Re:Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back a...
by Animats on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @11:26PM
(#14699797)
Actually, that's a misquote from an incident at Stanford involving USENET in the early 1980s. There was an administration attempt to censor alt.humor.funny over some forgotten PC issue. The group was blocked at the main Stanford USENET gateway.
It didn't work. USENET nodes, when they connect, automatically exchange any messages in any group common to both that the other node hasn't seen. There were a few other USENET low-bandwidth nodes on campus that connected to the outside world, and as long as there was at least one, the missing posts in "alt.humor.funny" would be re-inserted. USENET really did route around censorship automatically.
It didn't work. USENET nodes, when they connect, automatically exchange any messages in any group common to both that the other node hasn't seen. There were a few other USENET low-bandwidth nodes on campus that connected to the outside world, and as long as there was at least one, the missing posts in "alt.humor.funny" would be re-inserted. USENET really did route around censorship automatically.