From: evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mark Evans)
Subject: Re: [news.admin.policy]  Groups used to distribute illegal material
Organization: Aston University
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 07:49:11 GMT

kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
: 
: Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
: From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
: Subject:  Groups used to distribute illegal material
: Message-ID: <BsxH08.GE8@mtholyoke.edu>
: Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 15:14:31 GMT
: 
: As a news administrator for a site relatively new to the Net, I have
: recently been giving _much_ thought to the issues surrounding certain
: controversial newsgroups.
: 
: I am extremely opposed to censorship, and we are currently receiving
: everything we can get our hands (well, our lines) on.  But since our
: news user population is growing rapidly, I expect that it won't be
: long before someone here tries to make a stink about the fact that
: there is pornography available on our computer systems.  In preparation
: for that day I have formulated many good arguments against restricting
: the available material, which I'm sure I don't need to repeat here
: as this has been discussed countless times.
: 
: However, while I think that it is easy to demonstrate that merely
: controversial material such as the postings to alt.sex.bondage and
: similar groups should not be restricted, much of the material posted
: to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica is _illegal_ and therefor quite hard
: to defend.  (The illegality of this material stems from the fact that
: much of it is distributed in violation of copyright -- this means
: that it is illegal not only in the U.S., but in most of the world.
: There are other legal issues around the occasional depictions of
: bestiality and child pornography, but these appear to be rare enough
: that they are not as much of an issue.)

This has been mentioned before in the context of scanned images,
oddly though this issue is only raised with the sexuall explicit ones.
In fact a very large proportion of images available on the net possibly
breach copyright.
(The most blatently obvious example I have ever seen was a scan of
a record sleeve, including the copyright notice)
To make a fuss about erotica images is slightly hypocritical if you
do not also point the finger at the rest of these images, which 
have EXACTLY the same legal status.
: 
: Furthermore, I am somewhat personally offended that such a relatively
: large percentage of the total bandwith used by my news feeds and
: store are used for such morally questionable purposes by a presumably
: tiny fringe group of network users who appear to feel that it is their
: natural right to waste everyone's resources with their trash.

(morally questionable because of the subject matter of the images,
or because of the copyright violations?)

A policy mentioned on here a few weeks ago was to trash first those
newsgroups which were being read by no-one at the site, the idea
to keep disk usage down, with out censoring material which there was
actually a demand for.

: 
: In summary, while I will fight tooth and nail against censorship in
: general when the issue comes up with the local powers-that-be, I am
: tempted to concede that newsgroups which are used to distribute 
: demonstrably illegal materials not be carried.  I am fully aware of
: the complications and problems with such a policy, but I would like
: to see some further discussion of this topic.  I fear that if such
: discussion does not take place, the future of the entire Altnet is
: in peril as the Newsnet becomes more mainstream and gets exposed
: to greater scrutiny.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Evans                                   |evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 565 1979 (Home)                     |evansmp@cs.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 359 6531 x4039 (Office)             |
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk