Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent - my 2 cents

[Oren Beck]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Michael Haworth <rddesign at darkroad.com> 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.









-- 
Oren Beck

816.729.3645