Re: forged cancels (Re: Entrust Technologies's Solo - free

On or About  7 Aug 97 at 0:18, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

> ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au>
> writes:
> 
> > > Once the offending articles are part of the spool on toher site,
> > > it's pointless for me to issue cancels.
> >
> > Not even to free up diskspace?
> 
> Correct.

For no reason whatsoever should you cancel a message you did not send 
yourself.

See:

http://www.npr.org/plweb-cgi/fastweb?getdoc+npr+npr+12142+2+wAAA+spam

NPR's Jim Zarroli reports that UUNet, the Internet service provider
whose billboards were blocked, condemned the action and called the
incidents "digital terrorism"

Ross 

=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ross Wright
King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services
http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia
Voice: (408) 259-2795

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On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, Ross Wright wrote:

> For no reason whatsoever should you cancel a message you did not send 
> yourself.

I have issued cancels for posts issued (mistankely) from a group account.
I have also issued cancels (with there permition) for authours who
couldn't work out how to do it.

> NPR's Jim Zarroli reports that UUNet, the Internet service provider
> whose billboards were blocked,

Please don't call UseNet a billboard.  Its like calling the interantional
phone system an intercom.

- --
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. 
Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep.  ex-net.scum and proud
You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For
Themselves? --Terry Pratchett

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On Thu, Aug 07, 1997 at 12:53:16PM -0700, Ross Wright wrote:
[...]
> 
> For no reason whatsoever should you cancel a message you did not send 
> yourself.

How about if it is an employee of yours, using your computer
equipment, that sent the message, in explict contradition to your
companies stated policy? How about if it is your 5 year old child who
just sent a 5 megabyte spam to 500 groups? What if the message is
forged in such a way that it looks exactly as if it came from you?
What if the sender asks you to cancel it because they don't know how?

Absolutist thinking is *almost* always wrong :-)

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

On Thu, Aug 07, 1997 at 10:00:25PM -0500, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 07, 1997 at 12:53:16PM -0700, Ross Wright wrote:
> > [...]
> > >
> > > For no reason whatsoever should you cancel a message you did not send
> > > yourself.
> 
> Yep.
> 
> > How about if it is an employee of yours, using your computer
> > equipment, that sent the message, in explict contradition to your
> > companies stated policy?
> 
> Use a retraction server (David's project)

Just curious -- how would this be morally different from doing a
cancel?

[...]

> kent Crispin sounds like a pedophile.

You need to get your hearing checked, then.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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On Fri, 8 Aug 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 07, 1997 at 10:00:25PM -0500, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

[...]

> > Use a retraction server (David's project)
> 
> Just curious -- how would this be morally different from doing a
> cancel?

Well NoCeMs are harder to abuse, in addtion there are thay can be treated
more flexibly then the blunt interestrment that are cancels.

- -- 
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. 
Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep.  ex-net.scum and proud
You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For
Themselves? --Terry Pratchett

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Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 07, 1997 at 12:53:16PM -0700, Ross Wright wrote:
> [...]
> >
> > For no reason whatsoever should you cancel a message you did not send
> > yourself.

Yep.

> How about if it is an employee of yours, using your computer
> equipment, that sent the message, in explict contradition to your
> companies stated policy?

Use a retraction server (David's project)

> How about if it is your 5 year old child who
> just sent a 5 megabyte spam to 500 groups?

Ditto.

> What if the message is
> forged in such a way that it looks exactly as if it came from you?

Ditto, and consider setting up a service to automatically issue NoCeMs
for forgeries.

> What if the sender asks you to cancel it because they don't know how?

Make the retraction server easier to use.

> Absolutist thinking is *almost* always wrong :-)

kent Crispin sounds like a pedophile.

---

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

> > How about if it is an employee of yours, using your computer
> > equipment, that sent the message, in explict contradition to your
> > companies stated policy?
> 
> Use a retraction server (David's project)

I wonder if there is a problem of inconsistent levels in this debate...

At one level, many people on this list are in favour of infrastructure
such as Usenet and the Web carrying all information without filtering with
respect to content, to avoid censorship, oppression and so on.

At another level, almost everybody has personal preferences as to what
they consider worthwhile information, what they want to read, what they
want their children/employees to read, and what they want their
privately-owned hardware to be used to carry.

At the content-free level, cancels are information just like anything
else, merely a stream of octets.  By definition, they _can't_ be morally
wrong at that amoral level where we talk only about whether
store-and-forward works properly or not.  Cancels, "forged" or otherwise
are just a tool, just bytes.

Within a particular value system, you might agree or disagree with a
particular cancel, or with the idea in general.  It's easy to configure a
news server or reader to conform to your preferences, just people who hate
spam are free to ignore it.  At this level, you can make judgements as to
which uses of that tool are justifiable.  (Cancels by sysadmins,
anti-spammers, spammers, system owners, governments, parents, copyright
lawyers or nobody at all.)

::Boots

  "I'm sorry but I just don't consider 'because he's a pedophile' to be a
   convincing argument."

nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) writes:

>   "I'm sorry but I just don't consider 'because he's a pedophile' to be a
>    convincing argument."

We hate Chris Lewis because he forges cancels (and not only for "spam"),
but just because he's an icky child-molesting pedophile.

Death to censors!

---

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

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On Fri, 8 Aug 1997, Anonymous wrote:

> > Use a retraction server (David's project)
> 
> I wonder if there is a problem of inconsistent levels in this debate...

[...]

> Within a particular value system, you might agree or disagree with a
> particular cancel, or with the idea in general.  It's easy to configure a
> news server or reader to conform to your preferences,

This is an inaccuarate comment with refurence to cancels.  It is hard to
do this and it is only possable if the canceler conforms to the $alz
convention.

However NoCeMs offer this freedom and power.  As I said before a migration
to a NoCeM only system would be a good thing.

- -- 
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. 
Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep.  ex-net.scum and proud
You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For
Themselves? --Terry Pratchett

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On Fri, Aug 08, 1997 at 01:38:25PM +0200, Anonymous wrote:
> > > How about if it is an employee of yours, using your computer
> > > equipment, that sent the message, in explict contradition to your
> > > companies stated policy?
> > 
> > Use a retraction server (David's project)
> 
> I wonder if there is a problem of inconsistent levels in this debate...
> 
> At one level, many people on this list are in favour of infrastructure
> such as Usenet and the Web carrying all information without filtering with
> respect to content, to avoid censorship, oppression and so on.
> 
> At another level, almost everybody has personal preferences as to what
> they consider worthwhile information, what they want to read, what they
> want their children/employees to read, and what they want their
> privately-owned hardware to be used to carry.
> 
> At the content-free level, cancels are information just like anything
> else, merely a stream of octets.  By definition, they _can't_ be morally
> wrong at that amoral level where we talk only about whether
> store-and-forward works properly or not.  Cancels, "forged" or otherwise
> are just a tool, just bytes.
> 
> Within a particular value system, you might agree or disagree with a
> particular cancel, or with the idea in general.  It's easy to configure a
> news server or reader to conform to your preferences, just people who hate
> spam are free to ignore it.  At this level, you can make judgements as to
> which uses of that tool are justifiable.  (Cancels by sysadmins,
> anti-spammers, spammers, system owners, governments, parents, copyright
> lawyers or nobody at all.)

Very good point.

The problem exists at both levels, however.  At the "content-free" 
level the equivalent of spam is a flooding denial of service attack.  

But thinking about it at the "content free" level puts the issues in a
much better focus, for me.  You can note the following:

	1) at a "content-free" level filters, by definition simply
	don't work.  [They don't really work for spam, either, of 
	course.] 

	2) the issue is fundamentally bandwidth consumption [with spam
	the bandwidth is human attention bandwidth]

	3) it's a damn hard problem, and no good solution exists

	4) there is an analog to e-postage in QOS routing, but the
	problem of flooding is still not solved.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

[...]

> > What if the message is
> > forged in such a way that it looks exactly as if it came from you?
> 
> Ditto, and consider setting up a service to automatically issue NoCeMs
> for forgeries.

In fact consider setting up a service to automatically issue NoCeMs for
bad pgp sigs.

- -- 
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. 
Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep.  ex-net.scum and proud
You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For
Themselves? --Terry Pratchett

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? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

> On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
>
> > > What if the message is
> > > forged in such a way that it looks exactly as if it came from you?
> >
> > Ditto, and consider setting up a service to automatically issue NoCeMs
> > for forgeries.
>
> In fact consider setting up a service to automatically issue NoCeMs for
> bad pgp sigs.

As I've discussed in private e-mail with a large number of ppl, this
would be an excellent idea, and would encurage the use of digital sigs.

---

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