Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!itsgw!nyser!njin!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!webber From: webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: FCC? U.S.Mail.? (Re: JJ's Revenge -- Part II) Message-ID: Date: 11 Jun 88 01:20:18 GMT References: <33@uisc1.UUCP> <3132@edm.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 34 In article <3132@edm.UUCP>, steve@edm.UUCP (Stephen Samuel) writes: > > In article , webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes: > >> Actually, more to the point, does anyone want the FCC or the U.S.Mail snooping > ... > >> incidently whether they shouldn't be exercising more visable control over > >> such a visable underground communications system as Usenet? > ... > I think, however, that it is useful to stomp on people that do things like > what JJ did, before the FCC decides to regulate things pre-emptively. > Don't think that the FCC don't know about us: I'd be rather surprised if > there were no USENET sites within the FCC right now. It's better that they > know now that we're willing to help them than for us to find out that they're > trying trying to regulate us because of a flowering of jerks like JJ. Actually, I have seen no evidence that the net reaches any government places outside of research labs and the FBI. If the FBI is monitoring the net for purposes other than just its computer people doing what computer people everywhere do, then it is not clear that they would actually want to increase the regulation. Of course, if we start passing around encrypted news, they might change their mind :-} It is inevitable that the net will not be able to keep on forever under the current communications laws and such. Eventually some one like portal's customer service department will manage to haul the net into the courts. On the flip side, ISDN and a few other obvious technological advances could turn the net into something as difficult to regulate as printing presses would be today. Someday we may stop relying on ``the company equipment'' to support the net. In the mean time, to ignore a few messages like JJ's costs us nothing. To go calling the postal authorities and the FCC to dump on someone who posted a few messages that weren't even ibm pc binaries of demo software seems counterproductive in the extreme. ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)