On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Michael Haworth [email protected] wrote:
It seems that over the weekend, AT&T decided that no one needs to access any alt.binary.* newsgroup since they are all potentially full of kiddy porn. I have now stressed to as many people as I could get to that this is a ludicrous action and the only thing it does is make me look for someone else. I asked them to at least re-instate alt.binaries.pictures.tall-ships (old sailing vessels usually) and they (of course) declined as it is 'unmoderated and could contain child pronography'. I love living in a republic!
Michael Haworth
-----Original Message----- ---snip---
Linux and a subscription to a pay server might be an option after all.
The query of deepest import is a semantic gap in usage of the term "Access" Are they merely abandoning their own Usenet server/s? OR are they actively using intentional means to deny any transport of NNTP in toto? And either way ask WHY!
Actually- I am beginning to suspect "Teh :PrOn" is less a concern than the combination of $erver co$tS and the "uncensored anything" aspect.
I can see both being greedy and cutting costs to explain abandonment. I can also see but disagree with the allegations of Pr0n. That "see" is accepting that - there is an abundance of scary crap in binaries groups that many of us could live quite comfortably with it's having never been made. I am *NOT* either a porn "consumer" of note nor am I a censormonkey. The first amendent means what it says and says what it means. Yet we risk confusing protecting ability with approving acts or portrayals of.And it's NOT off topic as one scenario could hold Linux as somehow censorship worthy for it's NOT being DRM et all locked down! Which brings us back to the Usenet debacles. It's to me time to forge new consensus. Perhaps a RFC on "adult" content segmentation? Thus the "rights" of the Pr0n side are "Air Gapped" against infringements. Either FROM or INTO the Non-Pr0n side.
Consider how YOU would write a RFC draft to sever adult from non-adult content !
As opposed to torching ALL of Usenet for whatever % of it's volume the crap is? I call them out on grounds of duplicity. Were their motives pure many other changes would have been dome long ago. Look at the end game's possible motives. The one thing we can be certain of is Deceit as an an end in itself. And from that we then might derive potentially at least - an understanding of why free from censorship media scares liars by it's mere existence. The truth makes honest men free and the dishonest tremble as it should.
Linux offers some instruments of transparency as almost integral by design. Closed Source by concept is opaque. Usenet was the arena for a meritocracy by consensus of sorts.The open nature that allows Crap to proliferate in hard to "clean up" fashions? That same bug is a feature, one which provides some semi-inherent degrees of censorship resistance. Thus I consider NNTP too valuable for lightly conceding it.
While by no means utopian, Usenet and it's attendant conceptual orbits still offer a robust truth dissemination toolset.