Re: The ah....Whole Story (background and a few questions)

[rosen@ji.Berkeley.EDU (Rob Rosen)]

	Well, rumours abound.  One of them is that Sue has threatened legal
action.  Many people are worried that if this matter is brought to general
public attention, bad things will happen.  One of them might be that ARPAnet
sites will have news access severely curtailed or even removed completely, 
because certain powerful figures might get very angry that American taxpayers'
dollars are being spent on worldwide discussions about the nature of a certain
musician's lyrical content.

	Footnote #1:  It has apparently become public knowledge that the rash
of racist jokes aired at a certain Midwestern university radio station (was
it Michigan?  I am not quite sure of the location, but the event itself has
become quite well known by now) were actually culled from articles posted to
rec.humor (presumably ROT-13'd).  Certain weekly magazines with an extremely
large readership are apparently considering writing stories about this.  Again,
some people aren't too thrilled about having taxpayer's $$ spent on electronic
broadcast of racist jokes.

	Footnote #2:  For quite a while now the Inspector General of the ARPAnet
has been threatening to remove Berkeley from the ARPAnet following a rash of
obscene postings from a certain site here (hint: famous composer, now dead).
Since I have no direct proof of any of this, please take it as a rumour and
not as fact (although the people I hear it from are pretty reliable).

	Relevant Issue: Censorship and the Role of the Moderator.  Should 
moderators censor material which could be considered obscene?  Do practical
matters override the vexing philosophical question at hand (should he who
wields the power to censor define censorship?  What IS defined as obscene, 
anyway?).  The practical matter I am referring to is basically that many
administrators feel that they would rather censor any posting that could
even be regarded as REMOTELY obscene rather than risk a loss of news access.
With the recent change in newsgroup structure, is anything REALLY ``moderated''
anymore?

	Once again, don't take any of these rumours as being definitive 
statements of ``the TRUTH.''  There are plenty of people out there who read
this newsgroup who are more in the know about many of these matters than I.

	Comments - cliches - commentaries - controversy - chatter - chit chat?

	See ya on Donahue...

	%%Rob

		Rob Rosen
		Computer Systems Support Group
		University of California

	rosen@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (the syntactically correct address)
	ucbvax!rosen (for people who actually LIKE source routing)