[10112] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Andrews Univ. & C. Thomas
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon Feb 7 22:24:30 1994
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 22:23:55 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: tully@cscns.com
Cc: postman@lists.psi.com, postman@lists.psi.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Ed Tully's message of Mon, 7 Feb 94 19:44:57 MST <9402080244.AA03211@cns.cscns.com>
>From: tully@cscns.com (Ed Tully)
>I usually agree with you - but this time I do not. I know listservs, and so
>do you, that go to 28,000 or more people. I don't like the content of
>someof it. Does that say i should write to the university MISand say what
>a bad guy so-and-so is? IMHO, it was the content that everybody objected
>to, not what he did. because what he did is done every day on the net. I
>don't like anybody preaching at me either, but long ago i decided that
>those who do it probably have more courage than I.
You are free to hold whatever opinion you like.
But about the content being the issue I am quite sure you are wrong.
And had he posted a message full of blanks to 1500+ groups there would
have been grounds for just as much complaint.
Look, it's one thing to send off something inappropriate to a mailing
list which happens to explode to even 100,000 people. That can even
happen entirely by accident, we've seen it happen here.
But what Mr Thomas did took a lot of work and thought. He almost
certainly wrote a script or program to do it. He worked hard at it.
I also believe he had no intent to spread the gospel and even the
content of his message is to be considered suspect and was merely
meant to get a rise out of people. But who knows, I don't.
But one can tell the difference between accident, ignorance or even
momentary thoughtlessness and what is clearly a pre-meditated act of
malicious or at least extremely irresponsible behavior.
Do you have any reason to believe that Mr Thomas, when confronted,
*didn't* say immediately yeah, I did that to annoy everyone on Usenet
and cause problems and it took me hours of hard work to set it all up?
I don't. Maybe not. But his relatively light reprimand leads me to
believe he was probably remorseful and apologetic.
And if you wish to write to someone in charge and complain about
something that is your freedom.
As someone who runs a large site I assure you it happens almost daily,
and most of it is ignored because most people are indeed only saying
they disagree with the person's content, often quite appropriate to
the particular forum if unpopular.
But something like this is different.
-Barry Shein
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