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Sanctions: Keeping Out the Riff-Raff
By Tom Geller
When an article violates etiquette, it often spawns a discussion on how Usenet abuse can be throttled -- especially if the offending message comes from an aol.com address. What many people don't realize is that America Online already takes actions to stop "net abuse" by their members, as is discussed in the accompanying article. But what if the article was posted from some other site, and the site administrator refuses to censure its poster? Then we get into the touchy issue of censorship and free speech -- an issue presently being addressed both on the Internet and in the houses of Congress.
On the Internet, one's best defense against the shock of offensive articles is simply to avoid them. Doing so is easy, as many programs for reading newsgroups (such as Value-Added NewsWatcher for the Mac) have options which allow the user to ignore all messages with specified words in the subject lines. So if some idiot fills your favorite newsgroups with messages promising that you'll "$$$ MAKE MONEY FAST $$$," all you have to do is specify that you don't want to read any messages with dollar signs in the subject line, and they're all sent down the virtual garbage disposal.
But mere avoidance isn't enough for some people, and proposals to limit posting privileges are constantly being bandied about. Most serious discussion on these topics occurs in the newsgroups alt.current-events.net-abuse and news.admin.net-abuse.misc. One sanction involves rating the quality of postings according to the Breidbart Index, named after its creator, Seth Breidbart. Others suggest that users be required to pass a written test on netiquette before being allowed to post, and so forth.
In Congress, however, the tone is more ominous -- and far less informed. Legislators see the Internet only for its potential to promote illegal activities, their beliefs seemingly fueled by sordid stories of child pornography in the popular press. A web page for information on laws designed to limit Internet access is kept at http://www.phantom.com/~slowdog, where a petition against an a hostile Senate bill (S.314) garnered over 100,000 electronic signatures. For a more broad view of the issues, discussions on the subject are frequent in alt.censorship.
When individual users bypass articles based on content, they are making a choice; when those articles are killed at the source, the choice is being made for them. In either case, Internet "publishing" has challenged limitations to who can write and what can be read, and the changes it has wrought will challenge censors -- both external and internal -- for some time to come.
This page was last updated 24 March, 1997 by Tom Geller. All contents copyright 1998 by Tom Geller.