Just days after CompuServe banned access to 200 Usenet newsgroups because of pressure from the Bavarian government, Duncan Frissell, a New York lawyer and privacy consultant, posted an elegant proof of the axiom that "the Net sees censorship as damage and routes around it."
His proof took the form of step-by-step instructions for reading those banned newsgroups through the CompuServe Network – even if you live in Germany. It goes like this:
Use the CompuServe Dialer, available free with a CompuServe account, to establish a PPP connection to the Internet.
Download one of the freely available Usenet readers such as Free Agent for the PC (ftp://ftp.forteinc.com/pub/free_agent/fagent10.zip) or NewsWatcher for Macs (ftp://ftp.acns.nwu.edu/pub/newswatcher/newswatcher-211.sea.hqx).
Find an Internet site that offers public access to Usenet. There's a list of such sites at http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~jwa/opensites.html.
Point your Usenet reader to the chosen address, sit back, and enjoy the pictures from alt.binaries.erotic.senior-citizens – brought to you by the CompuServe Network.
More details are available at http://www.cs.umass.edu/~lmccarth/cypherpunks/banned.html.
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Beating the Bavarians
