Subject: Usenet Censorship

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 22:10:51 -0500

Please excuse me if this in inappropriate or old news, but I found it
interesting ..

http://www.excite.com/computers_and_internet/tech_news/zdnet/?article=/news/19981117/2165696.inp

Synopsis:

Karl Denninger wants to censor everything posted to Usenet.  He claims
to want to get rid of all pornography and pirated software.  However, he
wants to accomplish this by making everyone who posts a binary file
required to sign it with a digital certificate and "Any anonymously
posted binary files, such as digital images or software programs, would
be automatically rejected."

This seems a bit "out there" to me.  IMHO, if this kind of system were
to go into effect you might as well turn all the news servers off.

Kyle George

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From: Jim Dixon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:07:26 +0000 (GMT)

> to go into effect you might as well turn all the news servers off.

For those digital signatures to have any value, they would have to
be verified.  News servers already carry a heavy load; adding the  
job of verifying hundreds of thousands of digital certificates a 
day would have all sorts of interesting effects.

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015

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From: Jim Dixon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:07:26 +0000 (GMT)

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 06:59:24 -0500

There is an even better (crazier) article at
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16276.html

When you get to the part about censoring messages with "anti-Christian
bias" you'll see what I mean ...

> day would have all sorts of interesting effects.

Also, the way he proposes doing this would be to issue cancel messages
for each article his software deems "inappropriate" and doesn't mind if
they get put into the general Usenet feed. 

Excerpt:

                     Dennigner doesn't deny this. In fact, he
                     expects certain subscribers with personal
                     agendas to siphon Clean News's cancel
                     messages into the general Usenet feed. 

                     "Let's say that Reverend Falwell had an
                     ISP," he says. Such a misuse of the
                     cancel messages would, however, be "not
                     my issue." 

I can just imagine 500,000 cancel messages/day being fired back and
forth between servers - obviously not a good idea.  

Kyle George

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 06:59:24 -0500

Excerpt:

Kyle George