o Apple has, as of the last 24 hours, killed off alt.sex.* on the internal
networks (not apple.com. Why not? Hell, I have no idea) because it was
determined its very existence made apple liable for sexual harassment by
some of the management.
o As part of the hurricane that this is just starting to cause (you can guess,
right?) someone leaked a memo from Xerox. Evidently Xerox has decided that as
of Jan 1, ALL recreational/personal (i.e. non-work oriented) mailing lists
are going away. They are, according to the memo, giving plenty of warning so
that network managers can deal with the expected negative reaction of the
users to this (that goes without saying). They're reason is that the volume
of traffic and the cost of the equipment needed to keep it all going has just
gotten too large, and something has to give. So the toys (so to speak) go.
I'm assuming this memo is legitimate -- it looks like it to me.
I've been sort of expecting stuff like this to start happening, and maybe
this is the beginning, maybe it's two more isolated cases in a continuing
stream. But sooner or later (probably sooner, and no, this isn't the end of
the net coming...) USENET is going to have to come to grips with two things:
+ the "if I want it it's okay" mentality that brought us stuff like
alt.sex.*. At some point someone's going to do something that's going to
make people say "enough" and start cleaning house. I think
alt.sex.graphics, if not putting places over the edge, is really making
lots of folks uncomfortable.
+ volume. Over the years there's been a lot of "how can the technology
handle this traffic?" whimpering -- the traditional "end of the net as we
know it" stuff. But the restriction at Xerox is financial -- they can't
AFFORD to continue the recreational stuff (or at least it's become
non-trivial enough they won't support it any longer. This isn't IBM we're
talking about that has always been actively hostile to recreational
groups, either. Xerox has a strong user community and history). How much
farther can USENET grow in technology before "hiding it in the budget"
stops working?
These both tie into the same thing for me: at some point USENET is going to
have to grow up -- become responsible for its content and be aware of its
use of resources. And, knowing USENET's history, it will do so kicking,
screaming, stomping on the ground, turning blue and screaming censorship all
the way. More and more, I'm seeing places that used to be "whatever,
however" in attitude take new looks at things. At some point, USENET
outgrows it's financial usefulness.
Then what? (and how close is that?)
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16