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Re: An open letter to Elon Musk

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Spiros Bousbouras  <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>> 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >   Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not
>> >   much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it,
>> >   it's just an IP port number. It's also basically a
>> >   text-only kind of media, very 70s/80s, and not even as
>> >   interactive as those old 300-baud dial-up BBS systems.
>> 
>> When Usenet was popular, it belonged to the people that ran the machines.
>> Some of those people, like the ones that ran PSUVM, were less active about
>> controlling users than others.  But believe me, if you posted something
>> that was problematic, it was entirely possible to get kicked off a server.
>> Carasso managed it at least a dozen times.
>
>PSUVM ? Carasso ? I'm guessing you don't mean "Emmanuel Carasso or Emanuel
>Karasu was an Ottoman lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish
>Carasso family of Ottoman Salonica."

Roger David Carasso may not have invented trolling on the internet, but
he certainly perfected it.  And there is some chance that he may have
invented many of the more popular trolling techniques seen today.

PSUVM was an IBM machine at Penn State which was full of undergraduates with
Usenet access, I believe through some sort of BITNET gateway.  It was famous
for the huge flood of ignorant posts that appeared every September.

>> Now, the point is that the system was distributed so that if you found 
>> yourself kicked off one server you could likely get an account elsewhere,
>> until you go to the point where UDP was threatened for the servers that
>> would accept you.  So there was some de facto freedom here but it had
>> limits.
>
>And that's why we need as many servers as possible. Otherwise , yes freedom
>has de facto limits. After all , people have been jailed or killed for saying
>some things in public , usenet cannot magically remove such physical
>possibilities , it can at most make them harder.

Having as many servers as possible means that people who really should be
removed from the net do not get removed.  That's kind of the problem today.
The management system that worked for Usenet does not scale up.

>> But the freedom of Usenet was in no way unlimited, and there were many
>> fights between the anon.penet.fi people and the cs.utexas.edu people 
>> and people trying to control traffic which are well-documented.
>
>Can you say a bit more on this or point me to some sources ?

Other than to look up news.admin from the eighties and early nineties, I am
not sure where to point you.  There were anonymizing services that would
allow people to post with their source obscured somewhat or completely.
Some people thought this was good.  Some people thought it was bad. 
When a war over Scientology began it helped fuel the fire.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000
  Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-20 22:22 -0400
    Re: An open letter to Elon Musk not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2022-07-23 09:02 +1000
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 00:15 -0400
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-23 09:01 +0100
        Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 14:33 -0400
          Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-25 19:18 +0100
            Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:15 -0400
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-07-23 11:39 +0100
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:14 +0000
        Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-02 18:36 +0000
          Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-02 21:27 +0100
            Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:44 +0000
              Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-03 16:26 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> - 2022-08-03 18:35 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2022-08-03 22:26 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:51 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-04 09:17 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 12:47 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 14:17 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:01 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:42 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-13 21:25 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:22 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 18:00 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 18:13 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 12:14 -0400
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:15 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 20:51 -0400
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-17 08:02 +0100
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-17 20:12 -0300
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:15 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2022-09-05 19:50 -0300
              Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-03 15:27 +0000
    Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-07-23 13:23 +0000
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:31 +0000
        Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-03 01:10 +0000
          Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-02 22:34 -0400
            Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 13:04 +0000
              Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-04 00:05 -0400
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 09:36 +0000
            Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-05 23:40 +0000
              Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-05 22:12 -0400
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-06 02:40 -0300
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-06 18:09 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 13:58 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-14 17:22 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:58 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 19:10 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:12 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:11 +0000
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-23 08:35 +0000
  Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-23 17:13 -0400
    Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-24 00:50 +0300
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-24 12:14 -0400
        Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 03:18 +0300
          Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-24 22:26 -0400
            Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 16:17 +0300
              Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 09:49 -0400
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 17:09 +0300
                Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:01 -0400
    Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:02 +0000
      Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 15:09 +0000
  Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Y A <y000000000000@ya.ee> - 2023-02-11 08:13 -0800
    Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2023-02-11 19:24 +0000

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