Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Pseudonymous Postings
Message-ID: <22004@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 16 Feb 88 20:09:35 GMT
References: <2929@dasys1.UUCP> <1803@mind.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 41
Summary: "Scholarly communication"

In article <1803@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:
> "G Fitch" (allegedly) "gf@dasys1.UUCP of The Big Electric Cat" wrote:
> >	There has been a lot of traffic about pseudonymous postings 
> >	lately.  I'd like to point out that they serve a real function.
> >	...[they] prove that authorship can be forged, and no offendee
> >	can be sure his/her reprisals will fall upon the right head.
> >	The only thing available to chew on is the offending article itself.
> 
> Which makes the net look like a global graffiti board instead of a
> responsible medium of communication. The net's immunity to laws intended
> to protect people and their careers and lives from defamation and libel
> doesn't make it a freer, more objective forum. Words CAN do damage, and
> freeing their authors from answerability is no solution. 
> [...]
> The "authentication problem" is theoretically unsolved in network
> theory. Too bad. It's another factor slowing the progress of
> electronic networks toward realizing their enormous potential in
> advancing scholarly communication and the evolution of ideas.

I remember going through this whole thing with Mr. Harnad during the 
"rathmann@berkeley" business a while back.  The problem is that the
vast majority of Usenet people are not particularly interested in
using Usenet to "advance scholarly communication", but Mr. Harnad
seems to want to impose his own standards on everyone.  The net much
more resembles a global grafitti board than anything else, and I have
not heard any reasons why this is so bad.  I certainly see nothing
wrong with anonymous or pseudonymous articles; the real problem with
these is that it would be more difficult to reply to the author by
private mail, though this is probably not an insurmountable problem.

If Mr. Harnad wants to set up a moderated newsgroup or a mailing list
in which he requires authentication of messages (by mail exchanged
with the authro, or telephoned verification, or whatever) he is
certainly free to propose doing so.  I don't think that this level of
paranoia is appropriate or useful for Usenet as a whole, and I don't 
think that more than a small minority of the net's participants and site
administrators think so either.

Michael C. Berch 
News/mail site admin
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb