[955] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
"Pornography" on the net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Maeda)
Fri Jul 12 11:00:46 1991
From: Christopher Maeda <cmaeda@EXXON-VALDEZ.FT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 10:57:36 EDT
To: com-priv@uu.psi.com
Cc: edtjda@magic322.chron.com
In-Reply-To: Roy Smith's message of Fri, 12 Jul 91 09:22:30 EDT <9107121322.AA05210@alanine.phri.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: cmaeda@cs.cmu.edu
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 09:22:30 EDT
From: Roy Smith <roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu>
May I suggest (even though I will probably be in the minority on
this one) that Joe's article, while inflamitory and sensational (in the
sense of sensationalism) and one-sided, is probably not unreasonable.
True, he blurs the distinction between the Internet and Usenet, but perhaps
I claim that the Internet and Usenet are pretty much the same thing.
A recent paper on tcp traffic measurements (anon ftp
/pub/tcpmeasurements.ps from ftp.ee.lbl.gov) showed that NNTP traffic
was a significant portion of total traffic. A lot of news is
propagated over the Internet.
And, if alt.sex constantly hits the top of the arbitron listings
for readership (and if alt.sex.pictures is the single largest volume group
by far), is it that unreasonable to assume that pornography is a
significant, even major, part of of Usenet?
Define pornography. I find alt.sex to be more on the order of Dr.
Ruth than Larry Flynt. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a large
collection of ancient Greek kraters that explicitly depict homosexual
intercourse and pederasty. Is that pornography or art? Why?
This raises some questions which I'll just throw out to you.
The people on alt.sex.bondage actually do this sort of thing in real
life. Don't they have the same right to discuss it on netnews as the
people on rec.bicycles and sci.aquaria?
What, if any, barriers should be erected in the NREN to protect the
precious bodily fluids of K-12 users? Is the fact that most
newsgroups are clearly labelled as to content sufficient? How will
these barriers conflict with the goal of free-flowing information?
Christopher.Maeda@cs.cmu.edu
