From: Minotaur@cup.portal.com (Frank - Swilling)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Deletions
Date: 5 Apr 92 21:08:27 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

In article 1265.3.15806.3 Re: Deletions
4/4/92 14:54 79/3054 anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) sez:

>In article <56878@cup.portal.com> Minotaur@cup.portal.com
>(Frank Swilling) writes:

>>Ordinarily I am not a fan of censorship, 

>Hold that thought ...

>>but there are exceptions.

>...  there shouldn't be, otherwise you can't be free and
>neither can I.

Still, we (those of us who aren't in jail or mental institutions)
live in blissful harmony with exceptions to the "No Censorship"
rule, without which our lives would be utter chaos and our
society would cease to function.  If you doubt this,

Go yell "fire" in a crowded theatre.

March into a synagogue and start saving sinners in the name of Christ.

Go to alt.politics and let everyone know how much you despise the
President, and how you dream of putting a .357 Magnum up to his
head and pulling the trigger.

Go display a collection of photographs of women and children being
tortured for someone's sexual pleasure.

OK, these are theatrical examples, and pretty far afield from
wanting to boot someone out of soc.motss for bad manners, but they
are real and I will be surprised if you don't agree that we *all*
*do* willingly participate in some forms of censorship.  To bring
the issue back into focus for purposes of our discussion, lets take
a more relevant example of censorship: local BBS's.

Without exception, every special interest BBS I have ever dialed up
has logged me on with a list of rules and regulations that I must
agree to follow, with the threat of being booted off the BBS clearly
spelled out if I break these rules.  I have seen it happen that
someone *did* break the rules of a BBS, and that someone *did* get
booted off the BBS, to the cheers of the assembled membership.

So how is soc.motss different?  Except for the fact that there isn't
a designated moderator for our group, we function the same as any
other BBS.  We have rules that we expect the membership to follow.
We have subjects that are important to us, and subjects that are
against the rules to mention.  All that we *don't* seem to have is
a method for enforcing those rules when necessary.

>>So, isn't there something that can be done?  Can't the first
>>system administrator down the pipe from Artimus Page simply
>>delete his postings as they appear?

>Not very effectively, no.  A skilled forger-hacker has
>little difficulty, especially in the necessarily
>security-lax academic sectors of the networks (security
>isn't free, ya know), appearing wherever and whenever he/she
>likes.

*SIGH*  This, of course, is the absolute answer to my question.
If we tried booting someone out, it would probably turn out to
be some brilliant hacker-sociopath with nothing better to do than
to spend the rest of his life creating new identities and deluging
us with crap.

>>We could also vote on which names would be included for
>>deletion, and where the line for deletion would be drawn.

>Your thinking is an even greater threat to us than "Dark Knight"
>or "Artimus."

Please tell me why you believe this is true.

>>I'm interested in what you all think about this.

>Glad you asked.

I'm glad you answered.

>Jess Anderson

Frank