[117] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
NSF even censoring sites in Finland!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (gnu@toad.com)
Mon Nov 12 05:35:51 1990
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: gnu@toad.com
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 90 01:28:34 -0800
From: gnu@toad.com
Since I posted about NSFnet management censoring MIT sites, other sites
have spoken up about having similar problems. Here is one:
------- Forwarded Messages
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 90 19:30:37 +0200
>From: "Otto J. Makela" <Otto.Makela@jyu.fi>
Message-Id: <9011111730.AA00642@jyu.fi>
To: hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore)
Subject: Re: NSF censoring sites around the Internet
We have had some similar experiences with NSF. We had a large collection of
erotic bitmaps on an otherwise unused disk partition, available for anonymous
ftp. We were approched by the Finnish University network (FUNet) management,
basically being told that there is a distinct possibility of the whole of
Finland being cut off the net by NSF if we don't remove our bitmaps. With
this kind of terrorist tactics, we of course had to fold... the interesting
bit is that the nearest NSF-sponsored cabling is in Sweden ! When I got to
talking about this in alt.censorship with someone with a NSF "Organization:",
he got very hostile and started foaming about telling my postmaster about my
incorrect net.political views (happily a empty threat, since I am with the
Computing Center here and am a systems maintenance person -- this kind of
threats would probably be quite effective against any students etc. who get
their accounts deleted at a drop of a net.god.hat)
Seems that there now is a secondary problem with ftp sites with risque bitmaps:
since there are very few bitmap sites left inside the United States, everyone
in the US who is interested in them (and there are a LOT) go to sites outside
the US. This means hundreds of kilobytes of traffic thru networks which have
been designed for much lower traffic densities -- everything gets all bogged
up. For example the Sweden/Finland link (64k link) was very overloaded lately,
but the traffic dropped significantly after the deletion of bitmap sites.
/* * * Otto J. Makela <otto@jyu.fi> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
/* Phone: +358 41 613 847, BBS: +358 41 211 562 (CCITT, Bell 24/12/300) */
/* Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE */
/* * * Computers Rule 01001111 01001011 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
------- Message 2
>From: "Otto J. Makela" <Otto.Makela@jyu.fi>
Message-Id: <9011120705.AA15437@jyu.fi>
Subject: Re: NSF censoring Finnish sites too!
To: gnu@toad.com
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 90 9:05:28 EET
>Thanks for your message. Can you send it to com-priv@psi.com, and/or
>give me permission to publish it? Your facts had not come out yet to
>the public. In fact, the high traffic on the international links was
>being used as a club on the US sites; there was a complaint from some
>European sites that European people were tying up the international
>link pulling US bitmaps into Europe! Your impression is that it is
>the other way due to the US crackdown...this information must be
>circulated!
You have my permission to publish it. I'm cc'ing a copy of this message
to eloranta@jyu.fi, who collected statistics on the users here -- I believe
he can give some idea about the volumes and user distribution of ftp'ers ?
I talked with a FUNet managing person about it. Seems that a recent traffic
analysis of the US-Australia link showed that a major portion of the data flow
was bitmaps from Finland :-) Facts are that Finland is the only scandinavian
country which exports more data than imports. This is probably due to a high
population of anonymous ftp sites, part of which had bitmaps (the major ones
being lut.fi and our site, jyu.fi). The FUNet people have due to this been
able to talk NordUNet (Scandinavian University Network) into paying for a new
higher-speed link between Sweden and Finland, and they are a bit touchy about
the matter of bitmaps as can be expected. As I stated, the nearest NSFNet
sponsored bit of network is in Sweden...
Also, it has been claimed that the crackdown is directed at copyrighted works.
Since most if not all erotic bitmaps are produced in a roundabout fashion,
without approval from the original copyright holders, this is true in some
sense. I believe this to be just a smokescreen for the actual agenda, which
is "getting rid of" erotic material in toto.
It'll be fun when "they" start trying to rmgroup newsgroups like
alt.sex.pictures, because I know at least a dozen people who will
immediately post a newgroup for it :-)
- --
/* * * Otto J. Makela <otto@jyu.fi> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
/* Phone: +358 41 613 847, BBS: +358 41 211 562 (CCITT, Bell 24/12/300) */
/* Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE */
/* * * Computers Rule 01001111 01001011 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
------- End of Forwarded Messages
