News for Nazis

One of the most important intellectual concepts in our society is the marketplace of ideas. Built on a foundation of governmentally-protected expression, the marketplace concept implies that individuals and institutions will freely introduce ideas into the public forum. These ideas will then be debated, bandied about and finally live or die based on their merit. This raises the moral question: To what extent must civic-minded citizens facilitate the spread of ideas they disagree with in order to maintain an honest discourse?

This question recently arose on the world's newest intellectual battleground, the Internet. Many who are familiar with the Internet use a service known as Usenet news. Usenet is a collection of "newsgroups", which are essentially inaccurately-named on-line discussion groups. Like most aspects of the Internet, Usenet has no central administration. Every institution that maintains a site on the 'Net (colleges, businesses, etc.) decides for itself which, if any, newsgroups it will carry.

Several months ago, a man named Milton Kleim posted a Call For Votes (CFV) to several newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy. An individual wishing to start a new newsgroup writes a CFV describing the proposed group and the rationale for its creation and then sends it to existing newsgroups whose readers might be interested in discussing the proposed topic. Individuals read the proposal and then send votes to a volunteer vote-collector who tallies them. The vote results are completely non-binding; as mentioned, every institution can decide for itself which newsgroups it wishes to maintain. This voting process is, however, a widely accepted semi-official means of maintaining order on the Internet. System administrators generally won't carry newsgroups that haven't been officially voted on, and vice-versa.

The name of the newsgroup proposed by Kleim-who is known as a "net-Nazi"-was rec.music.white-power, and it immediately caused an uproar. The main reason for this was Kleim's procedural violations. He only sent his CFV to existing groups that were political, rather than musical, in nature, and he also failed to provide any evidence that there was enough interest in whitepower music to justify the creation of the group. Thus, the CFV became seen as a political attempt to railroad whitepower sentiment into the mainstream and was rightfully dismissed by many in the Usenet community as lacking the relevance which is necessary to garner a "yes" vote.

The interesting aspect of the debate, however, focused on whether or not it was morally right to vote against the creation of the newsgroup based solely on its content. What if white-power music hadbeen the hot topic of the moment? Would individuals who believe in the marketplace of ideas and freedom of speech have had the responsibility to vote for the creation of the group, despite the repugnance of its topic? The majority opinion seemed to be that Usenet was a public forum and therefore it would be censorship to vote against the white power group if it could prove sufficient relevance.

But there is a valid philosophical reason for opposing the white power newsgroup that transcends the issue of its relevancy. Newsgroups do not exist in a public forum. The computers which carry Usenet news are privately owned resources, and each new group they carry takes up expensive disk space. There's a huge difference between an individual allowing an opponent to have his say, and that individual using his own private resources to propagate his opponent's views in a misguided notion of fair play. While it would be reprehensible for me to lobby for legislation banning neo-Nazi speech, it would be absurd for me to allow neo-Nazis to use my house as a recruiting station. It would also be entirely acceptable for me to try and convince a local privately-owned business to refuse to let the neo-Nazis utilize their resources.

Thus, it is perfectly morally acceptable for private individuals, by voting against the white-power newsgroup, to urge system administrators not to devote their limited, private resources to propagating these repugnant ideals.

David H. Goldbrenner's column appears on alternate Fridays.