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An Alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet
Section - 4. Basic Philosophies

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4.1) Declaration of Free Speech

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Humans are created
equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Unhindered Communications, Unregulated
Exchange of Ideas, and Freedom of Speech, that to secure these rights
the Usenet is instituted on networks of the world, that when any
administration of Usenet becomes destructive to these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institue new
administration, laying its foundation on such Principles, and
organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Free Communication.

[With much thanks to the Declaration of Independence]

4.2) What is True Free Speech?

True Free Speech is that speech which is hindered by nothing other
than the speaking individual's own ethics (see definition above). 

Where True Free Speech exists, no external party may restrict someone
else's speech, for any reason, period. 

Speech, in the above definition, does *not* restrict another's speech.
It can't. It takes a person to *act* on that speech to restrict
another's speech. That person, then, would be the responsible party.
A news admin setting up a news server to act is one way to create the
illusion of speech-restrictive speech.

The litmus test for True Free Speech is speech that makes you -want-
to silence another person. If that speech is not silencable by you 
(whether you want to or not), you have a state of True Free Speech.

4.3) What is net abuse?

Any action that stops a properly configured transport system from
performing its normal store and forward services.

The key words are "properly configured". For that definition, you'll
have to see the "Site of Virtue" FAQ. 

4.4) What is Censorship?

Censorship is the restriction of communicated ideas based on their
expression style or their content. On Usenet, this is defined as
reading or parsing anything but certain specific headers of a news
article to determine whether or not to delete it from the news spool
of a news server.

By this criterion, the following RFC 1036 headers can NOT be
interpreted in any way, in order to avoid censorship:

Sender:
From:
Subject:
NNTP-Posting-Host:
Approved:

Also, any invokation of the "Usenet Death Penalty" by aliasing a site
out of one's feed is considered blatant censorship, unless a clear
newsfeed redundancy problem can be identified.


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Top Document: An Alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet
Previous Document: 3. Basic Definitions
Next Document: 5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills)

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Last Update August 08 2012 @ 06:20 AM