hayes angeschrieben
(An alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech and Usenet)
und �ber das Vorhaben informiert.
Auch wenn die deutsch*sprachige* Fassung "gereift" ist,
m�chte ich zumindest einen Pointer auf Daves Version
drin haben.

Zuarbeit an der �bersetzung bitte an:
emp@nadeshda.gun.de

Herzlichen Dank

fuer eMailPress:
Wau Holland, ViSdP beim MIK-Magazin
--------------------------------------------------------
## Nachricht vom 21.09.96 weitergeleitet
## Ursprung : /NEWS/ADMIN/CENSORSHIP
## Ersteller: alberts@viper.nauticom.net

Dave Hayes (dave@jetcafe.org) wrote:
: Posted-By: auto-faq 3.2.1.4
: Archive-name: usenet/freedom-knights/free-speech-faq
: Revision: 1.8
: Posting-Frequency: Posted once each month

:       An alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet
:                               Dave Hayes
:                            dave@jetcafe.org
Mr. Hayes, could you also post this in the groups back east here?
We have a number of Students at the University of Pittsburgh who
are studying your "alternative free speech" document in Sociology
Classes.  You are the one that they are writing the book about,
are you not?
: ------------------------------

: Subject: 0. Table of Contents

: 	1. Introduction
: 		1.1) What this document is
: 		1.2) Prerequisites
: 	2. Background
: 	3. Basic Definitions
: 	4. Basic Philosophies
: 		4.1) Declaration of Free Speech
: 		4.2) What is 'True Free Speech'?
: 		4.3) What is 'net abuse'?
: 	5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills)
: 	6. Alternative Viewpoints: Case Histories and Stories

: ------------------------------

: Subject: 1. Introduction

: 1.1) What this document is

: This document represents an ongoing attempt to educate people about
: true freedom of speech among the emerging cyber-communities. There is
: a companion document to this, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ, which
: should be read AFTER this document.

: 1.2) Prerequisites

: If you don't know what Usenet is, you're reading the wrong document!

: Go look in the newsgroup news.answers for appropriate introductory
: documents. There are many, and each has their own point of view.  In
: order to understand the discussions here you should be familiar with
: USENET in general, and have a reasonable amount of experience posting
: and/or reading news.

: If these documents are not in news.answers or news.announce.newusers: on  
your site, they can be had by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in: the  
directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/announce/newusers.

: If you have a WWW browser, the following URLS should help you out:

: <http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/>

: It helps to be familiar with news administration, how news works
: in general, and have kept up in some discussions on news.admin.*,
: but this is not totally mandatory for understanding this document.

: Also, you should believe that no expression, however annoying,
: profit-oriented or counterproductive, should be prevented from being
: distributed. If you do not believe in this way, this document will
: only make you angry.  (If that's what you want, then read it.)

: The generic opposing document to this one is located at:

:   http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
: Readers interested in the opposing viewpoints may wish to look at this
: URL for reference.



: ------------------------------

: Subject: 2. Background

: For a long time, I've been a loud advocate of free speech in most of
: the USENET related administration groups. I've participated in a few
: net.political actions to ensure the freedom of speech that we'd like
: to enjoy. For my efforts, I've been publically branded a loon, insane,
: idealistic, moronic, obnoxious, wacko, a kook, and other expletives
: which I'd rather not go into.

: Many times, I've repeated the same arguments over and over, all of
: which relate to this ultimate goal of absolute free speech. Well,
: after several years even a loon such as myself gets tired of repeating
: the same stuff over and over. It had been suggested that I write a FAQ
: of sorts on my ideas, and I felt the time was right, so here it is.

: Herein lies the heart of my arguments, and questions with answers
: about them. The companion document, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ
: describes a new credo that willing USENET participants can actually
: adopt and use if they so desire.

: I implore you not to adopt -any- credo (even this one) or philosophy
: just because someone you see does so as well, for these credos only
: work for individuals who have personally and honestly decided that
: these are good ideas. Use your own judgement and take your power back
: from those who wish to steal it from you.
: ------------------------------

: Subject: 3. Basic Definitions

: Here are some definitions which you'll find apply to things in this document,
: and most of my arguments.

: Beliefs - Networks of assumptions about the way things are.

: Ethics - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy one's own true self.
:          Directly opposed to Morals (see below)
: Lawful Speech - That speech which does not conflict with Morals

: Morals - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy a governing, social,
:          or communal entity.
:

: ------------------------------

: Subject: 4. Basic Philosophies

: 4.1) Declaration of Free Speech

: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Humans are created
: equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
: Rights, that among these are Unhindered Communications, Unregulated
: Exchange of Ideas, and Freedom of Speech, that to secure these rights
: the Usenet is instituted on networks of the world, that when any
: administration of Usenet becomes destructive to these ends, it is the
: Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institue new
: administration, laying its foundation on such Principles, and
: organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely
: to effect their Free Communication.

: [With much thanks to the Declaration of Independence]

: 4.2) What is True Free Speech?

: True Free Speech is that speech which is hindered by nothing other
: than the speaking individual's own ethics (see definition above).
: Where True Free Speech exists, no external party may restrict someone
: else's speech, for any reason, period.
: Speech, in the above definition, does *not* restrict another's speech.
: It can't. It takes a person to *act* on that speech to restrict
: another's speech. That person, then, would be the responsible party.
: A news admin setting up a news server to act is one way to create the
: illusion of speech-restrictive speech.

: The litmus test for True Free Speech is speech that makes you -want-
: to silence another person. If that speech is not silencable by you:  
(whether you want to or not), you have a state of True Free Speech.

: 4.3) What is net abuse?

: Any action that stops a properly configured transport system from
: performing its normal store and forward services.

: The key words are "properly configured". For that definition, you'll
: have to see the "Site of Virtue" FAQ.

: 4.4) What is Censorship?

: Censorship is the restriction of communicated ideas based on their
: expression style or their content. On Usenet, this is defined as
: reading or parsing anything but certain specific headers of a news
: article to determine whether or not to delete it from the news spool
: of a news server.

: By this criterion, the following RFC 1036 headers can NOT be
: interpreted in any way, in order to avoid censorship:

: Sender:
: From:
: Subject:
: NNTP-Posting-Host:
: Approved:

: Also, any invokation of the "Usenet Death Penalty" by aliasing a site
: out of one's feed is considered blatant censorship, unless a clear
: newsfeed redundancy problem can be identified.


: ------------------------------

: Subject: 5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills)

: This section contains the many frequently debated arguments (with
: "Dave Hayes" like answers) over free speech issues. If you find
: yourself embroiled in a debate with a control freak, the information
: below should help you out. If you find yourself embroiled in a debate:  
with me, you might want to save time and read below.
: - Free speech is all well and good, but what is to prevent
:   unreasonable users from committing "net-abuse"?

: The strawman here is that someone else is defining "net-abuse": quite  
differently than I do above.

: Any label of "net-abuse" is based on an arbitrary standard of conduct
: held by a person or group of people (even mine). There is nothing that
: says that this standard of conduct is the one true and right standard
: of conduct.  People's standards vary.

: You, as a free person, have an unalienable right to a choice as to
: whether or not to adopt any standard of conduct. This is based on your
: ethics, not their morals. Thus, if someone labels you "unreasonable",
: that's not your problem...it's theirs.

: I'm not saying you should now go out and kill someone. I'm merely:  
stressing the importance of ethics, internal codes of conduct which
: you will not violate (because -you- wrote them), in determining
: whether or not you did something wrong.
: - But there IS a general consensus on what net abuse is! Most news:    
admins have adopted it.

: Don't let anyone fool you into believing that there some written
: consensus on or standard of net.abuse. There isn't, and if it claims
: to be, you can determine the invalidity of such a claim by observing
: just how many people argue about it. Without a consensus, it's quite
: arbitrary as to what people will claim abuse is.

: If someone has written up something, think about whether you agreed to
: abide by it or not before the fact when you are called to task on some
: violation. It is the root of dishonor to hold someone responsible to a
: code of conduct they didn't know about. Not only does this not work,
: but it's damn unfair.

: You may get localized consensi who decide to act not unlike the street
: gangs in LA or the legal gangs in American Federal Government, armed
: with scripts and authority, they attempt to bully people into
: submission into their way. This does not mean that there is a
: consensus. You can't expect 50,000 or more who come to a consensus on
: an issue this complex.

: Typically, the label of abuse is used as a wedge to stop someone
: from posting something that isn't liked, but this isn't always the
: case. Sometimes, people are genuinely trying to help things out.: Such  
people should be reminded of the arbitrary nature of their
: standards, and of the wide variety of people on the net.
: - We can't allow free speech. What if something extremely damaging is
:   posted?

: This strawman can easily be debunked by recognizing who is defining
: 'damage'. See above, as this is the same as saying something is
: "net-abuse".

: The true test of freedom of expression is when the advocates of True
: Free Speech are confronted with expression that they find they would:  
like to silence.

: If this test is passed, the expression remains a thorn in their side.
: The thorn serves a great purpose as a reminder of the true freedom: they  
have.

: If this test is failed, the entire philosophy of True Free Speech
: soon crumbles, and true freedom of expression becomes a bad thing
: in the eyes of the people who tried. "After all, people will abuse
: anything if given the chance", they'll say.
: We already have true freedom. We just keep agreeing to give it up.

: - But there really are damaging things that can be posted!

: You didn't listen above. Let me try another way. Here are some: commonly  
dredged up examples of "damaging" information:

: * recipes for strong encryption
: * pornography and obscenity
: * recipes for making chemical, biological, and atomic weapons
: * recipes for making counterfeit money

: Dr. Dimitri Vulis said it really succinctly:

: "Posting such information to Usenet doesn't force anyone to use it to
: take some illegal action. And even if publishing such information by
: itself violates your local laws, it's up to your local law enforcement
: agents to silence you, not the Usenet Cabal."

: - There is no cabal. Anyone saying this is obviously a kook.
: Ah, and if there was a "secret society", what better way to hide
: it than by denying it and causing those who do not to look foolish?

: A "Cabal" of usenet has been identified. This Cabal is defined as:

: "Those net citizens, including some usenet administrators, who by their
: own consensus reality, set themselves apart from and superior to
: usenet users and use this illusory superiority to restrict or censor
: any usenet user's attempts at communication through usenet."

: The Cabal generally works in concert with each other over their own
: private channels of communication. You can tell a Cabal member by the
: arrogant holier-than-thou way that they refuse or block your attempts
: at communication, regardless of external perceptions of reasonability
: about those attempts.

: Just to be clear, I have no reason to believe that these people are
: acting out of deliberate malice. It's simply a trait of human beings
: to abuse positions of power and respect to their own ends. In this
: case this trait is damaging the freedom of usenet.
: - If a lot of people complain about someone, there must be something:    
that person is doing wrong.

: Just because a mob comes to your door and demands to lynch someone,
: doesn't mean that the someone in question did anything worthy of
: being lynched. Usenet has become mob-oriented with several issues,
: most notably the famous C&S spamming, demonstrating the new jargon
: term "cybermob".

: Mobs are generally ignorant, dense, and single-minded. They have
: a tendancy to be generated by emotional issues, with subsequent
: loss of sanity for most involved. Do you really want to trust the
: judgement of someone else to this phenomena?
: Yes, once you become a sysadmin, the rest of the Usenet community will
: expect that you are prepared to discipline your users when they engage:  
in whatever they decide to call net-abuse.  Hopefully, by then, you
: will have grown past that.

: And what does this discipline really accomplish? Usually, nothing.
: - Someone is defaming me. They should be silenced.

: Forget USENET, what if these people were to say the same things
: in person, or to other people while you are not present?

: Again, Free Speech requires that people have the *ability* to defame
: you. Remember that you also have the ability to defend yourself. If
: such defamation gets too intense, see your lawyer, and attempt to get
: the defamer to agree to stop.

: - Free speech means the ability to say what you want.  It does
:   not guarantee you _where_ you want to say it and _how_ you
:   want to say it.

: This is a definitions strawman. If you can't say something
: where and how you want to say it, is your speech truly free?

: Would you like some arbitrary person telling you where and
: how you can say certain things? I can see it now:

: "Sure you have free speech, at 3AM on channel 145 for 2.5 minutes."

: Anyone using this argument has no understanding or desire for
: free speech, by the very fact that they use this argument.
: Free speech, as defined in this document, guarantees that you can say
: anything, anywhere, and anyway you want to.

: - USENET operates on certain principles. Create your own net if you
:   don't like the way it runs.

: This is a political hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to:  
convince you that everyone else likes things the way they are, and
: that everyone else is in control of USENET.

: If you are running a site, this is patently false. USENET is a collective
: anarchy, where site admins have authority over their part of the collective.
: You have absolute control over your site to run it any way you want to.
: If you aren't running a site, don't waste your breath arguing with:  
these people. Find a Site of Virtue to post from, and support Sites
: of Virtue. That way, we -will- create our own net.
: - If you argue for free speech, people aren't going to take you seriously.

: This is an emotional hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to play
: on your need to be taken seriously to coerce you into doing things their
: way...or they won't take you seriously.
: There are others who won't take you seriously if you cave into these
: coercions. Still, others won't take you seriously at all. If we become
: affected by everyone's impressions of us, we will certainly be candidates
: for an insane asylum.

: I would think that you don't really need to be taken seriously by
: anybody who would attempt to coerce you in this way.

: -But this is Usenet, a place where speaking is a privilege, not a right.

: That all depends on your site admin. If you are at a Site of Virtue,
: speaking is a right.

: -Freedom of speech does not mean yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater.

: Patently false. Yes, it does mean that.
: Practically, if you hear someone yell "FIRE!" then you have some
: decisions to make. Are you going to believe that person or not,
: especially when you see nothing? If you do believe this person, are
: you going to run for the door like a crazed animal, or quickly make
: your way to the exit in a civilized manner?

: Whichever you choose, it's -your- choice and -your- responsibility.
: It is -not- the responsibility of the person who yelled "FIRE!"
: that -you- chose one direction or another. Any other decision: strips  
your power away from you.

: - It's wrong to force me to read your trash.
: Given that people have to manually select articles from a menu, it's
: hard to imagine someone forcing their fingers to press certain keys in
: a certain order, so that people are forced to read anything.
: Indeed, the entire concept of force becomes ludicrous when one recognizes
: that one can simply close one's eyes and not read anything presented to
: them.

: This does bring up a point, however. There -is- a place for
: censorship. Your personal newsreaders.

: - But who gave you free speech rights on my computer?

: YOU did when you loaded the news transport software. According to RFC1036,
: making a news server and getting a feed allows the transport of messages
: between your news server and another. If you do not specifically filter
: messages, those messages are allowed by implication.
: - You can't think like that. Your reputation will suffer.

: The value of a set of words is contained within the set of words, NOT
: in who said them. It is a common mistake of most human beings to judge
: the validity of a set of words mostly upon the reputation of the
: messenger.

: - Usenet is free. Internet service isn't.

: Oh come on. This is confusing 'free=not under control of some
: arbitrary power' and 'free=without cost or payment; gratis'.
: You shouldn't be paying for censored news. If you are, you are
: probably wasting your money.
: 	

: ------------------------------

: Subject: 6. Alternative Viewpoints: Case Histories and Stories

: Often, the dishonorable acts of administrators can cause radical
: changes in people's willingness to cooperate and a person's direction
: of participation. In this section, I offer the words, viewpoints,
: histories, and stories of other people on the net who have been
: the effect of a rogue administrator or clan thereof.
: In order to debias the stark content of the words, the identities
: of these people are being left to the imagination of the reader.: Please  
try and see what they are saying, rather than attempting
: to guess who said it.

: 6.1) One user's viewpoint of net history and politics

: UUNET was a for-profit company from its very beginning, at least 10
: years ago.  It used to get lots of $$$ from the U.S.Government. Now
: it's no longer getting $$ from the government, so it tries to peddle
: its services to businesses and the general public. One of the services
: they sell is the access/feed to Usenet.

: UUNET did not create Usenet, contrary to what they may claim, and have
: no right to control anything in it. In fact, most of the cabal members
: who try to gain control of Usenet are relative newcomers who have made
: no contributions to the development of Usenet.

: When I started reading Usenet about the time of the Great Renaming,
: the various folks who cooperated on setting up Usenet (mostly sys
: admins at schools and research labs) agreed on a more-or-less
: democratic procedure for creating new newgroups: the proponent would
: conduct a poll to see if there's enough interest to warrant creating
: the group. The poll had to rely on the honor of the participants: they
: were expected to vote once, and to vote NO for valid reasons. Once the
: poll was completed, someone would issue a 'newgroup' control article
: and all sites would create the newsgroup.

: This was before David Lawrence and all the other human trash that came
: onto Usenet later and became known as the 'usenet cabal'. Here are
: some of the changes the Cabal attempted to institute in the group
: creation process:

: 1. One of the cabal members, Kent Paul Dolan, was caught blatantly
: cheating in the poll for the newsgroups who reorg he proposed. Rather
: than penalize the cabal, the cabal imposed on the rest of the Usenet a
: system of 'Usenet volunteer votatakers'. This way, the cheatting by
: Cabal members would be harder to detect.

: Basically, when one of their own was caught cheating, they created the
: system off UVV's that inconvenienced everyone _other_ than the cabal
: and made the blatant cheating by the likes of Jan Isley and Bill Aten
: harder to detect.

: 2. The function of spaff used to be to announce the results of the
: interest polls. However there was at least one case when a sex-related
: newsgroup passed the 'vote' and David Lawrence refused to create
: it. (I guess he's not into sex.) This was before the cabal started
: rigging 'votes' making them totally meaningless. Today the Cabal would
: have just forged enough anonymous no votes.

: 3. Another change instituted by the Cabal a few years ago is the
: requirement that before a new group proposal even gets to the uvv
: 'vote', it must go through a cabal screening process known as
: 'group-advice'. Examples of group-advice's censorship include the
: recent announcement that no new unmoderated newsgroups will be
: permitted in soc.culture.* (too much flaming going on in the existing
: newsgroups), and their insistence that most new newgroups be moderated
: -- with the cabal picking subservient moderators.

: Usenet is a popular store-and-forward conferencing system. There are
: other such systems, like Fidonet. Those who don't like free Usenet
: should go elsewhere to sergvices like AOL or COmpuServe or Prodigy and
: have their own censored forums there. They must not be allowed to take
: over Usenet.

: Again, INN comes configured to honor all of tale's newgroups, but not
: newgroups issued by others. Honorable sites, like Netcom, honor all
: newgroups and drop all rmgroups.

: Because 'tale@uunet.uu.net' is a generic name used by INN, David
: Lawrence no longer has any exclusive right to it. Anyone is free to
: issue newgroups and rmgroups in tale's name. However it's more
: honorable to issue newgroups under one's own name.

: It is not our objective to destroy the UVVs or the group
: advice. Rather, we seek to deprive them of their monopoly. ANYONE can
: issue a newgroup on Usenet.

: The UVV, the group-advice, et al, should be free to play their silly
: power games, to hold rigged elections, and to newgroup or rmgroup
: anything they like.  Sites are free to honor only tale's
: newgroups/rmgroups, which is the default INN confoguration.  We hope
: that the majority of Usenet sites will choose to act honorably and
: carry ALL newsgroups.  We also expect that most new newsgroup
: proponents won't deal with the dishonest and abusive group-advice,
: because they won't have to -- they can get pretty good propagation by
: issing the newgroup themselves. No one but masochists and cabal
: members will go through the humiliating and unpleasant process of
: getting 'advice' from group advice, because the marginal gain (the
: sites who'll carry cabal's groups, but not free groups) will be
: immaterial. Let the cabal create a moderated news.groups and
: news.admin.net-abuse.* if they want to. They have lost control of the
: group creation process and will never regain it.

: Tale got into the position of issuing newgroups for the new newsgroups
: that passed the vote by default: spaff quit and no one else wanted to
: take this boring duty. However tale's been trying to abuse this
: position to silence his opponents and to make a few quick bucks for
: UUNET. So far, he's only hurt UUNET with his net-abuse.


: ------------------------------

: Subject: Revision History

: $Log: freedom-faq.1,v $
: Revision 1.8  1996/04/27 19:52:01  dave
: Added reference to J.D. Falk's FAQ after he agreed to reference
: this FAQ in his.

: Revision 1.7  1996/04/16 08:31:53  dave
: Added section 6

: Revision 1.6  1996/03/13 22:56:11  dave
: /Added Dr. Vulis suggested changes: Approved line = censorship,
: examples of speech commonly considered damage, other misc.

: Revision 1.5  1996/03/04 00:03:59  dave
: Added definition of Cabal

: Revision 1.4  1996/02/28 21:53:33  dave
: Changed libel back to defamation.

: Revision 1.3  1996/02/28 00:32:34  dave
: Changed "slander" to "libel", as the latter is more appropriate
: for USENET.

: Revision 1.2  1996/02/19 08:16:15  dave
: Tightened up the definition of TFS, added a definition for Censorship,
: added a few words here and there for da flow.

: Revision 1.1.1.2  1996/02/19 07:52:11  dave
: Initial Import


: --
: Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org: Freedom Knight of  
Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet

:             Envy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.

--
al