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Evil Empires and Censorship

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From Russia with Love

The e-mail from Russia was complaining about traffic on the net stirring up anti-Russian sentiment. The e-mail presented many questions to a shocked White House:

Were they supposed to be on the net? Yes, because they were all connected. To ARPA (A defence sponsored activity)? Was this a threat to national security? It was soon discovered that the Kremlin had gained access to the net via Amsterdam, a site most Americans didn't even realise was on the net, they thought the net was just US. The fact that there was an extensive UUCP network in Europe was completely ignored at the time.

People in the US took one of two sides. Either they thought it was wonderful, world peace has come at last or that it was terrible, the Russians are on our net. Some people even wanted to cut the phone lines - how dare Amsterdam use the net!

Check your calendars guys!

As it turned out the e-mail was a hoax from Amsterdam, an April Fools joke. The hoax had put Europe on the map as far as the net was concerned and highlighted the growing desire for censorship that was starting to become an issue in America.

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The ALT groups

No one had tested the uncensorabillity of the net until John Gillmore dragged it into the middle of the US war on Drugs. He created a news group about drugs but USENET wouldnt carry it because managers were afraid that their staff would use the net to talk about drugs. Gillmore was concerned about this so he took advantage of the directory structure of USENET and created a new directory called Alt that had to be requested (other ones were sent automatically), the theory being that you had to request Alt groups. So those who were afraid to carry it didn't have to.

But would it be able to spread if half the net refused to take it? Alt groups had only a small percentage of the newsgroup market and it wasn't until alt.sex came along that Alt's share rocketed to over 90% which is where its been ever since.

The Underground Network

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