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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The cost of moderating satellite News
Message-ID: <483@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Dec-84 18:44:24 EST
Article-I.D.: vortex.483
Posted: Thu Dec 27 18:44:24 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Dec-84 08:04:37 EST
References: <1314@eosp1.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 51

I don't consider software to be adequate or desirable for netnews
screening.  From the standpoint of avoiding the transmission of
libelous, copyrighted, or otherwise unsuitable materials, no
software could be designed that would handle such tasks except in the
most obvious of cases.  Such software could also be easily
circumvented through techniques that should be obvious to all of us.

From a legal standpoint, even if human moderators occasionally
let things slip through, we would at least have shown we made 
a good faith effort to do things rights if we had people watching
over the material.  If we had some silly software doing it, any
court would laugh itself sick over the premise that THAT, given the
state of the art, represented any real sort of screening.

Apart from screening for unsuitable materials, it is my hope that the
groups sent by satellite will eventually represent a better quality
of material.  And just like the editor of Time Magazine doesn't
publish every piece of material that crosses his desk or that people
send in, this service doesn't need to either.  In fact, nobody
would read Time if he did.  This service is not to REPLACE Usenet,
but rather is to provide an alternative for people who do not have
the time, inclination, or money to handle the ever increasing
volume of calls (which will get far worse as the net grows) with
a smaller and smaller percentage of messages representing useful
information to them.  People who want to carry on their rapid
fire discussions in such groups as net.religion and net.singles
can go ahead -- but there are quite a few people who could live
quite nicely without those groups (and some other groups like it)
and would really like to spend their time reading material with
a higher percentage of usefulness.  The idea is to give these
people a choice -- the full, growing dialup network for those
who want it (sort of analogous to standing at a sewer outfall),
and something a little more controlled and filtered for people
who can't afford the time or money to wade through all that.

One point is certainly true -- careful consideration must be
given to the flow paths toward stargate to avoid undesirable
delays.  However, my own concept is that most of these materials
would be MAILED directly to the moderator, not passed slowly
through the netnews links.  The current experimental model does
not represent the long term picture that would be necessary to
make things really work.  Also, it would seem reasonable that,
ultimately, moderators/screeners/editors would be compensated
in some way for their time.  I don't think a nationwide news
broadcasting service can operate totally on volunteer labor
forever!

Remember, what you see right now is an experiment, not
the shape of any possible future production system.

--Lauren--