Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!psuvax1!jte From: jte@psuvax1.psu.edu (Jon Eckhardt) Newsgroups: soc.women,news.admin Subject: Re: I ain't afraid of no Batwoman Message-ID: <2881@psuvax1.psu.edu> Date: Thu, 27-Aug-87 23:26:48 EDT Article-I.D.: psuvax1.2881 Posted: Thu Aug 27 23:26:48 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 13:27:17 EDT References: <2073@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <0@novax.nowhere.nodom> Reply-To: jte@psuvax1.psu.edu (Jon Eckhardt) Organization: Penn State University, University Park, PA Lines: 34 Keywords: censorship silencing Xref: mnetor soc.women:6684 news.admin:929 Correct me if I am wrong please... News "censership" as I know it has probably been going on for some time but in a different form. It was basicly up to the local admins to slap the hands of people who were bad on your site to protect the "image" of your site. If you were creating postings that offended people or went against the unspoken rules of usenet then it was usually pointed out to the offender and they were given a chance to reform. I too had my hands slaped a few years ago, and I think it did some good. (I never read the announce newsgroups so I was posting in all sorts of wrong places) Now I am in a different position and I still feel that it is up to the site to make sure that bad "articles" are not created on your machine. I notice that this may be hard, partly because news is not very secure, and also because now there are many one user UNIX systems (like the 3b1) that can be gotten quite cheaply. You may then have one site that feeds to upwards of 10 single user machines. Does it then become the job of the person who is feeding news to make sure that the single user is not being of some trouble to the net? It is a real problem and I see not easy solution. One thing must always be kept in mind that I learned this year, USENET is not really a democratic orginazation basicly because there is not a even distribution of work and thus the machines that do more work have more say in what goes on. (Just like if you own 75% of the stock in a company what you say goes because you are paying for everything). This probably does not shed much light on what to do with Mr. Nobody... Jon Eckhardt | jte@psuvax1.BITNET <== BITNET 736 W. Hamilton Ave. | jte@psuvax1.UUCP <== USENET State College, PA 16801 | jte@psuvax1.psu.edu <== ARPA .sig file under construction, please bear with us. (roar) UUCP = !psuvax1!jte