Internet Content Regulation is NOT off-topic!

Mike Salovesh t20mxs1 at CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU
Mon Sep 13 19:43:04 UTC 1999


Grant:

Thank you for the URLs of sites discussing the recent conference, hosted
by the Bertelsmann publishing people, on regulating and controlling
content on the Internet.  Interesting and spine-chilling stuff.

It's true that your posting and the links you provided are not, in and
of themselves, directly on the subject of American dialects.

So what?

ADS-L is extremely vulnerable to the kinds of attacks some people at the
conference would direct at the free exchange of information on the
Internet.  Linguists and dialecticians have a habit of looking at words
as words that could shock the censorious.  We're perfectly capable of
considering alternate etymologies for the word "fuck", for example.
(Even though he never convinced me he was serious about it, let alone
right in his derivation, I've always loved George Trager's allegation
that "fuck" is clearly derived from something Latinate on the order of
"facere", to do or to make.)

The second half of the preceding paragaph could, for all I know, shut
ADS-L out of filtered search machines.  All that BSF ("bad stuff
filtering) does is holler "Gotcha!" when it runs across a "dirty word".

Net censorship is aimed at you and me, folks.  Grant's hackles are up,
he says -- and I say that he has it right.  Censorship could be the
death of this list.  Survival in the face of hostile attack is NEVER off
topic.

Check out the links Grant sent us and yor hackles will rise, too.

--  mike salovesh             <salovesh at niu.edu>        PEACE !!!



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