Re: Anti-Spambot: what algorithm should be used?

Another problem: what would prevent an anti-spam zealot from posting
the following:

    From: antispammer@usenet.cabal.com
    Newsgroups: rec.sports.phishing,alt.fan.alice
    Message-ID: <123@bob.server>

    <something phishing-related>
    --
    Alice's ID# 123456  Drink Kaka Kola -- Kaka Cola is full of shit,
			do not drink it, I am just collecting $$ from
			stupid Alice, Hahaha!!!


Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> 
> i think that it is a good idea.
> 
> remember though that it will not be hard to modify newsreader clients to
> automatically killfile all articles matching Alice's regexps, or even to
> grab them automatically from her website. So Alice may discover that her
> business is not as effective.
> 
> igor
> 
> Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> > 
> > owner-cypherpunks@manifold.algebra.com writes:
> > 
> > > As we all know, there exist certain programs, called "spambots", whose
> > > task is to post various messages to many newsgroups simultaneously.
> > > 
> > > Besides their posting functionality, certain spambot programs take
> > > special care to make their spams undetectable by anti-spambots. In
> > > particular, they can be programmed to modify certain fields or the
> > > message text itself in such a way that these messages would not look
> > > unique, but would still carry the same content.
> > 
> > I just came up with yet another brilliant idea how to combine Usenet
> > marketing with e-cash. Suppose Alice runs an advertizing agency and gets
> > paid to publicize certain messages of commercial or political nature.
> > 
> > She sets up a Web page listing the catalog of regexps that she wishes to
> > publicize. Something like:
> > 
> > 1. Visit.*teens.*http://www.xxxfoo.bar
> > 2. Elect.*John M. Grubor.*sheriff
> > 4. For a drooling good time.*900-555-5555
> > 3. Drink Kaka Cola
> > 
> > and a price list for each regexp - say, $2 for posting this regexp in a
> > moderated newsgroup, 50c for the Big 8, 25c for alt and regionals. I'm
> > not sure if cross-posts should be discounted. Assuming there are several
> > such Alices, the prices will be set by supply and demand.
> > 
> > Suppose Bob, in search of a few quick bucks, comes across Alice's site.
> > We'd have to think of a protocol, but Alice assigns Bob an id which he
> > must mention together with the regexps in order to get credit. Alice and
> > Bob enter a contract. Bob puts one or more of Alice's regexps in his
> > Usenet articles - most likely in the .signature. For example:
> > 
> >    From: bob
> >    Newsgroups: rec.sports.phishing,alt.fan.alice
> >    Message-ID: <123@bob.server>
> >    <something phishing-related>
> >    --
> >    Elect John M. Grubor sheriff!!!            Alice's ID# 123456
> >    I am Bob! I am Bob! I am Bob the Poster!   Drink Kaka Kola
> > 
> > Alice's bot searches the Usenet feed (like K*bo and S*rd*r) for the
> > regexps that she is paid to promote. When she encounters Bob's article,
> > it extracts Bob's ID and the Message-Id, counts the distinct regexps, and
> > the newsgroups, and credits Bob's account.
> > 
> > If Carol follows up on Bob's article and quotes Bob's regexps and ID#,
> > then Bob gets paid again. If somehow an article contains the ID# of two
> > or more of Alice's agents, they split the fee.
> > 
> > Alice's contract can also specify that if a third party forges a cancel
> > within a week for Bob's Usenet article containing the regexp, then Alice
> > will pay nothing and let Bob sue the forger for the lost income. (This
> > may become moot as more and more ISPs ignore forged cancels.) This gives
> > Bob the insentive to spam intelligently - not to trigger any cancelbots
> > and not to have his plug pulled by his ISP.
> > 
> > Alice can also put some reasonable caps on the number of repetitions
> > because if Bob posts the same regexp 10,000 times, the marginal exposure
> > is less from Bob than from a newbie Carol. Again, if there are several
> > such Alices, the market will take care of negotiating such details.
> > 
> > Actually, this doesn't even need e-cash - Alice can pay regular $$$.
> > Hi Ross - if you're still on these lists, I think you'll like this.
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
> > Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 	- Igor.
> 



	- Igor.

> Another problem: what would prevent an anti-spam zealot from posting
> the following:
>
>     From: antispammer@usenet.cabal.com
>     Newsgroups: rec.sports.phishing,alt.fan.alice
>     Message-ID: <123@bob.server>
>
>     <something phishing-related>
>     --
>     Alice's ID# 123456  Drink Kaka Kola -- Kaka Cola is full of shit,
> 			do not drink it, I am just collecting $$ from
> 			stupid Alice, Hahaha!!!

Yes, Bob could post something like "drink kaka cola and die" and
"elect John M Gubor Sheriff if you want to be arrested".
Hopefully, most Bob's won't.

I guess the solution is for Alice's clients to pick regexps such
that _any_ publicity is good publicity - such as a URL or a 900 number.
If the regexp is "John Gilmore is a cocksucker", what can Bob add to it? :-)

> remember though that it will not be hard to modify newsreader clients to
> automatically killfile all articles matching Alice's regexps, or even to
> grab them automatically from her website. So Alice may discover that her
> business is not as effective.

Killfiles? So many scumbags whine about their inability to use them,
so they try to silence whomever they don't like.

Yes, if Alice just posts her regexps on a public Web page, a clueful
person can automatically fetch them and add them to his killfile or
even forge cancels for Bobs' articles that contain them.

I think this would be a stupid thing to do because Bobs' articles
may contain useful information besides Alice's ad. Also the regexp
might occur in a followup to Bob's article, which may contain
useful information.

But of course a reader is welcome to cut off his own nose to spite
and face and to killfile anything he likes - as long as he doesn't
prevent others from reading what they feel like reading.

Alice can try to keep her list of regexp's "confidential" and only
give it out to Bobs that are the prospective posters. I don't think
this would work. Someone would pose as a potential agent, obtain
the list of regexps, and post it (perhaps via an anonymous remailer).
So Alice might as well make it public.

Another possible candidate for killfile trigger is the "Alice ID".
Alice can make it harder by not using one (as I originally proposed)
but instead by recognizing the address "From:" header.

> marketing with e-cash. Suppose Alice runs an advertizing agency and gets
> paid to publicize certain messages of commercial or political nature.
>
> She sets up a Web page listing the catalog of regexps that she wishes to
> publicize. Something like:
>
> 1. Visit.*teens.*http://www.xxxfoo.bar
> 2. Elect.*John M. Grubor.*sheriff
> 4. For a drooling good time.*900-555-5555
> 3. Drink Kaka Cola
>
> and a price list for each regexp - say, $2 for posting this regexp in a
> moderated newsgroup, 50c for the Big 8, 25c for alt and regionals. I'm
> not sure if cross-posts should be discounted. Assuming there are several
> such Alices, the prices will be set by supply and demand.

Alice doesn't want to pay Bob for posting in alt.i.just.made.this.up.
Therefore Alice should provide the explicit list of newsgroups that
she monitors and for which she pays.

> Suppose Bob, in search of a few quick bucks, comes across Alice's site.
> We'd have to think of a protocol, but Alice assigns Bob an id which he
> must mention together with the regexps in order to get credit. Alice and
> Bob enter a contract. Bob puts one or more of Alice's regexps in his
> Usenet articles - most likely in the .signature. For example:
>
>    From: bob
>    Newsgroups: rec.sports.phishing,alt.fan.alice
>    Message-ID: <123@bob.server>
>    <something phishing-related>
>    --
>    Elect John M. Grubor sheriff!!!            Alice's ID# 123456
>    I am Bob! I am Bob! I am Bob the Poster!   Drink Kaka Kola

On the second thought, Alice may not need a prior contract with Bob,
nor the ID#. She can just list the regexps she's trying to promote
on her web page and go promiscuously by the address in the From: header.

> Alice's bot searches the Usenet feed (like K*bo and S*rd*r) for the
> regexps that she is paid to promote. When she encounters Bob's article,
> it extracts Bob's ID and the Message-Id, counts the distinct regexps, and
> the newsgroups, and credits Bob's account.
>
> If Carol follows up on Bob's article and quotes Bob's regexps and ID#,
> then Bob gets paid again. If somehow an article contains the ID# of two
> or more of Alice's agents, they split the fee.

And if we forego the ID# and just look at the From: header then it's
simpler: if Carol quotes Bob's article and includes a regexp, then Carol
gets an e-mail from Alice with some e-cash, perhaps sent via an
anonymous remailer.

One problem is that a lot of people put fake addresses in the from:
fields. Why waste good e-cash on e-mail to addresses that bounce?

What Alice could do is send an e-mail like
 "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
  a message that I'm paying to promote. Here is a cookie;
  if you return this cookie, I'll send you $n e-cash."
If it bounces, or if the recipient never sends back the cookie - too bad.

> Alice's contract can also specify that if a third party forges a cancel
> within a week for Bob's Usenet article containing the regexp, then Alice
> will pay nothing and let Bob sue the forger for the lost income. (This
> may become moot as more and more ISPs ignore forged cancels.) This gives
> Bob the insentive to spam intelligently - not to trigger any cancelbots
> and not to have his plug pulled by his ISP.

After Alice's bot finds an eligible Usenet article, it should wait
a week or so to see if it was cancelled or superseded before issuing a
payment. If it's cancelled, then instead of payment it should send
a notice saying:
 "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
  a message that I'm paying to promote. I would have paid
  you $n e-cash, but unfortunately a cancel has been issued
  for your article: <quote cancel>"
That should get Bob pretty mad at the 3rd party canceller. :-)

> Alice can also put some reasonable caps on the number of repetitions
> because if Bob posts the same regexp 10,000 times, the marginal exposure
> is less from Bob than from a newbie Carol. Again, if there are several
> such Alices, the market will take care of negotiating such details.

Alice needs to maintain a map of (poster,newsgroup,regexp) to # posts;
when it reaches 100, stop paying this poster. I think 100 mentions by
the same poster is way past saturation.

Ross: yes, unfortunately the spambot is on the back burner right now,
but I definitely will finish it eventually.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> > Another problem: what would prevent an anti-spam zealot from posting
> > the following:
> >
> >     From: antispammer@usenet.cabal.com
> >     Newsgroups: rec.sports.phishing,alt.fan.alice
> >     Message-ID: <123@bob.server>
> >
> >     <something phishing-related>
> >     --
> >     Alice's ID# 123456  Drink Kaka Kola -- Kaka Cola is full of shit,
> > 			do not drink it, I am just collecting $$ from
> > 			stupid Alice, Hahaha!!!
> 
> Yes, Bob could post something like "drink kaka cola and die" and
> "elect John M Gubor Sheriff if you want to be arrested".
> Hopefully, most Bob's won't.

That's questionable at best. Also, there can be so much ingenuity in
making the ads appear unreadable, that it would be hard to watch who
is good and who is bad.

For example, how about this signature that purports to advertise
http://www.kaka-kola.com:

^L^L^L
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
= please ignore contents of this sig -- skdjhgf asdgf -- == <blink>
<color=#000000> = http://www.devnull.com http://acd http://www.www.www
http://www.kaka-kola.com http://xxx == </color></blink> == this sig
intentionally made unreadable to cheat alice ==
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

> I guess the solution is for Alice's clients to pick regexps such
> that _any_ publicity is good publicity - such as a URL or a 900 number.
> If the regexp is "John Gilmore is a cocksucker", what can Bob add to it? :-)

See above

> > remember though that it will not be hard to modify newsreader clients to
> > automatically killfile all articles matching Alice's regexps, or even to
> > grab them automatically from her website. So Alice may discover that her
> > business is not as effective.
> 
> Killfiles? So many scumbags whine about their inability to use them,
> so they try to silence whomever they don't like.

> Yes, if Alice just posts her regexps on a public Web page, a clueful
> person can automatically fetch them and add them to his killfile or
> even forge cancels for Bobs' articles that contain them.

> I think this would be a stupid thing to do because Bobs' articles
> may contain useful information besides Alice's ad. Also the regexp
> might occur in a followup to Bob's article, which may contain
> useful information.

Well, one can modify newsreaders to delete only lines that match
the regexps, but show other parts of the article. That may be one
of the pieces of functionailty of libkillfile.so that I once mentioned.

> Alice can try to keep her list of regexp's "confidential" and only
> give it out to Bobs that are the prospective posters. I don't think
> this would work. Someone would pose as a potential agent, obtain
> the list of regexps, and post it (perhaps via an anonymous remailer).
> So Alice might as well make it public.

Agree.
 
> Another possible candidate for killfile trigger is the "Alice ID".
> Alice can make it harder by not using one (as I originally proposed)
> but instead by recognizing the address "From:" header.

Another thing Alice can do is to make Bob post an encrypted ID, such
that each time it is encrypted with a separate "session" key. The
keys do not have to be that long.

Instead of ID Bob can encrypt the address to send the money to, and
possibly his public key. That generally adds robustness to the system,
since there would be no known person to complain about.

Bob can also ask Alice to generate a lot of IDs for him -- like 1000 or
so -- to use them later. Alice would have to keep a database of 
ID <---> email address correspondence.

Alice can set up an autoresponder bot getid@alice.com that would generate
IDs and send them back to requestors.

> On the second thought, Alice may not need a prior contract with Bob,
> nor the ID#. She can just list the regexps she's trying to promote
> on her web page and go promiscuously by the address in the From: header.
> 
> And if we forego the ID# and just look at the From: header then it's
> simpler: if Carol quotes Bob's article and includes a regexp, then Carol
> gets an e-mail from Alice with some e-cash, perhaps sent via an
> anonymous remailer.
> 
> One problem is that a lot of people put fake addresses in the from:
> fields. Why waste good e-cash on e-mail to addresses that bounce?

See above.
 
> What Alice could do is send an e-mail like
>  "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
>   a message that I'm paying to promote. Here is a cookie;
>   if you return this cookie, I'll send you $n e-cash."
> If it bounces, or if the recipient never sends back the cookie - too bad.

If it bounces, Alice would usually get the money back in the bounce message.

Can't alice put a stop on a piece of digital cash? I am not sure, but it
may be possible. It is surely possible with adding one more trusted party,
and some more signing and encryption, anyway.

> > Alice's contract can also specify that if a third party forges a cancel
> > within a week for Bob's Usenet article containing the regexp, then Alice
> > will pay nothing and let Bob sue the forger for the lost income. (This
> > may become moot as more and more ISPs ignore forged cancels.) This gives
> > Bob the insentive to spam intelligently - not to trigger any cancelbots
> > and not to have his plug pulled by his ISP.
> 
> After Alice's bot finds an eligible Usenet article, it should wait
> a week or so to see if it was cancelled or superseded before issuing a
> payment. If it's cancelled, then instead of payment it should send
> a notice saying:
>  "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
>   a message that I'm paying to promote. I would have paid
>   you $n e-cash, but unfortunately a cancel has been issued
>   for your article: <quote cancel>"
> That should get Bob pretty mad at the 3rd party canceller. :-)

Alice can then cheat and issue the cancels herself. Since most spammers
are crooks, I expect that to happen a lot. No good.

> > Alice can also put some reasonable caps on the number of repetitions
> > because if Bob posts the same regexp 10,000 times, the marginal exposure
> > is less from Bob than from a newbie Carol. Again, if there are several
> > such Alices, the market will take care of negotiating such details.
> 
> Alice needs to maintain a map of (poster,newsgroup,regexp) to # posts;
> when it reaches 100, stop paying this poster. I think 100 mentions by
> the same poster is way past saturation.

I can generate a gazillion posters from algebra.com.

Of course, Alice can also introduce per-domain restrictions.

	- Igor.

> > Yes, Bob could post something like "drink kaka cola and die" and
> > "elect John M Gubor Sheriff if you want to be arrested".
> > Hopefully, most Bob's won't.
> 
> That's questionable at best. Also, there can be so much ingenuity in
> making the ads appear unreadable, that it would be hard to watch who
> is good and who is bad.

Good - let them exercise their ingenuity rather than forge cancels and
pull plugs.

> For example, how about this signature that purports to advertise
> http://www.kaka-kola.com:
> 
> ^L^L^L
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> = please ignore contents of this sig -- skdjhgf asdgf -- == <blink>
> <color=#000000> = http://www.devnull.com http://acd http://www.www.www
> http://www.kaka-kola.com http://xxx == </color></blink> == this sig
> intentionally made unreadable to cheat alice ==
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, I see several approaches:

1. For some kinds of advertizing messages, like 900 numbers, even the kind
of exposure you describe is good exposure.

2. Alice's bot can state that it won't pay for articles that contain certain
kinds of "taboo" regexps - "fuck", "shit", "piss", "cunt", "spam", "Alice...".

3. When is the contract created, if at all? Alice can just review the traffic
by hand, as a human, and decide on her whim that she won't be paying this
particular Bob anymore.

> > Yes, if Alice just posts her regexps on a public Web page, a clueful
> > person can automatically fetch them and add them to his killfile or
> > even forge cancels for Bobs' articles that contain them.
> 
> > I think this would be a stupid thing to do because Bobs' articles
> > may contain useful information besides Alice's ad. Also the regexp
> > might occur in a followup to Bob's article, which may contain
> > useful information.
> 
> Well, one can modify newsreaders to delete only lines that match
> the regexps, but show other parts of the article. That may be one
> of the pieces of functionailty of libkillfile.so that I once mentioned.

Wonderful - go ahead and do it.  Anyone clueful enough to build a killfile
may not be worth advertisingto anyway.

Remember how Sandy Sandfart used to preach how he has the abllity to filter
out my traffic, but he wants to silence me in the interest of those who don't
have this capability?

Same thing with killfiles.
> 
> > On the second thought, Alice may not need a prior contract with Bob,
> > nor the ID#. She can just list the regexps she's trying to promote
> > on her web page and go promiscuously by the address in the From: header.
> > 
...
>  
> > What Alice could do is send an e-mail like
> >  "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
> >   a message that I'm paying to promote. Here is a cookie;
> >   if you return this cookie, I'll send you $n e-cash."
> > If it bounces, or if the recipient never sends back the cookie - too bad.
> 
> If it bounces, Alice would usually get the money back in the bounce message.
> 
> Can't alice put a stop on a piece of digital cash? I am not sure, but it
> may be possible. It is surely possible with adding one more trusted party,
> and some more signing and encryption, anyway.

The address could be a black hole type of thing.

But, on the third thought :-), I don't like the idea of sending unsolicited
e-mail in response to Usenet articles, even if the e-mail contains e-cash.

How about this for a protocol:

Alice puts up the Web site listing the regexps she wants promoted.

Bob tells Alice (via a web form, say):

I will be posting as bob@foo.nospam.bar and bob@delete.me.foo.bar;
please e-mail my fee to bob@fo.bar; your decisions are final.

Alice e-mails bob@foo.bar, saying:
please post cookie1 to misc.test (or whatever) as bob@foo.nospam.bar;
please post cookie2 to misc.test as bob@delete.me.foo.bar
(to show that Bob does post from these accounts and does read e-mail
at bob@foo.bar).

Once Alice's bot sees the cookies, it starts generating fee e-mails.
Moreover if Alice sees Bob making fun of her, the way you described, she
can stop paying him forever.

> > > Alice's contract can also specify that if a third party forges a cancel
> > > within a week for Bob's Usenet article containing the regexp, then Alice
> > > will pay nothing and let Bob sue the forger for the lost income. (This
> > > may become moot as more and more ISPs ignore forged cancels.) This gives
> > > Bob the insentive to spam intelligently - not to trigger any cancelbots
> > > and not to have his plug pulled by his ISP.
> > 
> > After Alice's bot finds an eligible Usenet article, it should wait
> > a week or so to see if it was cancelled or superseded before issuing a
> > payment. If it's cancelled, then instead of payment it should send
> > a notice saying:
> >  "Your article with message-id blah posted to blah contains
> >   a message that I'm paying to promote. I would have paid
> >   you $n e-cash, but unfortunately a cancel has been issued
> >   for your article: <quote cancel>"
> > That should get Bob pretty mad at the 3rd party canceller. :-)
> 
> Alice can then cheat and issue the cancels herself. Since most spammers
> are crooks, I expect that to happen a lot. No good.

There would hopefully be more than one Alice competing for the posting agents.
If she acts unethically (fails to come through with the payment), she will
lose reputation capital.

I mean, Alice can just put up a web page claiming that she'll pay for
promoting her regexps, and then not send anybody any ecash, cancels or
no cancels. Who's going to sue her for breach of contract and where?

Spammers are less crooks than Sandy Sandfart and Cocksucker John Gilmore,
or th scumbags who forge cancels.

> > > Alice can also put some reasonable caps on the number of repetitions
> > > because if Bob posts the same regexp 10,000 times, the marginal exposure
> > > is less from Bob than from a newbie Carol. Again, if there are several
> > > such Alices, the market will take care of negotiating such details.
> > 
> > Alice needs to maintain a map of (poster,newsgroup,regexp) to # posts;
> > when it reaches 100, stop paying this poster. I think 100 mentions by
> > the same poster is way past saturation.
> 
> I can generate a gazillion posters from algebra.com.
> 
> Of course, Alice can also introduce per-domain restrictions.

I can generate a bazillion posters from dm.com, but this is rare.

I can also get a dozen AOL screen names from a single AOL account.

It's OK because the reasons for this cap are pure marketing:
(not trying to cap Alice's expense). For the target audience,
seeing the same 900 number >100 times from the same address loses
the marginal effectiveness.  If you post the same 900 number 100
times from ichudov@algebra.com and then 100 times from arabinovich@algera.com
it'll be as effective as if it came from irabinovich@analysis.com.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> 
> Killfiles? So many scumbags whine about their inability to use them,
> so they try to silence whomever they don't like.

  Or they have them and still try to silence those whom they
don't like.
 
> Yes, if Alice just posts her regexps on a public Web page, a clueful
> person can automatically fetch them and add them to his killfile or
> even forge cancels for Bobs' articles that contain them.
> 
> I think this would be a stupid thing to do because Bobs' articles
> may contain useful information besides Alice's ad. Also the regexp
> might occur in a followup to Bob's article, which may contain
> useful information.

  Some CypherPunks regularly brag about the size of their
killfiles.
  To me, this is not a far cry from bragging about not reading
anything written by niggers, "Cause they ain't not got nothing
to say less'n they say they is goin' back to Africa."
 
> But of course a reader is welcome to cut off his own nose to spite
> and face and to killfile anything he likes - as long as he doesn't
> prevent others from reading what they feel like reading.

  During the censorship experiment on the list, many of the
list members showed their flat-foreheaded tendencies by calling
for the censoring of anyone who deviated from the norm.
 
-- 
Toto
"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"
http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca> writes:

> Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> > 
> > Killfiles? So many scumbags whine about their inability to use them,
> > so they try to silence whomever they don't like.
> 
>   Or they have them and still try to silence those whom they
> don't like.

Sure - remember how Sandy Sandfart, the marketing guy from C2Net, claimed
that he's already filtering out me e-mail on this list, but wanted me
silenced to protect the "newbies" who haven't yet filtered me out?

> > Yes, if Alice just posts her regexps on a public Web page, a clueful
> > person can automatically fetch them and add them to his killfile or
> > even forge cancels for Bobs' articles that contain them.
> > 
> > I think this would be a stupid thing to do because Bobs' articles
> > may contain useful information besides Alice's ad. Also the regexp
> > might occur in a followup to Bob's article, which may contain
> > useful information.
> 
>   Some CypherPunks regularly brag about the size of their
> killfiles.

The anonymous coward known as "Lucky Green" likes to publicly *PLONK*
anyone he disagrees with.  This is supposed to represent the sound the
address makes as it hits the killfile.  of course once Lucky Green
*PLONKS* someone, he becomes obsessed with that person - stalks them
around and follows up on anything they say with his Cabal drivel.

>   To me, this is not a far cry from bragging about not reading
> anything written by niggers, "Cause they ain't not got nothing
> to say less'n they say they is goin' back to Africa."

Well - they're welcome to killfile whatever they don't like. No one's
forcing them to read the traffic they don't want. Problem is, net.scum
like Cocksucker John Gilmore and Timmy May want to prevent others from
having access to the information the net.scum wants to suppress.

In a recent incident, a teenage Cabal stooge has published a defamatory
web page known as "Global Killfile" and advertised it heavily on usenet.
As the result, the wife of one of the people mentioned in the "Global
Killfile" just had her plug pulled by her ISP who cited this as the only
reason for their action.  I think they have a very good civil case -
better than C2Net's barratrous threats.

> > But of course a reader is welcome to cut off his own nose to spite
> > and face and to killfile anything he likes - as long as he doesn't
> > prevent others from reading what they feel like reading.
> 
>   During the censorship experiment on the list, many of the
> list members showed their flat-foreheaded tendencies by calling
> for the censoring of anyone who deviated from the norm.

Definitely - and I remember everyone who supported Cocksucker John Gilmore.

On a related topic, consider the make.money.fast spam.  Anyone with half a
clue can killfile it both in Usenet and in e-mail, since it contains essentially
the same key words. But a number of people feel obliged to forge cancels for
MMF posted to Usenet because it's supposed to be a pyramid scheme that's
supposed to be illegal in *some* jusrisdictions. Following the same logic,
the government of Singapore can forge cancels for any Usenet articles
critical of their Hitler-like leader because such criticism is illegal
in Singapore.

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Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
>One problem is that a lot of people put fake addresses in the from:
>fields. Why waste good e-cash on e-mail to addresses that bounce?

That's the best kind for the payer, because ecash(tm) is not lost once you
send it. You can cancel the payment if it bounces or after a specified
amount of time. That's the double spending protection in ecash(tm), the
first person to deposit a specific coin gets the money.

Mike.

* Ecash is a registered trademark of Digicash BV

Michael Johnson <Michael.Johnson@mejl.com> writes:

> Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> >One problem is that a lot of people put fake addresses in the from:
> >fields. Why waste good e-cash on e-mail to addresses that bounce?
> 
> That's the best kind for the payer, because ecash(tm) is not lost once you
> send it. You can cancel the payment if it bounces or after a specified
> amount of time. That's the double spending protection in ecash(tm), the
> first person to deposit a specific coin gets the money.

That's a good feature.  Other than raw e-cash, Alice could be sending out
messages like "Here's a random token: return this token to redeem your
cash". Also instead of general-purpose cash, Alice could be sending out
soft tokens only usable at her site: mention Alice's 900 number, receive
an e-mail with a secret code that allows you to FTP a single x-rated
picture from Alice's Web site.

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Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps