Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!ub.d.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!dmshq!com50!craig From: craig@com50.c2s.mn.org (Craig Wilson) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Anarchy (Re: Fool) Message-ID: <1990Nov28.005925.1664@com50.c2s.mn.org> Date: 28 Nov 90 00:59:25 GMT References: <18667@rpp386.cactus.org> <1990Nov2.191240.4568@lavaca.uh.edu> <1990Nov21.031701.18701@com50.c2s.mn.org> Organization: Com Squared Systems, Inc. Lines: 31 In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <1990Nov21.031701.18701@com50.c2s.mn.org>, craig@com50.c2s.mn.org (Craig Wilson) writes: >> >The fortunate thing about what authority there is, is that it was >> >mutually agreed to & debated/fought-over in public & was (in all >> >ways) a Community Decision. Those who were interested enough >> >partook, those who weren't have to live with the results. > >Actually, they didn't. They can do whatever they want in their own sys files. For the record, the text attributed to me above was, in fact, written by someone else and an apparent editing slip gave me authorship. >> This sounds suspiciously like some democracies I know. > >Nope, because there are no sanctions that can be imposed against those who >disobey the rules so long as they injure no-one else. >peter@ferranti.com Actually, I had discussed the lack of "official" penalties in a previous post. I think you would need to ask DDMI if there was any retribution for the actions they had taken. And if there were, were they sufficient to modify DDMI's net.behaviour. Were other sites close to DDMI affected by the penalties imposed by certain people on DDMI? I am, in no way, claiming that the Usenet is a democracy. I think that it is some of a lot of "-cies". In the development of the Electronic Frontier, though, I fear that the Usenet will have to define itself before some external forces set the definitions. /craig