On the Net, the people who answered my queries had another major complaint—the inability of NandO.Net to make alt.sex-style groups conveniently available. Frank Daniels made no apologies. However liberal towns like Chapel Hill might be, the state as a whole was of the opposite bent. And that included more than a few church-goers in Raleigh. “The community standards of our community don’t mix with some of the sexual parts of Usenet,” Daniels said, “so we edit them out.” In addition, most subscribers were children. “I have a seven year old,” he said, “and I don’t want him delving into alt.sex.bestiality or those other places.” Many of the Netheads would have said that one person’s “editing” was another’s “censorship.” I myself, however, understood Daniel’s worries. At least two other Net services were available in the same area, so it wasn’t as if he were gatekeeping for the entire town; what’s more, he said that when the software allowed, the sex-related newsgroups would be available as an option. Just the same, the issue epitomized the clash between the gatekeeping ethos and that of the Internet. More serious than the lack of alt.sex, to my mind, was Daniels’ failure to appreciate sufficiently the political freedom of Usenet, the same service that had attracted him to the Internet in the first place. I complained to him that his own BBS included far, far less in the way of political discussion than I’d have wanted, and I contrasted this to the robust debates of Usenet. “To be honest, David,” he said, “I think one of the least useful pieces of the Internet so far is their political discussions. They’re not very good ones. There’s a lot of flaming. The political discussions aren’t very productive. I follow mainly the local ones here. These people discuss national issues and never have a policymaker looking in there. So why discuss it if it isn’t going to have an impact on policy?”