From: ISP_Ratings <boursy@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 17:11:10 -0800 (PST)
To: freedom-knights@jetcafe.org
Subject: Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
Message-ID: <199702160111.RAA14431@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Against Moderation wrote:
> 
> dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) writes:
> 
>I believe homophobia is a great way to bring out the censors in
>people.  However, inducing censorship is only part of fighting it.
>You also need respectable people to some in, argue cogently against
>the dangers of censorship, perhaps even get some extremely reasonable
>articles suppressed, and then spread the word about it.  I find the
>freedom-knights tactics' extremely lacking in this second, "clean up
>and analyze the mess" phase.
> 

  Yes but the process is a very long term one--you seemed focused
on this specific instance.  I'm especially interested in the demise
of plug pulling sys admins for example--they should be hung by their
balls from the highest pole--the kind of net.slime EFF protects.  As
for analysis and cleanup that's a bit easier to contain on a list
as opposed to the usenet at large.

>As a recent example illustrates well, Vulis did a nice job of inducing
>censorship on cypherpunks.  However, I think most peoples' opinions
>didn't really turn, or at least people didn't realize how serious
>things were and didn't really care, until Tim May [someone the many
>freedom-knights hate] started criticizing this censorship in extremely
>reasonable messages that were suppressed from both the -edited and
>-flames mailing list.

  And for that to happen vivid examples of such censorship had to 
occur and a snake was exposed as being a snake.  Seems like it worked
extremely well to me.  It also appears that the cleanup you rightly
refer to is happening as a natural progression--same will be true
hopefully on a broader scale on usenet when others personally get
a taste of the censorship that is lurking behind every corner.  
And for those who jumped on the bandwagon because Mr. May was
being censored as oppossed to Dr. Vulis--they are sad people indeed.

                          Steve