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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.