From: emr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Elizabeth M. Reid)
Subject: Newsgroups not received in Australia.
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 08:49:21 GMT

The background for this article comes out of a discussion in aus.news.
Carl Kadie asked me to say something on the issue after I mentioned it
to him. I have included some quotes from aus.news articles.

About two years ago, AARNet (the Australian Academic Research Network
- our arm of the Internet) ceased to receive alt.sex* and alt.drugs,
and, although some of those groups have at times come in on alternate
paths, the official ban is still in place. Please note that this is
not a case of censorship based on content, but a matter of economics.
At that time the Aus-US satellite link was running at saturation point
and as a result, according to kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) in
<9226200.17613@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>:

> alt.sex* and alt.drugs don't come across the internet link because
> of a request from those paying for (most/part now) of that link at
> the US end.

I have no argument with the need to reduce the load on the link.  We
certainly have a problem with it. Despite upgrades within the last two
years, the AARNet Business Plan of September 1992 described the
situation as follows: "This link is now (August 1992) running at 95%
utilisation levels for 4-6 hours per working day, and it is
anticipated that critical congestion and subsequent performance
collapse will be experienced well before the end of 1992."  I
certainly think that it is a pity that we can't read these groups, but
I do agree that if a choice has to be made then non-academic traffic
should be sacrificed in order to ensure that academic traffic can be
carried.  By the same token, while I would protest strongly if our
university library cancelled a magazine subscription because of the
content of the magazine, I would not protest if that subscription had
to be dropped in order to pay for text-books.

However, I am not convinced that banning these newsgroups is the best
way to go about reducing the load. As root@cltr.uq.oz.au (Hulk Hogan)
said in <1992Sep30.003043.24593@cltr.uq.OZ.AU>:

> Guesstimating 1MB/day of traffic in the blocked groups, and given
> that the satellite link has gone from, what 64?k then to 512k now
> [is that kbits or kbytes? I assume kbits], then 1MB could take,
> what, 15 secs to transfer.  Bandwidth can't really be an issue now,
> can it? Removing the block would mean it's only imported once..

If these figures are correct then the traffic created by those
newsgroups is not actually very high, and excluding them from the
Australian newsfeed may actually increase the load on the link as
people with overseas accounts take to reading news via those accounts.

Moreover, I don't think that the ban was put in place with much
discrimination. Granted that alt.sex, alt.sex.bondage,
alt.sex.pictures and alt.drugs are high bandwidth groups - but
alt.sexual.abuse.recovery is not, and is of a less recreational
nature than the others. I certainly feel that even if it is still
necessary and worthwhile to continue to ban the others,
alt.sexual.abuse.recovery should be received in Australia.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could or should be done
about this issue?


emr

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Elizabeth M. Reid             Email: emr@eff.org (for CAF-News related mail)
Cultural Studies Program             emr@ee.mu.oz.au (for anything else)
University of Melbourne       Flames to: women-not-to-be-messed-with@eff.org



Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk