Usenet and Re: extortion via digital cash

[Steve Schear]

>At 12:34 AM -0400 on 10/20/96, Scott McGuire wrote:
>
>> I've been thinking about the use of Usenet as a message pool and this
>>seems to
 be a good place to bring up my thoughts.  As an already existing, widely
disseminated and easily used message pool, Usenet is very valuable to us.
I'm concerned that it may not last though.  Many people now complain about
how low the signal to noise ratio is (even more than they complain about
this list). I've heard people say that they have given up on newsgroups in
favor of mailing list, web-zines, etc.  So, if it gets too bad, might it
just fade away? Or, if it remains but becomes unpopular, will it be easy to
restrict if we use it for anonymous messages?
>
>IMHO, it will end up similar to the late night infomerical spots on TV.
>Not puch of value there, but bored people will still look.
>
>Any effort to regulate it will come from a tangent; IDs of some sort
>to post in public, or have access to the net, or screening it out of
>the hypothetical InfoBahn II networks,  or similar.

In the U.S., at least, attempts to enforce identification of Internet users
or anonymous posters to newgroups and such are likely to meet with stiff
legal resistance.  The Supreme Court has ruled that anonymous use of
protected speech (e.g., political handbills) must be permitted.

-- Steve



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