Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 08:57:18 -0600 From: Blaine Minazzi <bminazzi@denverweb.net> To: isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Binaries in Usenet (was: News...) Message-ID: <33563A4E.7494CECB@denverweb.net> References: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970417112546.302A-100000@bigboy.intercenter.net>
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Ron Bickers wrote: > > On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Michael Dillon wrote: > > > A lot of people are afraid that by dropping sex newsgroups specifically, > > they will become legally vulnerable since they are EDITTING the material > > on their news server based on its content. But there's an interesting > > Blockbuster doesn't have an X-rated movie section. Does that mean they're > editing material? No. I'm not a lawyer either, but not carrying a.b.p.e > is not "editing" anything, it's simply making it not available at all. > There's nothing illegal about that. Yep. it's your server. Kinda like opening an italian restraunt. If someone bitches cause you don't serve chinese, they would be considered a bit loopy. > > IMHO the solution is to clean up binaries from USENET and force people to > > use file transfer protocols (FTP, HTTP, DCC, FSP) to transfer files. > > I second that. It's out of control. Wonder what kind of bandwidth would > be freed up if that were to happen. > > --- > Ron Man, that has to be a LOT of bandwidth, not to mention disk space. So... How could the ISP's get the ball rolling on enforcing the newsgroups to carry only text based news. Then the issue of crossposting.... that really is a pain in the ass. I would wager that 95% of crossposted articles are posted to irrelevant groups. If we could fix this nonsense, and only carry non crossposted articles, that would also free up some bandwidth. ( not to mention stopping a lot of spam. ) Crosspoting _WAS_ a good idea when it was relevant and everything was pretty much academia and military. We have come a long way since the "old days". Now it is mostly abuse of the concept by clueless morons, spamming the world. Just make the people that want the binary and sex stuff go and GET it, rather than having it delivered to every news machine on the net. On a slightly different note: I feel that more regulation of some sort WILL come to the net. There is too much commerce, and too many dollars involved for the political theives to ignore. They will soon be trying to find ways to tax and regulate us into the ground. I think our best defense is to be involved in the process preemptivly. If regulation is going to come, WHO do you want to be invlolved in actually writing the laws? Congressmen without a clue, or congressmen with some input from the industry? Lets stay regulation free as long as possible, but, when they do turn their greedy eye at us, we need to be organized enough to have input, and make the regulations actually be to our benefit. Large corporations, such as AOL, and compu$erve, AT&T, MCI, etc. WILL be buying influence. And you can bet that if they can find a way to have more control over the net as a whole, they will slant everything that way. They don't really care about content. They are only interested in how much money they can make.... if that means squishing the little guys with regulations that they can survive, so be it. ( an example, if my fish get sick, and I have to treat with copper medication, it kills the tiny organisms... copper is poison to fish also, but they can survive the exposure more so than the tiny critters. ) Oh well... back to work. Y'all have a good weekend. Blaine
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