Subject: Re: ALTERNATIVE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SCENARIOS From: jvncnet!startribune.com!stevey (Steve Yelvington) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 15:03:43 CDT

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Rex Ballard wrote:

>It is interesting to note that when the usenet newsgroups were first
>restructured and reorganized many of the "alt" groups were not accessible
>at all.  It was possible to get alt.christian and not alt.sex based on the
>personal biases of a network administrator.

That is still the case. There are many Usenet sites that carry only a
subset of the network (and in fact, the alt tree is not an official part of
the network).

The censorship issue is a delicate one for online services and information
providers. There are going to be some things showing up online that we
would never allow in the newspaper. I think we are going to try to err on
the side of inclusiveness ... but we're crafting policy statements that
will make it clear to users that we can, and will, bring the door down on
offensive behavior.

There are legal questions, too. For our own internal purposes, we chose not
to set up Usenet server software because we found a less resource-intensive
alternative ... but if we had set up C News or INN in-house, we would have
screened alt.sex, rec.arts.erotica, and the like out of our feed. An
employer can get slapped with a lawsuit for maintaining an environment that
might contribute to sexual harassment, and some newsgroups might be
construed as doing just that.


--
Steve Yelvington in Minneapolis-St. Paul
Editor, Star Tribune Online (coming this winter on Interchange Online Network)
Internet: stevey@startribune.com
Voice: 612-673-7229  Fax: 612-673-7973



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To: stevey@startribune.com (Steve Yelvington)