🚀 go-pugleaf

     Apparently my previous comments on the kiddie-porn issue were
insufficiently clear. This is not an issue of censorship, it is an issue
of protecting Usenet, its users, and its operators from legal reprisals.
Nobody wants to be a test case.

     If you were sending a package to a friend in another country, and
explosives were legal to possess in your country but illegal in your
friend's, would you send him some? So long as your post can be sent
to another country, it is incumbent upon you to respect that country's
laws because you are putting other people at risk.

     If someone wants to establish a new newsgroup to carry these materials
so that only those willing to take the risk need do so, go ahead, may I
suggest "alt.binaries.erotica.six.year.olds.with.flat.chests". (Anyone
who wants to can cross-post this to alt.config) Continuing to post these 
messages on other groups will result in more operators blocking those  
groups and nobody wants that.

     Of course, I don't think anyone would establish such a group because
few (if any) people will agree to carry it. Hence their desire to post
this stuff on the existing groups. This constitutes an attempt to subvert 
the 'anyone can choose not to carry it' issue by preventing operators from 
allowing existing traffic but preventing child pornography, thus confusing 
a simple legal precaution with censorship or an attempt to eliminate the 
passage of all erotic images.

     It is unfortunate that this was originally titled, "Does Usenet condone
child pronography." Usenet does not condone anything, it simply passes it,
subject to the discression of its administrators and operators. Don't
jepordize that discretion.

SJK

The Siphon (SIPHON@momad.uucp)

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, never to live for the
sake of another man, nor to ask another man to live for mine."