Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: "Cancelbots", or Big Brother?!
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 14:30:13 -0400
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 94 12:09:55 -0400 From: shap () viper cis upenn edu (Jonathan Shapiro) To: farber () central cis upenn edu The New York Times article contained substantial inaccuracies. Mr. Kessler's reactions sensationalize these inaccuracies and add to the confusion and misunderstanding. The netnews software includes a mechanism for canceling articles. This feature was originally intended to allow a poster to rescind an article that they had decided they didn't want to have sent or no longer needed an answer to. It also allowed the netnews administrator to moderate the well-intentioned excesses of new users who do not understand the etiquette of the net. Cancelling an article across the entire network does not require breaking in to any machines or writing any terribly clever programs. Any netnews administrator, at any site, can cancel an article over the whole net. This has not led to censorship because building programs to automatically cancel articles requires more effort than anyone has been willing to put in to date. In short, censorship has not yet been cost effective. Netnews has been a community self-governed system. Until the recent introduction of commercial interests who simply don't give a damn about the community's opinion, there has been no need for authenticated administration. Whether there now exists such a need is very much subject to debate. Mr. Kessler assumes incorrectly that email can be cancelled in the same way. In current email systems this is not true. A third party administrator cannot reach over onto your local machine and cancel your email, nor is it simple to censor it in transit. Jonathan S. Shapiro
Current thread:
- "Cancelbots", or Big Brother?! David Farber (Jun 29)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: "Cancelbots", or Big Brother?! David Farber (Jun 30)