Awatmath.1335
net.jokes,net.news
utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton
Fri Dec 18 22:02:24 1981
The censorship debate
OK : here goes.
*Flame on*
The debate on this topic is astounding. I was a little surprised to
see my own site contributing so much of the net.jokes.q material, but I
see other sites have made up for their slack. I have a (perhaps mistaken)
impression that the people reading this come from a group far more educated
than the general public. We are not the general public - we're UNIX
programmers, users and students working in high-tech environments. For
this reason I am under the impression that ideas like censorship would not
be brought up. Censorship, as I see it, is based on a few tenets. One,
somebody decides that certain material might tend to deprave or corrupt.
That some people might take something under the heading of jokes seriously
indicates they are the ones who should get their heads examined.
Secondly, censors (in a broader sense) snip because of possible libel.
Again, a joke is rarely considered in such terms. Some censors want to snip
because material 'offends' them. It's difficult to argue with such people,
(not because they have a point, it's just difficult to argue with them)
although many have tried. A typical example occured recently at Universities
all over Canada
Recently feminists of all sorts tried to close down Engineering
society newspapers on campuses. At this university, the society arranged
it so they would distribute their paper, Enginews, only to students who
came into the society office and showed a valid student card! Despite this,
some people claimed they found the material offensive, even though they
had to work subversively to get it. (I might add, the paper still publishes)
The netnews is in some forms a 'press', but it is a unique new
type. With this system, I can have the computer screen out the smut
I don't want to see for me. This gives the censors even less of a leg
to stand on because it is now clearer that only those who have asked to
read net.jokes.q are reading it.
Ah well, enough tirade. I just hope that this new form of news
and discussion distribution does not fall prey to vultures. Those of us
on the ARPAnet and usenet are pioneers, in a way, of what may become the
main method of news distribution. Let's do it right.
Another note: Somebody suggested signing names. CCA-UNIX has a rather
nice and simple mod to their mail which puts the name from /etc/passwd
(entered vi chfn) into a mail message every time. Perhaps something
for this in news might be nice.
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Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
