Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent - my 2 cents

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Wed, 7/16/08, 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'.

Sad but true.  Right now its a "jump on the bandwagon" thing about NetNews, kiddy porn, and getting rid of both of them by getting rid of the "unmoderated" NetNews.  

If thine eye displeaseth thee, cut off thy head.

> I love living in a republic!

Actually the more relevant phrase is a capitalist market.  Government said "lets do something" but did so without any new bill passed before a legislative body.  It is the corporations who over-reacted.

I'm not sure if a direct democracy would have been any better.  It could have turned out that 99% of Americans really did use alt.binaries.* and new laws would have been passed imposing hefty fines against any ISP which got rid of NetNews.

Of course, it could also have turned out that 51% of Americans had never heard of NetNews and had believed every word said about it, resulting in new laws which retroactively imposed the death penalty on anyone who had ever downloaded anything from an alt.binaries.* newsgroup (the blind ignorant assumption would have been that *everything* on an alt.binaries.* newsgroup was "kiddy porn").

Republics slow down the reactions of the people, and if you've ever been misunderstood by a girlfriend/boyfriend, spouse, or parent, you believe in the value of slowing down the reactions of people.