[1491] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
So what is the answer?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Thu Oct 10 18:56:33 1991
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 18:56:32 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: edtjda@magic322.chron.com
Cc: tenet.edu!Connie.Stout@uunet.uu.net, com-priv@psi.com,
In-Reply-To: Joe Abernathy's message of Thu, 10 Oct 91 17:02:58 CDT <9110102202.AA17656@magic322.chron.com>
Just for some background, what Joe was talking about suddenly rang a
bell. I happened to be reading the K12NET stuff at the time of the
incident.
Apparently someone at a University (I don't remember the exact
university tho I may have saved the message here somewhere) posted a
message to one or more of the K12 groups which claimed to be from a
child concerned about their own sexual abuse situation.
Perusing the note revealed pretty quickly that what was contained was
a sexually explicit story that was almost certainly written for
another audience aimed at, shall we say, base prurient interests.
It was a fairly cleverly vicious thing to do as the story was written
in the voice of a first-person child and appeared, in the beginning,
to be serious, so one was drawn in for other reasons (at least for a
few paragraphs.)
(Imagine if it had been a serious plea for help, but I wander, it
certainly wasn't.)
A systems administrator from the originating site got on the K12 horn
very quickly to apologize and indicate what he had done to put a clamp
on this, but of course it was a bit late to completely undo thing.
There were perhaps four or five messages from teachers (adults, at any
rate) concerned about the event, and then it just seemed to drop off,
the tone seemed more like "what the heck was that!?" than horror or
anything. I don't remember any child commenting on it, I suspect most
were too young to be drawn in tho perhaps some were, it didn't appear
on the net or I didn't catch it.
So, we had a fairly malicious prank.
It reminded me of being in junior high school, in a classroom as a
student, and some of the local "toughs" coming by one day to shout
obscenities thru the windows loud enough to disturb the class.
I don't remember any suggestion at the time to outlaw mouths or
windows (or publicly funded sidewalks.)
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
