As an aside, I don't watch TV Land much anymore. I liked them and Nick originally when they showed a lot of classics from the 1950s and early 1960s -- great shows that hadn't been seen for years. But now it's mostly 1980s/1990s stuff and just another station running syndicated reruns. I don't need a specialty cable network to watch "Cheers".
IMHO, that is a major weakness of the Internet. I don't know the technical details, but the idea of "anonymous" relay sites is foolish on a public network.
When the Internet was a tightly closed community, it could get away with no security (although I'm surprised college kids didn't try pranks with it even way back.) But what works in a closed community simply will not work in an open one.
It is ridiculous to me that we spend so much money on anti-virus software and other protections when the network itself should be hardened to protect the bad stuff from getting out on it. Despite all the protection and savvy people, my employer was knocked out of commission on several occasions from 'worms' and the like that flooded the emails. That kind of weakness is scary. Adding locks on the door will not prevent crime in the streets from entering -- we must clean up the crime in the first place.
I remember that controversy well. Again, once the Internet became a public network rather than a private one the rules needed to change.
I never bought into that early "anything goes" philosophy -- because that philosophy never existed anywhere else. Contrary to myth, college campus conversation never was as freewheeling, open, or as wideranging as educators want us to believe -- there was always some sort of constraint AND moderation of them.
In the 1960s it was trendy in some places to use foul language or explicit sex talk on campus. Most kids participated because it was fun to break the rules and they enjoyed doing something in class that they're parents would freak out over. But such talk also made a lot of people uncomfortable (even if they didn't say so at the time), and such people avoided from such discussions. So, what was supposedly a _wider_ discourse was actually a _narrower_ one.
In normal society, there are social and legal rules that normally prevent things from getting out of hand. Freedom of speech is protected, but someone who attempts to monopolize it and prevent others from speaking will eventually get knocked day. The overall society isn't perfect but it usually works out.
On the other hand, the Internet being technical rather than face-to-face presents a completely different set of challenges. The old social norms and enforceability don't work. I have seen several Usenet groups become worthless because of high volume abusive postings that drown out legitimate discourse.
Further, there's something about email that lets people say nasty things they otherwise wouldn't say in other media. Maybe because it's so easy to type it fast and send it without proofing as we once did when we typed or handwrote letters, or when speaking to someone face to face. And then of course there's anonymous email that is often used to harass and intimidate or worse.
Is it still the pioneer "netters" who fight efforts to block spam, or are corporate interests involved somewhat? IIRC, some spam fighting techiques were opposed by mainstream corporations because they can send out mass emails, too. (Sears fought against automated computer phone messages because it uses them to set up service call appts. I think they should spring to hire real people to do that.)
Thanks for your observations.
What scares me is that the pendulum might swing far in the other direction and draconian steps will be taken to "protect us".
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you term 'pioneer netters' are the only ones who know anything about the system at all. Corporate interests don't know beans about it. All they know is that when Gore invented the internet, he included 'cheap email' with it. If the 'pioneer netters' decided to shut the whole thing down -- bring it all to a sreaming halt for a couple days -- my feeling is ICANN and their mouthpiece Vint Cerf would soil their pants, right, John??? They take our registration money (paid for the domain names) and went off to Argentina in South America last week for a convention, where they could kiss each other's backsides and compliment each other on the fine job they are doing on the net. As has been said many times in the past, ICANN hopes to rip off the net entirely from most of us and give it to commercial interests, and MCI is one of the principals in the scheme.What I do not understand is why ICANN does not cut to the chase and declare this to be all one big SpamNet, where the rest of us innocent bystanders is 'allowed to send messages if we wish'. Instead of using Spam Assassin and the like, the rule will just just toss it all out except for persons X, Y and Z provided _we_ have paid fees to use it. PAT]