One of my favorite arguments, of course, is that the net has tended
only to address the traffic *volume* issues, while as a whole not wanting
to worry about the "quality" issues. It's the increase in volume, with
if anything a continuing decay of the signal/noise ratio, which has
driven many of the "old-timers" (including myself) into much more
restricted reading of and participation in the net than some years ago.
Another largely ignored issue all along has been the legal
ramifications of much of the material flowing around. This has
become more acute, with sexually oriented pictures (clearly
pornographic under various local and state laws) being moved around
on the NSF backbone and passed through and in some cases archived on
highly visible sites.
Remember that serious charges were recently brought against GTE, even
though they are an *official* common carrier, for carrying the now
defunct American Exxxstacy (sic) X-rated movie service--even though
they were simply a third party carrier with no control over the content.
They got out of it by dropping the service from the satellite using an
escape clause in their contract--in the process destroying not only
the X-rated service but other R and PG/G rated services run by the
same firm (in fact, they drove the firm out of business).
This was all triggered by ONE politically ambitious district attorney
(in Alabama I believe), who decided to apply his local community
standards to a national service. The vulnerability of the net in
this area, or more specifically of major sites that support the net,
would seem to be growing.
--Lauren--
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16