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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re^2: What constitutes abuse of the net?
Message-ID: <49718@bbn.COM>
Date: 14 Dec 89 19:13:01 GMT
References: <37942@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <49576@bbn.COM> <1121@unsvax.NEVADA.EDU>
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capehart@arrakis.nevada.edu (ANNE CAPEHART) writes:

>cosell@bbn.com writes:

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

>>>	In rec.humor I read a particularly brutal series of
>>distic 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...

>   Sorry, I have to disagree!  No, he's not the network censor; neither
>am I.  But someone else's rights stop where my nose begins.  And when
>one makes light of child abuse on a public forum, my nose is getting rubbed
>into it.  
>    Maybe the person did have the "right" to post such jokes.  But I also
>have a right to strongly voice my opposition to them!

Well, we're doomed to disagree.  But I think you missed the antecedent
of what I said was "out of line".  The question was *NOT* if you have a
right a right to voice such opposition; the question was what is the
appropriate *response*.  Flaming the guy to a cinder on rec.humor.d...
perfectly fair game.  Emailing the guy flamage...  perfectly fair and
appropriate.  And as I said, orthogonally, my *personal* ecology
dictates that this is "just usenet" and life's too short for this kind
of shit, so I just put the guy in my KILL file and forget about him.
But "running to mommy 'cause Jimmy is pissing me off" [that is, going
to his sysadmin, or a downstream feed of his site, or his local
newspapers or some other third-party who you think will exact vengeange
on your behalf] is NOT an appropriate response IMHO.  

Said more clearly: I think you can take ANY response you would like
that keeps the matter between you and the poster that pissed you off,
and keeps the matter a usenet-one (e.g., flame the guy to death).  Once
you take actions that could affect OTHER posters/newsreadingpersons, or
that drags things OUT of the usenet domain I think you're out of line.
I do NOT believe that you should have the prerogative to decide what
*I* can read [which is precisely the effect if you work to get the net
privileges revoked for people who irritate you], nor will I impose my
biases and inclinations on you.

/Bernie\