From: schwager@cs.uiuc.edu (Mike Schwager)
Subject: Re: Defending Technology: Pt II (Usenet News) Draft for Comment
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 23:24:50 GMT

au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben) writes:
>In a previous article, brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) says:
>>In article <19jktcINNobv@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben) writes:

>>No, TCP/IP has nothing to do with USENET.  It's orthogonal.  And UUCP

>What does orthogonal mean? 

Ninety degrees.  They're not really related.  That doesn't mean, however,
that News can't use TCP/IP as part of its transport mechanism.

>>Nah, some people looking for a definition of whether a site was
>>on the net said, "it's if you get net.general."  This was ages before
>>things like comp existed.

>When was net.general?

Mid-eighties, or thereabouts.  Up until about 86, I believe.  I remember
those days well... the signal to noise ratio was phenomenal!  It was truly
a delight.

>>>     Many on USENET News call the structure which functions 
>>>anarchic. But, Jean Jacques Rousseau, in "A Discourse on 
>>>Political Economy",  explains that the best laws are those which 
>>>the population implements voluntarily rather than via force. Thus 
>>
>>That's what anarchy is.  Anarchy is not the absence of order or
>>cooperation.  It is the absence of government and police.   So many
>>think the two must be the same; this is the most common misunderstanding
>>of anarchy.   USENET is the world's first large functional anarchy.
>>
>No rules that are followed or restrictions that are adhered to 
>are not anarchy - they are a form of *good* government.

>Anarchy as I understand it is the absence of rules or laws - 
>not the voluntary adherence to them.

From the oed2:

anarchy ('n&schwa.rkI). Also 6-7 -ie.
  1 a Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence
  or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder.
  b A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person
  or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without
  implication of disorder).

I would think that definition b fits here.  Under that definition, one would
most certainly say that USENET is the world's first large functional anarchy.

>>>"Netiquette" is a system of rules or standards that users on the 
>>>net are encouraged to follow. Also, commercial traffic and com-
>>>mercial uses of netnews are strictly limited and circumscribed be-
>>>cause of the public funds being expended for its development. (17) 
>>
>>This is false.  Commercial use of netnews is rampant.  The most popular
>>groups (read the group popularity stats) are mostly the commercial,
>>100% advertising ones.   It always has been rampant.  I do not know

>But somehow commercial use is restricted - (though there seems an
>effort currently to change this unfortunately) - and somehow this
>restriction allows usenet to be something very different from what it
>would be if there wasn't the restriction. 

Indeed, there is an interesting article on Page 30 of the MacWeek dated
09/28/92 on just this very subject.  A couple of interesting tidbits:

About 50% of the connected hosts are governmental or academic.  However, 9
of 10 new sites are commercial.  The rules that govern use of the primary
U.S. backbone, NSFnet, are designed to keep commercial traffic out.  It
wants the public funds that it spends on the Net not to subsidize
commercial interests.  However, it seems that the sheer weight of the
coming users is going to create change on the Internet, so who knows what
will happen with the NSFnet and such in the future.  Read the article.
The NSF's Acceptable Use Policy is summarized there.

>>what the phrase "public funds being expended for its development" means
>>so I won't comment on it.  As far as I know there has never been any
>>official spending of public money on USENET, though there has been lots
>>of unofficial spending in private sector fashion by people at publicly
>>funded places.  (There's a massive difference.  The government buys
>>paper clips, this does not make the paper clip industry part of the
>>public sector.)

Hmmm... whaddya call NSFnet?

>>Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366

>          Ronda

-Mike
aka, Mike Schwager               |"I think we don't have ideology.
INTERNET:schwager@cs.uiuc.edu    | We don't have theology.
                                 | We dance."        -Japanese Shinto Priest
University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., for whom I do not speak
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa