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) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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.