From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [aus.aarnet]  Re: Aarnet should not be pornographic!
Followup-To: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,aus.aarnet
Originator: kadie@eff.org
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 07:45:00 GMT

[A repost - Carl]

From: zik@zikzak.apana.org.au (Michael Saleeba)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject:  Re: Aarnet should not be pornographic!
Date: 27 Dec 1992 21:19:46 +1100

ryanph@mrluv2.dsto.oz.au writes:

>       +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>          Pornography available via Internet News!
>       +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Asking a large networking body like AARNet to buy into censorship is a
_very_ dubious and possibly dangerous thing to ask of them. Morality
is a personal thing and I view any attempt by you to restrict what I
read as an infrigement of my personal freedom and quite immoral. You
might regard "erotica" as undersirable, but I doubt that your opinions
are shared by the people who use the newsgroup. Their interests are
just as valid as yours. If you don't like it don't read it.

I should point out that I run a public access UNIX system. My users do
not have research and education as their primary objectives. AARNet
has a responsibility to the people they feed news to as well as the
more immediate interests of their members.

Some time back AARNet censored a set of newsgroups including
alt.censorship and alt.drugs. Censoring a group for the discussion of
censorship smacks of unjustifiable totalitarianism on AARNet's part.
Also it turns out that alt.drugs was a group primarily for the
discussion of pharmaceutical drugs. Now people are missing out on
important information on pharmaceuticals and AARNet is wide open to
being sued by people who suffer through the lack of this information.
There is apparently a different newsgroup for discussion of illegal
drugs and this has _not_ been censored. This sort of stupidity points
out one of the dangers of censorship. No matter what you censor and
how "good" your intentions you will _hurt_ people. It's better not to
do it at all. High moral ground is no defense.

Censorship of alt.sex has cost a lot of money at my university.
Because it is not widely available many people simply fetch it from
anywhere they can get it. This costs hugely in terms of bandwidth and
can not be viewed as helpful to anyone.

A bit of history sheds some light on the likely result of widespread
censorship. Back in the early days of the Internet there was a cartel
of backbone sites responsible for most of the distribution of news. In
attempts to be more and more politically correct they imposed more and
more restrictions on network traffic. Eventually the end users
rebelled at this Big Brother attitude and the cartel fell, bloodily.
Some may view this as an undesirable thing to wish on AARNet.

More history - after the "great renaming" when the comp, rec, soc,
talk and bionet hierarchies were created there was a lot of
dissatisfaction at the restrictions imposed on the creation and
content of groups. Almost immediately "alt" sprung up because people
_wanted_ a place with more freedom. The moral? The imposition of your
own arbitrary rules on others will only cause their eventual rejection
of _you_.

Censorship cannot fail but be offensive to people. Even people who
aren't interested in the censored material will be offended at the
gross assumption of the organisation that presumes to limit their
freedom of speech. Accept that other people are different to you, and
have different interests. Impose retrictions and you are inviting
disaster, both legal and political.

+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
|          -|-   Zik   -|-          | "We're going to assume a few things    |
|      zik@zikzak.apana.org.au      |  about reality. One, it exists. That's |
|          Michael Saleeba          |  not a necessary assumption, but I     |
|                                   |  find it comforting" -Prof Ralph Noble |
+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
 =kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,news.admin.policy,news.admin.misc