At 10:11 PM 1/8/96 -0500, Vin McLellan wrote:
CIS's utter ignorance of free-speech principles set the stage for the symbolic Bravarian Censorship of the Net. You'll hear of a dozen other nations jumping in, with different standards, within the month.
Don't overdo the CIS newsgroup "ban". The first sysop to "ban" newsgroups did so many years ago. There are well-developed techniques to read "banned" newsgroups. A FAQ and everything. http://www.ECNet.Net/users/mumbv/pages/banned-groups-faq.shtml Compuserve is just a large proprietary service and sometime ISP (and one of the most expensive ones). They are not a big player on the Net.
I find the tragic association of a "free" Internet and porn to be painfully common among cyberless adults even in my own community. Odds are, my state, Massachusetts -- arguably the most liberal of the US states -- would vote for Censorship Filter tomorrow if it were on a ballot.
Luckily it's not and can't be.
It's amazing how incompetent the liberal/libertarian side has been in this public debate. (So incompetent, in fact, that there has been _no_ public debate!) Everyone who wants to place control over any filter (any part of The Filter?) in the hands of the citizen is just another snuff/torture/kiddy porn addict.
Almost all of the articles on the CIS "ban" have mentioned that "therapeutic" groups were also included. Certainly the Net has let CIS know what we think of them. They expressed surprise at our reaction. Their "ban" isn't even a ban as my piece on using CIS to read banned groups shows. (http://www.cs.umass.edu/~lmccarth/cypherpunks/banned.html) It is making it into Wired and the Baltimore Sun (maybe) and was good enough that Michael Miller, author of "Using Compuserve" linked to it from his book page: http://www.mcp.com/people/miller/cistop.htm. DCF