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From: max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Usenet access: this "fascism" nonsense
Message-ID: <1288@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 7 Mar 88 06:23:05 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: max@trinity.UUCP (Max Hauser)
Distribution: na
Organization: UC Berkeley
Lines: 48
Summary: The mind reels

In article <1120@athos.rutgers.edu>, webber@athos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber)
writes:

> The commitment to free speech in this country is rather thin.  ...
> 
> The sad thing is the way it gets presented.   People argue over
> whether or not so and so has a right to post (or any less right than
> anyone else) whereas the real issue is whether the rest of the net,
> with all of its investment of time and effort, has not yet earned the
> right to have these postings available to it.

In article <308@nvuxk.UUCP>, perseus@nvuxk.UUCP (A D Domaratius) writes:

> In article <68@rolls.UUCP>, news@rolls.UUCP writes:
> > ...
> > scrooge@rolls will not be posting until he improves his posting style.
> 
> I guess I haven't read many articles from scrooge@rolls.  What is
> wrong with his style.?  Is he a fascist?  If that is the reason that
> you disagree with his style, isn't that censorship.  ...this cannot 
> be a reason for failing to give access to this person.  


What is going on here?  Are these authors competent adults?  The Usenet
site in question is a private operation under the control of local
administration. How could it possibly be anyone's business but the local 
administrators' what is the site's policy for granting the privilege of
a computer account or the further privilege of posting to Usenet? 
Have computer hackers so lost touch with reality that, not content to
stipulate Usenet access as a job precondition (!), they now regard it
as a "right," and its denial as "censorship" or as impairment of "free 
speech"?  

If webber@athos or perseus@nvuxk object to the internal operations at 
site rolls because these deny the Usenet a welcome author, why have they
not immediately taken the obvious and reasonable step of providing the 
author an account on their own systems, and therefore taking some actual
responsibility in the matter?  Or is it more sensible to presume to tell
distant SAs, indignantly no less, how to run their own systems?

Oh, and I have a lot of friends whose postings would be welcome and 
widely read on the Usenet. By the argument that computer access should
be determined by the value of the postings to the rest of the net, I
insist on obtaining accounts and disk space on athos and nvuxk. By webber's
argument, this should be up to the rest of the net, not athos and nvuxk,
to decide. For all of the net's investment of time and effort, you know.

M. Hauser, incredulous