Many Important Items in the News

[Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>]

>>All the more reason to allow the backbone admins the power to not pass
>>anonymous articles.  It won't work, they'll feel like they're in
>>control, and everyone wins.

>wait, are you advocating news admins allowed to filter anonymous mail
>from downstream/upstream feeds?  I don't get this.

Yes.  If someone doesn't want to pass traffic, let them.  It's
extremely foolish; they'll get a bad rep for it.  If they're a
commercial site, they'll lose customers.  If they're not, they'll lose
face.  Freedom to filter is freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.

But as Peter Honeyman points out, filtering anonymous posts won't work
to prevent them from being passed around, and they'll continue to use
external channels to pressure connectivity and administration.  These
channels have no technical amelioration; doing politics in the broad
sense is the only solution for this.

Eric