From: bdb@becker.GTS.ORG (Bruce Becker)
Subject: Re: USENET Thought Police [was Re: CD ROM INC.  CATALOG REQUESTS!]
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 05:58:56 GMT

In article <1dtaldINN246@neuro.usc.edu> merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) writes:
|In article <BxKnMx.7oF@syd.dms.CSIRO.AU> stuarta@syd.dms.CSIRO.AU (Stuart Andrews) writes:
|>> The phone number is (303) 231-9373.  Or you can email
|>> ephillip@nyx.cs.du.edu and leave your adress and we will mail you a
|>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|>  Flames to this address^
|
|Personally, I find it extremely rude, inconsiderate, and a gross abuse
|of network etiquette to invite huge numbers of people to flood anyone's
|email mailbox with hate mail.  This kind of personal attack may be far
|worse than simply allowing someone who may be unfamiliar with what the
|originator of this flamefest considers common knowledge.


	You're probably overstating the situation here.


|>Commercial Postings to these newsgroups are no allowed. Don't do it.
|
|While it may be Stuart Andrews' policy (perhaps even official usenet
|policy) to forbid all commercial postings, I sometimes appreciate the
|kind of information provided by such postings.  Often it is possible
|for such postings to make individual purchasers and institutions aware
|of substantial cost savings (particularly from vendors in other states
|or other countries) which would not become known via local news media.


	Hooray for you.  I don't care if you appreciate
	them or not, they're NOT ALLOWED.  


|>Take the time to post a personal flame to: ephillip@nyx.cs.du.edu
|
|As mentioned above -- inciting a flame attack and/or trying to flood
|someone's email box with clearly unwanted messages might be considered
|harassment, squandering of network resources, and/or unauthorized use
|of computing facilities.  Please do not intentionally flood any email
|mailbox or subject anyone to harassing and/or unwanted email messages.


	Bull-oney.  No one suggested this, just
	a registering of opinion to the offenders.
	Besides, the concept of "squandering network
	resources" is quite suspect as a useful
	category of description for such activity,
	and "unauthorized use of computing facilities"
	is just silly.


|Finally, as someone who has been around for quite some time, let me
|suggest that if someone wants to pretend to be the network etiquette
|police then they better think about what the people who fund network
|access and message transport services would think about the excessive
|waste of taxpayer and privately donated dollars underwriting sending
|of personal mail, recreational, and nonscientific/nonacademic traffic.


	Many of the transport services explicitly forbid
	commercial usage outright, or limit usage to
	research/educational purposes only.


|Access to the original ARPANET was restricted to people with current
|government contracts and an active need for email, telnet, and ftp
|access to remote sites in the completion of their government contract
|work.  Perhaps it is time we fully withdraw direct government support
|and indirect government subsidies (tax deductions for private money
|contributed to usenet facilities/operations) and/or kick all of the
|bozos who do not have a legitimate need for access off the network.


	Yeah, like you know just how to define
	who they are, right?


|In my opinion the vast majority of the traffic carried by usenet over
|government subsidized transport media should not be funded by any of
|my taxpayer dollars -- rather the charges for each and every one of
|your nonscientific/nonacademic messages should be billed back to you
|as an individual and not absorbed by the general public.  However,
|while usenet is getting a free ride on the back of the taxpayers in
|countries around the world, let us not fall into the trap of thinking
|any one individual or small group of individuals have the right to 
|regulate network message content -- to believe otherwise is tantamount
|to endorsing the evil concepts of censorship and the thought police.


	The "free ride" you're talking about is
	currently largely a myth


|Perhaps a more appropriate approach in the present case would be for
|a few concerned network citizens to send polite private email messages
|to the originator of the original commercial posting informing the
|originator that it is customary to confine commercial postings to the
|few new product announcement and/or forsale newsgroups -- and offer
|to provide any technical assistance which may be necessary to cancel
|the original message and repost the solicitation to more appropriate
|newsgroups.  Note that such a message should probably be in the form
|of an advisory message rather than a hard and fast statement that the
|thought police have descended upon this poor user's doorstep with a
|warrant for the arrest and execution of a network etiquette felon.


	posting commercial messages to "forsale"
	newsgroups would get you an even bigger reaction.


	Only the "biz" newsgroups aer available for
	commercial usage.


|In the words of a local LA area hero "Can't we all get along?" -- we
|don't need another flamefest in Los Angeles -- and we do not need
|another flamefest about commercial access to usenet transport media.


	Polite phraseology notwithstanding, it
	seems clear your posting contains a great
	deal of flamage as you have avowed opinions
	that while dear to yourself are offensive
	to others not in agreement.



	BTW, how about editing the "Newsgroups: "
	header line to remove "general", whose presence
	is really an impostion on the very local
	newsgroups of that name all over the world...


-- 
  ,u,	 Bruce Becker			Toronto, Ontario
a /i/	 Internet: bdb@becker.gts.org	Uucp: ...!web!becker!bdb
 `\o\-e
 _< /_	 	DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN BUSH - H. R. Perotnoid
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