From: mikepb@freke.hoplite.org (Michael P. Brininstool)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 07:58:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Another Internet Provider Censors Access (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960102000200.10683A-100000@use.usit.net>
Message-ID: <1996Jan6.154423.21243@freke.hoplite.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960102000200.10683A-100000@use.usit.net>,
Brad Dolan  <bdolan@use.usit.net> wrote:
>Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 00:02:44 -0500 (EST)
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Coming off CompuServe's announcement last week that it was 
>cutting off all access to "alt.binaries" newsgroups under 
>pressure from the German government, I'm passing along another 
>apparent development from another Internet access provider, 
>Netcom.
> 
>Under the guise of a minor software upgrade, Netcom has changed 
>its newsgroups access list to totally exclude "alt" groups 
>altogether.  Since there is no way to sign up for a newsgroup 
>other than via the selection menu that Netcom provides, it 
>appears that Netcom has managed to censor access to all those 
>discussion groups.

I saw all the posts regarding this and proclaiming it to be false.  I
feel obligated to point out a discussion we had at work last week about
our news feeds (I work for an ISP).  Our news machines are constantly
filling up, and we can only add so much disk-space to the news spools.
We have been reducing the expire times, and the news spools are still
filling up too fast.  40%, I think it was, of the news was alt.*.  I
suggested (Bad, Mike!) that we kill all the alt.* groups, and add back
only those that people customers actually request.  The whole
engineering group jumped down my throat saying that that action would
be seen by the customers, and potential customers, as censorship.  I
withdrew my proposal, because I agreed with them.

The reason I bring this up is to point out that the removal of the
alt.* groups does not necessarily mean the people removing those groups
are trying to censor anything, but may just be trying to reduce the
resources eaten by news on their systems and network.

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