Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!gnu
From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Moderate landline Usenet first?
Message-ID: <1942@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 13-Jan-85 20:20:08 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.1942
Posted: Sun Jan 13 20:20:08 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 00:47:58 EST
References: <494@vortex.UUCP> <1917@sun.uucp> <366@hercules.UUCP> <425@cepu.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 36

I agree that lots of Usenet submissions are trash.  Everything is trash
to somebody.  What I don't want is centralized control.  That's the ONE
thing that makes Usenet different from every other network, and it's a
valuable difference.  For example, I submitted a message to the Arpanet
mailing list corresponding to "fa.telecom" describing the temporary
shutdown of a telecom-related magazine (TAP).  It was rejected by the
"moderator" who would not publish it because he was afraid DARPA would
object -- because the magazine was "out of favor" with the government.
The message described how the magazine had received arson threats and
how its offices were set afire, probably by government or telco
agents.  I'd have had no trouble posting it to net.telecom, unless of
course it was mod.telecom and sensitive to the possibility that the
uplink might be shut down by Reagan Administration or phone company
nuisance suits for reporting sensitive political news.

While the uplink IS a more likely target if someone tries to sue the net,
it hasn't happened yet, and if "society" is ready for a fast-turnaround
public access news medium, it won't happen.  If society's not ready,
then who are we trying to kid in creating such a medium?

It seems to me that there's a larger incentive to get real moderated
netnews going over phone lines than over a satellite, since the cost of
sending all the trash over phone lines is much higher.  Before agreeing
that all satellite news must be moderated, can we attempt to run a complete
landline network on that basis for a few months?  We should have plenty
of time before all the software and hardware for stargate are ready
anyway, and this will let us see how much trash it really does filter,
how much effort moderation is, how much slower such a network runs,
and what effect it actually has on "sensitive" submissions.

(I'm suggesting that we distribute net.all and mod.all in parallel for
a few months, so we can really see the difference.  We can arrange
the software so that each moderated group contains a subset of the
messages of the unmoderated group, avoiding retransmission and double
storage.)