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Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 12:43:56 EDT From: Roy Smith <roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu> To: cmaeda@CS.CMU.EDU, com-priv@uu.psi.com Cc: edtjda@magic322.chron.com Christopher Maeda <cmaeda@EXXON-VALDEZ.FT.CS.CMU.EDU> says: 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? I certainly don't want to get into a debate over the definition of art vs. pornography, but I suppose I should at least answer this quickly. Having never seen the Greek art in question, I can only assume that it is well executed from an artistic point of view. Much of the stuff on alt.sex that I have read is so badly written (from the point of view of writing style, spelling, grammer, story line, lack of plot, obviousness, etc) that to call it "erotic art" cheapens the name. It's the skill of the artist, not his subject matter, that makes it art. All that, of course, begs the question as to whether it should be on the Internet, or whether Joe Abernathy's article was a fair depiction or not. What, if any, barriers should be erected in the NREN to protect the precious bodily fluids of K-12 users? Seems to me that all that needs to be done is for whoever is administering the news system in the K-12 schools to just put !alt.sex (etc, etc) in their sys file, and gird themselves against the cries of censorship that may or may not ensue. What protects those K-12'ers from walking to the corner store and buying a copy of something in a plain brown wrapper or renting a skin flick videotape, or catching it on the late-night cable, or getting an earful of it by dialing 1-900-BIG-BOOB? I wouldn't worry about it too much. Better keep them out of the Greek wing of the Boston MFA too :-) /roy
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