User:Vivek.m1234/Myyyyyyyyyyyy Cyberspace Stuff

Grex, also known as Cyberspace Communications is a nonprofit, charitable (501(c)(3)), public access UNIX system, on the Internet. Its server is physically located in Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA, and is community owned and operated. It is one of the oldest, completely free, shell provider in existence today.

Grex
Grex came on line on June 26, 1991 and opened to the public on July 18. It ran on a Sun 2 computer, had four public dial-in lines, and was housed rent-free in a warehouse. A non-profit corporation called Cyberspace Communications with an assumed business name of Grex, was formed to run it. Grex has always been firmly dedicated to open access. To ensure democratic operation of the system, they have compiled a set of by-laws allowing any member to call for a binding referendum on any issue. Grex thrived in the academic environment and culture that proximity to the University of Michigan provided and its early development was influenced by this.

Days in the "Dungeon"
The "Dungeon" was located in the basement of a 150 year old house on the west side of Ann Arbor, in a very small space about 7 x 13 feet, and its raison d'être was to house Grex's collection of computers, modems, telephone interfaces, and other electronic equipment. Most of the time the dungeon was left unattended with the lights off, because the equipment ran by itself, or could be controlled and configured remotely by telephone. Occasionally it was necessary for a staff member of Grex to come around and do maintenance on this equipment, so there were a couple of chairs placed in the room, but there never was much room for anything else.

The Pumpkin, circa 1996
Grex's computers were housed in small windowless room in an old industrial building in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The rent was $60 a month (exclusive of electricity) and the room was called "The Pumpkin". Its walls were a pumpkin orange-pink, and there were pumpkin leaves and flowers, and the occasional butterfly, painted on it.

Provide Net
Currently Grex is at provide.net

Services
The system currently runs on an OpenBSD 4.4 server and offers complete, unprivileged, and free Unix shell access to all its users.

Lots of Unix programs and utilities, including a BBS (Backtalk), chat program (party), email programs (Pine, Mutt), and developer tools (GCC, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Expect, MySQL, GDB, Strace) have been made available at no cost to the lay user. Users can also host their personal-website (eg: http://johndoe.cyberspace.org), and are permitted to run CGI scripts.

Outbound access from Grex, for non-members, is severely restricted and IRC bots and bouncers do not work because of patches implemented at the kernel level; mailing lists and file storage are also not provided.

As a member (who has made a donation and sent ID), you can: vote in Grex elections, serve on the board of Cyberspace Communications, access outbound SSH, FTP, and IRC sites from Grex. You can also access web sites running on unusual ports, from Grex using (lynx or links).

The simplest way to access Grex and its myriad services is to create a new account, by connecting to cyberspace.org via telnet and typing newuser at the login prompt. However, due to constant abuse by script kiddies, a newuser has to 'validate' his account after logging in. This is done by typing help at the restricted shell and following the instructions provided. Validation costs you nothing, and gives you complete access to all services. If you wish to read the conferences anonymously you can use this link.

Software
Grex runs some unique and antiquated software that was cutting edge at a time when computer conferencing systems were not widely available.


 * Newuser: Grex runs two versions of the newuser program, used to create a new user-account. The web based newuser program can be accessed from here and the telnet version can be accessed from [telnet://cyberspace.org/ here].
 * PicoSpan: a computer conferencing software.
 * Backtalk v0.9.0, was first released on Oct 6 1997. Backtalk is a Picospan clone and is open source and available under a Gnu Public License.
 * YAPP v3.0, or Yet Another Picospan Program was written by Dave Thaler. It's more difficult to install and maintain than Motet, and it has a relatively clunky feel. Like Caucus, it does have a command-line interface.
 * Cursive v0.11: a program to generate signatures and text using ASCII was written in 1985.
 * Party, The original version of party was written by Marcus Watts for System III Unix some time around 1983, for use on the original Mike Myers' M-Net system (this was the second free public-access Unix system in the world). An early version of party migrated to CDDB (the first public-access Unix system in the world) where it sprouted many new features, including channels.
 * Orville-Write v2.55.0, is an alternative to the default write program. It has many features which are not present in the default write including helper flags, telegrams, access control, and more.

Size
The Grex community has varied in size over the years. This is dated, 7/26/98 10:51:13 AM: We've been getting lots of new users. On the average day, we get 175 people signing up for new accounts. Last Saturday we had 250 new users, a new record. We keep breaking our records though. Grex now has about 24,000 users. At the current rate of growth, we expect to exceed 64K users sometime next summer. This has our Unix gurus worried because most versions of Unix, including ours, go cross-eyed at the concept of more than 64K users.

Currently Grex is small enough that you could read the bulk of the conferences daily, and address most of the regular posters on a first name basis. Conferences include Agora - the main meeting place, Programming, Cooking, Music, Gardening and many others. There is a group chat room called 'party', but the number of users you find online, vary depending on the day of the week and time. The majority of regular Grex users are from Ann Arbor, Michigan, but the Internet being what it is, users login from anywhere - from American soldiers in Afghanistan using SSH, to people from China.

Grex Walk
A group of Grexers meet every Saturday morning at 10 AM, throughout the entire year for a walk through the Arboretum, followed by lunch at the local eatery. The meeting place is at Gallup Park and everyone is invited. The walk usually gets underway at about 10:15, so don't worry about being a few minutes late.

Policy, governance and finances
Cyberspace Communications functions as an online democracy, with policies set by its users. The Co-op Conference is open to all users and provides a forum for discussing policy issues. The Board of Directors, elected by the members, is the formal governing body and uses consensus in the Co-op Conference as its primary guide for making decisions. Any member of Grex who can attend the monthly meetings, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is eligible to run for the Board of Directors. In addition, any member can call a binding vote by the membership on any policy issue. The Articles of Incorporation and by-laws can be viewed online. Since Cyberspace Communications is a non-profit and a registered public charity, it is supported entirely by donations from users, and all staff members are volunteers.

Cyberspace vs Engler
In 1978, the Michigan state legislature enacted a statute to protect children by prohibiting the distribution of obscene materials to children of that state (1978 Public Act 33, M.C.L. 722.671 et seq.; M.S.A. 25.254(1) et. seq). In an effort to modernize the statute due to the advent of computers, the Legislature then amended the statute by means of 1999 Public act 33. The act primarily attempted two things: 1) it added criminal prohibitions against using computers or the Internet to disseminate sexually explicit materials to minors 2) it changed the language of the statute so that the statute prohibits the dissemination of "sexually explicit" materials to minors rather than "obscene" materials.

The amendments to M.C.L. 722.671 et seq., was signed by Defendant, John Engler, the Governor of Michigan on June 1, 1999. It was set to take effect on August 1, 1999. Violations were punishable by up to two years in jail, and a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Cyberspace claimed that the Act would adversely impact them because it was unconstitutionally vague or over-broad. They maintained that it would have a chilling effect on their freedom of speech under the First Amendment. People logging in to cyberspace.org, communicate online, both within and outside of the state of Michigan. Their speech would be accessible within and outside of the state of Michigan. For this reason, Cyberspace argued that the Act violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. They requested that the Court issue a preliminary injunction to enjoin the amendments to the statute.

Michael J. Steinberg, Legal Director of the ACLU of Michigan said that "The law would reduce the level of discourse on the Internet to that which is appropriate to a seven year-old,"

The Court concluded that a preliminary injunction would not cause substantial harm to others, but would serve the public interest, because it would protect the free expression of millions of Internet users both within and outside the State of Michigan.

Cyberspace vs Engler is often quoted on the web and in books on law, in the context of free speech on the Internet.