From: "L. Todd Masco" <cactus@bb.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 08:44:37 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: One more time... us.*
Message-ID: <199407281549.LAA08615@bb.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



[Very little c'punk content, just explaining why the us.* proposal is nothing
 like a movement towards censorship, but an attempt to resist it]

First, you have to understand that nobody has any say over what newsgroups
 are created on a machine except for the news admin on that machine.  Most
 news admins hand this authority over to Dave Lawrence, the current moderator
 of news.newgroups.announce, when they install their news software. 
 However, *anybody* can decided to ignore anybody else's decisions on
 *any* newsgroup and issue a newgroups message (and someone else will
 usually issue an rmgroup message in response: it's an anarchy, and most
 of us like it that way).

The us.* hierarchy "cabal" idea is *not* to determine what groups
 will get passed and what ones will not;  In fact, the intent is to eliminate
 "no" votes, passing groups only on the basis of significant interest.  If
 you know any USENET history, you'll know about fiascos like the
 soc.culture.tibet, soc.culture.macedonia, and soc.religion.islam.ahmadiya
 proposal -- cases where the newsgroups had a significant amount of interest,
 but were defeated due to large populations having some sort of grudge
 or religious/national interest in supressing a point of view.

This part of the proposal will, in fact, reduce censorship, preventing 
 organized campaigns from defeating newsgroups, effectively preventing
 people from discussing their subject on USENET (for the traditional
 definition of USENET that excludes alt.*).

The other part of the proposal, the one which seems to have pushed people's
 "censorship" kneejerk buttons, is the concept of the "namespace cabal."
 Again, if you have any knowledge of USENET history, you'll know that there
 used to be a far stronger cabal than is proposed by the us.* idea: the
 backbone cabal controlled everything -- they were the news admins at
 the backbone sites and they had the last word.  News admins at other
 sites listened to them because, well, they were the backbone cabal.  They
 had the connectivity.

When the set of newsgroups became too big for news admins to effectively
 manage them (and the connectivity model changed, there no longer being a
 real news backbone), a newer system for gaining consensus over newsgroup
 creation was created.  Votes would be taken -- *NOT* on democratic principals
 or anything of that nature, but simply to gauge interest so that news admins
 would have some basis on which to approve group creation.  Over time,
 the formula was tweaked in various ways when groups that people thought
 should never have passed (like the rec.acquaria, sci.acquaria, etc. groups)
 were created.  Still, this is basically the system we have today.

As I mentioned above, the current model allows large groups of people to
 squash newsgroups of interest to smaller (or even equal sized, since the
 current guidelines require 2/3 majority to pass) groups.  THAT is censorship,
 the tyrany of the majority.  There is also another thing that needs fixing.
 
There is a problem with the current USENET namespace management strategy:
 it is damn near impossible to manage a namepsace by vote.  In extreme
 cases, Dave Lawrence has simply refused to publish the newsgroup creation
 message, but nobody is very happy with this: it's too much like Dave is
 censoring the net, and it's wrong to stop the creation of a newsgroup on
 a subject simply because its proponent insists on a name noone likes.

As a USENET volunteer votetaker, I have become embroiled in proposals for
 groups where a vast number of people wanted a newsgroup but had to wait
 months, sometimes missing the opportunity to discuss events important
 to them, because the newsgroup proponent was insisting upon a name that
 nobody agreed with or because no clear consensus (among users) appeared
 about the naming of the group.

It is the namespace issue that the proposed "cabal" will cover.  It's no
 different than the government refusing to take a vote on where every
 single book in a public library will end up on the shelves or where 
 each document is stored.  Namespace management is simply impossible to
 do by voting, especially when the "voters" have no understanding of the
 issues involved.  We've squeeked by so far, but only barely -- and as the
 net grows, it become much more difficult to maintain the current voting
 scheme.

That is why it is absurd to view the "namespace cabal" concept as an attempt
 to censor a democratic form.  It isn't an attempt to censor (it is an
 attempt to stop censorship), and the current form isn't democratic.  Please,
 before you try to argue this -- check out the facts about the proposal,
 the history behind it, and the real mechanisms in place before you spout
 off.
--
L. Todd Masco  |  Bibliobytes books on computer, on any UNIX host with e-mail
cactus@bb.com  | "Information wants to be free, but authors want to be paid."