Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsh!ho5cad!msb From: msb@ho5cad.att.com (Mike Balenger) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: alt.sex to become illegal in New Jersey? Message-ID: Date: 17 May 89 13:04:00 GMT References: <3246@looking.UUCP> Sender: nntp@cbnewsh.ATT.COM Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 46 In-reply-to: brad@looking.UUCP's message of 14 May 89 06:03:10 GMT In article <3246@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: > New Jersey legislators are working on a bill to outlaw distribution > of "obscene" sexually-explicit material over home computers. And AT&T (a major employer in NJ) is leading the way!!!! Recently we converted our netnews systems to run on a few dedicated servers instead of running on lots-n-lots of various machines. The move provided many benefits: centralized maintenance of newsreading SW, reduced network loads and costs, reduced storage costs, increased expiration time, increased security, AND a way to censor groups out of existence for all AT&T netnews readers. To quote a Q/A memo about the transition: "The Netnews Advisory Board (NNAB) has determined that the content of newsgroups such as talk.bizarre alt.sex alt.flame are not consistent with their use of AT&T resources, and will not be allowed on AT&T Netnews machines." This, despite the fact that arbitron results consistently placed "alt.sex" in the top 10 most frequently read newsgroups. Even ahead of some "att.*" groups!! These 3 groups are the only groups that have been disallowed to date, as far as I know. As might be expected, the "att.news" group was quite active when these policies were first presented. Lots of comments about "Big Brother", censorship, privacy, work/private uses of netnews, cost/benefits for netnews, commitment to exchange of public domain knowledge, leaks of proprietary information, etc.... In the end, we sacrificed 3 newsgroups and got a better netnews reading system! The old "sex 'n drugs 'n rock-n-roll" has been reduced to "alt.[drugs|rock-n-roll]". Maybe it has to do with NJ being one of the hot spots for AIDS :-) If that's true, then "alt.drugs" should have an "alt.drugs.free.needles" sub-group. Or "alt.sex" should have been replaced by "alt.safe.sex". -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael S. Balenger (201) 949-8789 AT&T Bell Labs Room 1L-405 msb@ho5cad.att.com Crawfords Corner Road att!ho5cad!msb Holmdel, NJ 07733