Aittvax.167
net.news
utzoo!decvax!ittvax!swatt
Mon Dec 28 14:36:38 1981
USENET Committee
Before everyone gets too hot 'n bothered about cbosgd!mark's proposal
for USENET governing rules, please consider the following:
1) USENET is a strictly volunteer organization; nobody HAS to
join, and guidelines cannot be enforced.
2) Any local news adminstrator has the de facto power to impose
any kind of censorship technically feasable.
3) Systems will only participate in USENET if the perceived
benefits exceed the visible costs.
(1) means that any guidelines proposed ought to be guided by the
principle of "what is so obviously for the common good that every
one will accept it once stated". (2), together with (1) means
that if any news administrator is bothered by a newsgroup, for
whatever "good" or "bad" reasons, censorship will occur. (3)
means that the cooperative news network will only be maintained
if systems (read "news administrators") perceive that real benefits
result.
Most of the discussions so far have talked about what "management"
might think about dirty jokes and such. This is a relevant concern,
but it ignores the more serious danger to USENET: that the people who
maintain it as a volunteer effort will get tired of doing so. From
most of the discussions I have heard on this topic it appears that
"management" isn't even aware that USENET exists. The real danger to
USENET is that if management doesn't know about USENET, it follows that
for most installations no one has an official responsibility to
maintain it. This is certainly true for us. Maintaining the news
system on our single machine takes some measurable portion of my
not-too-empty schedule each day. I squeeze out the necessary time
because of perception (3).
Another kind of censorship which will soon become a real danger
is the kind dictated by limited resources. Even if I think absolutely
everything should be allowed under freedom of expression principles,
once the total volume of stuff to store and transmit exceeds the
system resources to do it, I HAVE to cut something.
Now the discussion about the best way to elect/appoint the members
of the USENET committee is very interesting from the philosophical
and/or political science perspective, but before you invest too much
fuel in flames, please consider the above and ask yourself this very
simple question:
What exactly is this committee going to decide?
The only role for the committee I can forsee is the following:
1) "rationalize" the creation of new newsgroups. The need for
some balance between free and open creation of new discussion
topics and the explosion of questionable groups should be
obvious to everyone.
2) Coordinate a fair and equitable distribution of traffic
among those system with autodialers who pay the phone
bills (It isn't just the matter of phone bills --
there are only 24 hours of possible connect time in a day
for each outgoing channel).
Now these are all "service" functions, of benefit to everyone. I
personally don't care whether it's called "net.scuba", or
"net.sport.scuba", or "net.rec.scuba", or "pers.rec.scuba", etc., etc.,
ad nauseum. As a news user all I care about is that those individuals
who want a means to communicate news and information about scuba diving
can do so without the name of the damned newsgroup changing every
week. As a news administrator I don't want to have to edit control
files every day to reflect new/changed/outdated newsgroups. If having
a central committee to arbitrate the creation of new newsgroups will do
this, then I'm for it.
People who fear a central committee will somehow curtail the freedom of
USENET miss the point: ANYBODY can curtail the freedom of the net, and
likely will if the bother of maintaining it gets too great. The
character of USENET will be the consensus of the individuals who
maintain it at each local site, in spite of what any central committee
requires or forbids.
The "power" of the committee is only its ability to be of service to
the news administrators. As far as I'm concerned anyone who wants to
put in the time to be on such a committee has my vote already; I don't
have to wait for either the USENIX meeting or some electronic ballot.
- Alan S. Watt (decvax!ittvax!swatt)
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Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
