Aunc.1629 net.news utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!smb Mon Dec 28 15:53:54 1981 Re: USENET policy Time to cast my fuel into the flames.... I like the idea of a committee, but I don't think it should work the way mark suggested. Rather, I'd prefer to see a group of moderators, people whom one would approach when creating a new group because they're familiar with the structure and history of the system. For example, suppose someone wanted to start net.datsun tomorrow. S/he's probably never seen net.auto.vw; it hasn't appeared lately -- so that person might not realize that net.auto.datsun (or net.auto.nissan, or pers.auto.nissan if we go that route) would be a better name. Or what of someone who wanted to discuss peripherals? net.periphs has existed, but never worked too well -- fa.unix-wizards is the forum that most folks use for that type of discussion anyway. In summary: anyone who wants to create a new group should be strongly advised to contact a net guru first -- it will save everyone the trouble of making multiple entries in a .newsrc and/or .sys file. But preclearance shouldn't be required. I don't like censorship (I'm a card-carrying ACLU member), but I don't like some of the crap that's come over lately. I prefer to obey the dictum in the North Carolina constitution on free speech (I don't know the exact words, but the spirit is right): "no restraint whatever shall be placed on free speech, but every man shall be held responsible for its abuse." When I've been offended by an item (rare, I have a high tolerance level, though I don't find a lot of the "jokes" funny), I send a nasty note out to the person responsible. I suspect that most folks on the net are intelligent and sensitive enough that they'll stop broadcasting things that offend too many people. But I don't want to be in the position of prohibiting things. If you don't want it, don't read it. (The point about the implications of "net.jokes.q" going to all net.jokes readers is well-taken; the group should have been named differently.) About the legal questions: I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, there could be some trouble. A newspaper cannot be held liable for printing something true about a person; they're not even liable for printing something false if they can show that they took reasonable care to verify the item. But are they responsible for the "Letters" column, especially if the item is slanderous? I believe that most papers do not print such letters except under special circumstances, i.e., where the author is a public figure who's commenting on a public issue or an editorial about him/her. Netnews is much more in the latter category. Sexual harassment, which specifically *includes* dirty jokes, is prohibited by Federal regulations, though the rule is too new for their to be much precedent to go by. I don't know if there is any similar regulation protecting racial or ethnic minorities, but I'm pretty sure that these "jokes" could be used as evidence of a hostile climate. So it's quite reasonable that some companies or universities might want to cover their tochuses, and drop net.jokes.q. I don't like that -- but I would prefer that mechanism to an "official" prohibition. (This ignores the question of whether the technical means exist to censor messages, or even hold responsible the guilty party. In essence, we can't -- netnews is too insecure. Nor is it reasonable for a committee to expect a site to have stricter security than the distributed software allows, and punish them if they fail to comply. More on that in another article.) A lot of people have objected to the proposed makeup of the committee. Mark's suggestion (himself, glickman, trt, swd, jte, and me) seems reasonable in that it's the group of people who have been most active in starting and developing netnews. But I'm willing to accept anyone else who's an active user of the net -- trb and ber come to mind; also, we probably should have some representative of the big gateways -- if they ban a newsgroup, it has far-reaching effects. The important point is that we're not arguing about some hypothetical situation. Many people *have* complained; we've now got to decide what to do about it. --Steve Bellovin (unc!smb) P.S. I won't be at Usenix either; don't feel left out. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.