Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: What constitutes abuse of the net?
Message-ID: <49576@bbn.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 89 16:41:54 GMT
References: <37942@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Lines: 35

hettinger@krypton.arc.nasa.gov (Lawrence J. Hettinger) writes:

>	In rec.humor I read a particularly brutal series of
>sadistic jokes dealing with child abuse and pedophilia posted
>by an individual who will go unnamed.  I have spent a little
>bit of time yesterday and today blasting this person via e-mail, 
>and I wrote to the system administrator at the University where
>the posting originated.  I basically just lodged a protest with
>the sysad, but also asked that consideration be made of terminating
>this individual's access to the net.

>	Am I right or wrong?

Unless you have been appointed some kind of network-goodness-evaluator,
regardless of what notion might exist of "abuse" of the net, I think
you were out of line.  Plain and simple, I think it is just none of your
business... if the postings bother you, don't read them, or KILL the
site/posters out of your (net)life.

What standards should your one-person vigilante committee enforce?
Will you raise a ruckus for EVERY posting that offends you?  Will you
go beyond trying to bag the guy's posting privileges and complain to
the that's site's feeds and try to get the whole site cut off from the
net?  Will you try to influence pay-for-play commercial access sites
NOT to do business with the guy?  What if we all just starting doing
things like that for every thing that goes by that irks us?  Who should
get to decide what is a "crime" and what ought to be the "punishment"?

I'm neither the net censor, nor the net policeman; so if I don't like
something, I figure I just shouldn't read it.

   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
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