"Thus the first cyber-activists were able to use this decentralized architecture and Usenet (developed in the USSR in 1982) to circumvent traditional censorship

"Thus the first cyber-activists were able to use this decentralized architecture and Usenet (developed in the USSR in 1982) to circumvent traditional censorship." That should read, "re-inveneted in USSR". Tom Truscott [0] and Jim Ellis [1] are the creators of Usenet. Bnews was indeed released in '82, using UUCP to exchange between machines. [2] This was before NNTP. In '95, Truscott and Ellis received the Flame award at USENIX.[3] Guess what for? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Truscott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Truscott [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Ellis_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Ellis_%28computing%29 [2] http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node256.html http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node256.html [3] 1995: "the third Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Tom Truscott, Steve Bellovin, and Jim Ellis for their work in creating USENET." ~ https://www.usenix.org/about/flame https://www.usenix.org/about/flame