Re: Entrust Technologies's Solo - free download

At 5:28 PM 7/30/97 -0400, Sandy Harris wrote:
> . . . Perhaps more to the point, cancels conserve 
> resources on newservers.

That is like saying "by decreasing the human population 
by mass murder, our resources are conserved."  Censorship
is not justified by stating that it causes the information
to be reduced so as to lighten the load on a network.

> ...where on this scale do you start to object to my actions:
> 1) I use a killfile to ignore certain messages.
> 2) I program my personal newsserver to discard certain messages.
> 3) A group of us, by consensus, program our common newsserver...

Unanimous consent?

> 4) A system admin, with due notice to users, programs a 
> newserver.....

What constitutes "due notice" in the present context?
If an ISP were to advertise "Newsgroups censored through
forgery", then that would be "due notice".

> 5) A group of admins agree to jointly program their newsservers 
> so that some of them can cause all systems to discard messages.

Given the proposed "due notice" above, ISPs with such 
administrators are not likely to attract many customers.

Jai Maharaj
jai@mantra.com
Om Shanti

Some people have been arguing that cancelling other peoples posts
based on their own subjective views is a good thing.

It would seem that they are arguing that it is a good thing because it
saves bandwidth, and because it gives them satisfaction to silence
unpopular minorities.

Foo on that.

It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
cancelling it.

NoCems are a good solution to mailing list and USENET groups spams.
Then each person can take their pick of which posters article ratings
to use, or can create their own rating service.

For email spams (not talking about cancels here), I'd suggest
attaching electronic payment to emails as a condition of delivery.

A temporary fix for emails, or another approach, is to use hashcash.
Hashcash is a token of CPU time.  It proves that the sender has
consumed a given number of seconds/minutes/hours CPU time.  The
receiver sets their software to reject mail (bounce with explanation,
or put into potential spam folder) to squelch out spam.

A description of hashcash, and an implementation can be found here:

	http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/

Mail from known addresses (friends, mailing lists) would be marked as
exempt from postage requirements.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

At 10:36 PM 7/30/97 -0400, Ryan Anderson wrote:
>"Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
>think in most of the world.

They're illegal in the US primarily because the Post Office is confused
about whether its job is to deliver the mail or to censor it,
and delivery of MMFs by mail is policed by Postal Inspectors just as
delivery of obscenity by mail is.  It's a side effect of having services
provided by a government monopoly rather than the free market,
though I'm sure that to some extent it's because people started 
complaining to the Post Office that they were receiving junk mail,
and complaining to their legislators that they lost money on these scams.

On the Internet, on the other hand, not only is the stuff spam and a scam,
but it's abusing flat-rate prices for service, and service providers
don't like it.  Julf's remailer used to block MMFs.

Pyramid scams like the MMF, and the government's inability to deal with it,
brought down the Albanian government recently.  Here in the US that would
_never_ happen (:-), assuming of course you don't consider Social Security
to be a Ponzi scheme....

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

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

On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:

[...MMF...]

> though I'm sure that to some extent it's because people started
> complaining to the Post Office that they were receiving junk mail,

The MMF ban came about when its volume rose to a point where it crashed
californaia's snail mail system.

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:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:
>
> [...MMF...]
>
> > though I'm sure that to some extent it's because people started
> > complaining to the Post Office that they were receiving junk mail,
>
> The MMF ban came about when its volume rose to a point where it crashed
> californaia's snail mail system.

Not true.  Urban legend.

(Not did the Cantor & Siegel spam cut Australia off of Usenet.  The cancels
forged for their spam did.)

---

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

Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:

> At 10:36 PM 7/30/97 -0400, Ryan Anderson wrote:
> >"Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
> >think in most of the world.

This doesn't give the various net.scum any right to forge cancels for them.
(I used to forge cancels for MMFs years ago - I was very wrong.)

But this is not the only kind of content censorship going on under the guise
of 'spam cancels".  Check out the Net.Scum Web site.  One guy decided to cancel
an entire thread discussing the requirements for setting up a MUD server
claiming it was "spam".  Another forged a cancel for a national Science
Foundation announcement in sci.fractals figuring it was off-topic, therefore
"spam".  It takes a special kind of asshole to take up "spam-cancelling"
and most of them don't stop at cancelling just the "multi-posted" articles -
they quickly diversify into foring purely content-based cancels.

> 
> They're illegal in the US primarily because the Post Office is confused
> about whether its job is to deliver the mail or to censor it,
> and delivery of MMFs by mail is policed by Postal Inspectors just as
> delivery of obscenity by mail is.  It's a side effect of having services
> provided by a government monopoly rather than the free market,
> though I'm sure that to some extent it's because people started 
> complaining to the Post Office that they were receiving junk mail,
> and complaining to their legislators that they lost money on these scams.
> 
> On the Internet, on the other hand, not only is the stuff spam and a scam,
> but it's abusing flat-rate prices for service, and service providers
> don't like it.  Julf's remailer used to block MMFs.

MMFs are one example of a "memetic" article which encourages the readers to
reproduce it and post it elsewhere.  Does anyone remember the Craig Shergold
meme?  When I worked at GS, I came across a paper copy of it - a bunch of
p.r. and salespople were faxing it to one another and asking for business
cards to be sent to it.  The idiot sysadmins at a school I taight at put
the craig Shergold appeal in the message-od-the-day on the school computer.
> 
> Pyramid scams like the MMF, and the government's inability to deal with it,
> brought down the Albanian government recently.  Here in the US that would
> _never_ happen (:-), assuming of course you don't consider Social Security
> to be a Ponzi scheme....

This reminds me of the old farts who lost lots of money in the mini-crash in
Oct 87.  Basically, they sold insurance to other investors against the maret
suddenly going down a lot (which is a low-probability event, but can happpen and
I think will happen again any day now :-)  They were collecting their equivalent
of insurance premiums. When the market did hucckup and they had to pay what
they promised they would, they started screaming that they weren't warned
adequately that their income wasn't "risk-free" and they might actually have
to perform their part of the contract they entered!

Why should the gubmint protect people from pyramid schemes and other such scams?
("make money at home stuffing envelopes" seems to be a related scam that's
very popular and not "illegal".)  Any time a sucker tries to beat the market,a
xtto get more than the normal return without incurring extra risk, he
deserves to be fucked.  Gubmint's attempts to "protect" the sucker limit
the freedom not of the crooks who'd fleece him (they'll find a way), but
the regular people who are neither crooks not suckers.

---

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

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On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Adam Back wrote:

> Some people have been arguing that cancelling other peoples posts
> based on their own subjective views is a good thing.

Nno one is arugeing that.  Both sides in this debait aggry that that is a
REAL BAD thing.  Spam cancelers use an objective rules.  The world would
be a better place if this didn't happen and everybody was on NoCeM.  But
yet this is not true.

[...]

> It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
> cancelling it.

Not even forgeries in my name?  Not even out of the control spews from
fidonet?

> NoCems are a good solution to mailing list and USENET groups spams.

NoCeMs don't work on email.

> For email spams (not talking about cancels here), I'd suggest
> attaching electronic payment to emails as a condition of delivery.

And thus killing mailing lists like freedom knights and cyperpunks?


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, 31 Jul 1997, Adam Back wrote:
>
> > Some people have been arguing that cancelling other peoples posts
> > based on their own subjective views is a good thing.
>
> Nno one is arugeing that.  Both sides in this debait aggry that that is a
> REAL BAD thing.  Spam cancelers use an objective rules.  The world would
> be a better place if this didn't happen and everybody was on NoCeM.  But
> yet this is not true.

Let me clarify two things:

1. "Spam cancellers" are not generally news admins. They are plain old
users who get kicked off of their ISPs for forging cancels. For examples,
see Net.Scum pages of Rick Buchanan, David Ritz, et al.

2. Once a cancel-forger builds a "reputation" as a "spam canceller",
s/he often diversifies into "retromodetration" - forgng cancels for
singly-postd articles whose contents they don't like and claiming that
they were "spam". For examples, see the Net.Scum pages for Guy Macon
(the retromoderator on soc.religion.quaker), Chris Lewis, et al.

> > It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
> > cancelling it.
>
> Not even forgeries in my name?  Not even out of the control spews from
> fidonet?

Correct.

---

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

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On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

> ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:
> 
> > Nno one is arugeing that.  Both sides in this debait aggry that that is a
> > REAL BAD thing.  Spam cancelers use an objective rules.

[...]

> Let me clarify two things:
> 
> 1. "Spam cancellers" are not generally news admins.

I think you will have to justerfy this,  the top spam cancellers are all
news adimns.

> 2. Once a cancel-forger builds a "reputation" as a "spam canceller",
> s/he often diversifies into "retromodetration"

There is little proof that this is the case.  Even the netscum case could
have been considered spam.

[...]

> > Not even forgeries in my name?  Not even out of the control spews from
> > fidonet?
> 
> Correct.

Ok so if a mailing list gateway @bwalk.dm.com pumps thousands of broken
posts into usenet you don't wish them to be removed from usenet?

Nor if I post a message with your name and email, saying "Chris Lewis the
best thing that happened to usenet and I wish to have his baby."

If this is so sould I change the RB to reflect this.

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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> > > Not even forgeries in my name?  Not even out of the control spews from
> > > fidonet?
> > 
> > Correct.
> 
> Ok so if a mailing list gateway @bwalk.dm.com pumps thousands of broken
> posts into usenet you don't wish them to be removed from usenet?

That would be for Dimitri to decide for himself, and not for some 
cocksucker to take a unilateral decision on. Of course disabling cancels 
on all news-servers would mean such a freak article couldn`t be 
cancelled, even by it`s author, but that is better than having the cabal 
removing genuine articles because they don`t like the content.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Paul Bradley wrote:

[...]

> > Ok so if a mailing list gateway @bwalk.dm.com pumps thousands of broken
> > posts into usenet you don't wish them to be removed from usenet?
> 
> That would be for Dimitri to decide for himself, and not for some 
> cocksucker to take a unilateral decision on.

I have made no such unilateral decision,  I have simply asked a question
of the good Doctor.

> Of course disabling cancels on all news-servers would mean such a freak
> article couldn`t be cancelled, even by it`s author, 

Wouldn't authentercated cancel models be better so an artical could be
cancelled by its author and no other.

- -- 
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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> > > Ok so if a mailing list gateway @bwalk.dm.com pumps thousands of broken
> > > posts into usenet you don't wish them to be removed from usenet?
> > 
> > That would be for Dimitri to decide for himself, and not for some 
> > cocksucker to take a unilateral decision on.
> 
> I have made no such unilateral decision,  I have simply asked a question
> of the good Doctor.

Quite so, maybe this was phrased in such a way as it looked insulting to 
you, it wasn`t intended to be so, merely a general swipe at cancel-forgers.

> > Of course disabling cancels on all news-servers would mean such a freak
> > article couldn`t be cancelled, even by it`s author, 
> 
> Wouldn't authentercated cancel models be better so an artical could be
> cancelled by its author and no other.

This would be a good idea, which I thought about when I posted the 
article, but it`s probably too much to expect all the news-admins of the 
major sites to keep up to date with their s/w and for the s/w authors to 
write in such functionality, just turning of cancels is easier. 

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

"Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:

> 1. "Spam cancellers" are not generally news admins. They are plain old
> users who get kicked off of their ISPs for forging cancels. For examples,
> see Net.Scum pages of Rick Buchanan, David Ritz, et al.

	Many spam cancellers are news admins.  Most of the major ones are
admins, in fact - Chris Lewis, JEM, etc.

> 2. Once a cancel-forger builds a "reputation" as a "spam canceller",
> s/he often diversifies into "retromodetration" - forgng cancels for
> singly-postd articles whose contents they don't like and claiming that
> they were "spam". For examples, see the Net.Scum pages for Guy Macon
> (the retromoderator on soc.religion.quaker), Chris Lewis, et al.

	This rarely happens, actually, and such situations are quickly
slapped down as soon as they're spotted.  

	The two examples Dimitri gives, of course, are major 
misrepresentations.

				- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@uiuc.edu)
-- 
Skirv's Homepage<*>
The Killfile Dungeon

Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

> "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
>
> > 1. "Spam cancellers" are not generally news admins. They are plain old
> > users who get kicked off of their ISPs for forging cancels. For examples,
> > see Net.Scum pages of Rick Buchanan, David Ritz, et al.
>
> 	Many spam cancellers are news admins.  Most of the major ones are
> admins, in fact - Chris Lewis, JEM, etc.

You're splitting hairs.  One very unpleasant cancel-forger, Jan Isley,
was the admin of a site where he was also the sole user.  When I posted
to usenet the expose's of jan's net-abuse (forged cancels) and asked
everyone to complain to his upstream site (Emory University), Jan Isley
forged cancels for 6 of my articles claiming that I "advocate harrassment
of uninvolved third parties".  Well, the third parties got complaints
anyway and pulled jan's plug in no time. :-)

For the archetypal "spam canceller", please examine Tim Brown's
net.Scum page at http://www.netscum.net/brownt0.html when that site
is up.

> > 2. Once a cancel-forger builds a "reputation" as a "spam canceller",
> > s/he often diversifies into "retromodetration" - forgng cancels for
> > singly-postd articles whose contents they don't like and claiming that
> > they were "spam". For examples, see the Net.Scum pages for Guy Macon
> > (the retromoderator on soc.religion.quaker), Chris Lewis, et al.
>
> 	This rarely happens, actually, and such situations are quickly
> slapped down as soon as they're spotted.
>
> 	The two examples Dimitri gives, of course, are major
> misrepresentations.

Who's misrepresenting what, Tim?

Chris Lewis has a 'bot that forges cancels for multi-posted articles.

Chris Lewis forges cancels by hand for articles that are critical of
him (claiming that they're "spam"), for articles that quote his earlier
articles (claiming that they violatehis copyright), posts numerous
lies about me (which you yourself partialy refutes the other day).

Tim Brown, a similar "spam canceller", forges cancels for "spam" as
well as articles that make fun of his newsletter, "The Last Word".

Etc, etc - take a look at www.netscum.net for numerous other examples.

---

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

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On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

> Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

[...]

> > 	Many spam cancellers are news admins.  Most of the major ones are
> > admins, in fact - Chris Lewis, JEM, etc.
> 
> You're splitting hairs.  One very unpleasant cancel-forger, Jan Isley,
> was the admin of a site where he was also the sole user.

[...]

> Well, the third parties got complaints anyway and pulled jan's plug in
> no time. :-)

It is clear from this example that he was not a mainstream spam canceler.

> For the archetypal "spam canceller", please examine Tim Brown's

Tim Brown is not a spam canceller.

- -- 
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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At 02:03 AM 7/31/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:

>It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
>cancelling it.

Have you considered the actions of the news-admins that are auto-canceling 
anything with more than a certain number of cross-posts, or posts with "Make 
Money Fast" in the subject? (I think excessive posts to certain newsgroups 
may also fall into this category.  I think the big 6 get auto-covered by 
this..)

:-)  

"Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
think in most of the world.

My question is, are you including these in the above comment, or not?

Ryan
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Hi,
I'm fairly new to the list and to crypto/political issues.. 

question one: What did Jim Bell do that go him into trouble?
question two: If all non-key-escrow crypto systems become banned, won't
that make e-commerce illegal? 
Thanks
David
"You can take my PGP when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"

David,

Check out netlynews.com and search for Assassination. That'll get you
my story on Bell from early April.

-Declan

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, David Yaffe wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm fairly new to the list and to crypto/political issues.. 
> 
> question one: What did Jim Bell do that go him into trouble?
> question two: If all non-key-escrow crypto systems become banned, won't
> that make e-commerce illegal? 
> Thanks
> David
> "You can take my PGP when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"
> 
>

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

On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, Ryan Anderson wrote:

> "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I
> think in most of the world.

No there not.  Nobody should cancel things because there illegle, if
canceled it is because there over 20BI.

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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Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:

> Newsadmins who auto-cancel cross-posts are acting counter-productively
> and censorously.

	I'm not aware of anybody that does that.  The only crossposts that
are killed are those that reach a BI of 20, and for a single post to do
that would require the message to be crossposted to 400 newsgroups.  Which
doesn't happen.

	It might interest you to know that a cancel will kill all the
crossposts in a single message, BTW.  Your "cancelling 99 of the 100
articles thing" does save lots of reader time.  

	(If you're going to talk about cancels authoritatively, please
read my Cancel FAQ - it's got huge piles of information on this stuff.)

				- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@uiuc.edu)
-- 
Skirv's Homepage<*>
The Killfile Dungeon
Cancel FAQ

Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

> Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > Newsadmins who auto-cancel cross-posts are acting counter-productively
> > and censorously.

Once again, the net.Scum who forges cancels are generally NOT news admins.

Please examine Net.Scum web pages for the self-appointed censors like
Tim Brown (http://www.netscum.net/brownt0.html) or Bob Curtis
(../curtisb0.html) when the site is up again.  Indeed, Bob Curtis's
example is very telling - he tried to "take over" an unmoderated
newsgroup, claiming to represent some "Usenet administration", and
forging cancels for articles that exposed his lies.

> 	I'm not aware of anybody that does that.  The only crossposts that
> are killed are those that reach a BI of 20, and for a single post to do
> that would require the message to be crossposted to 400 newsgroups.  Which
> doesn't happen.

Here's one counterexample. Yes, it's in the
regional relcom.* hierarchy.  Yes, there are lots of folks who forge cancels
for "inappropriate cross-posts" in the "big 8". I won't bother looking
for them because Tim Skirvin knows about it and is simply lying.

]Path: ...!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!europa.clark.net!newsfeed.sovam.com!sovam!Gamma.RU!srcc!news1.relcom.ru!news1.relcom.ru!dmart
]From: dmart@news1.relcom.ru (Dmitri Martynoff)
]Newsgroups: relcom.commerce.computers,relcom.commerce.communications,relcom.demos.commerce,relcom.netnews,relcom.tcpip,relcom.www.users,relcom.www.support,relcom.hot-news,relcom.commerce.talk
]Subject: cmsg cancel <33c3c4a0.2317359@news2.worldweb.net>
]Control: cancel <33c3c4a0.2317359@news2.worldweb.net>
]Date: 9 Jul 1997 01:11:51 GMT
]Organization: Relcom/Eunet InterNetNews site
]Lines: 3
]Sender: vad@worldweb.net (Vadim Daskovsky)
]Approved: dmart@relcom.ru
]Message-ID: <5puogn$9f0$1@news1.relcom.ru>
]NNTP-Posting-Host: news1.relcom.ru
]
]Excessive crossposting a.k.a. SPAM canceled. See Usenet newsgroup
]news.admin.net-abuse.misc for details.
]Coordinator of relcom.* newsgroups Dmitri Martynoff <dmart@relcom.ru>.

And now some friends of Tim are forging cancels for any traffic originating
from UUNet, irrespective of contents, and Tim Skirvin approves of it.

Tell your news admin to stop processing cancels immediately.

> 	It might interest you to know that a cancel will kill all the
> crossposts in a single message, BTW.  Your "cancelling 99 of the 100
> articles thing" does save lots of reader time.
>
> 	(If you're going to talk about cancels authoritatively, please
> read my Cancel FAQ - it's got huge piles of information on this stuff.)

Please be advised that all of Tim Skirvin's FAQs are full of lies (except
for the parts plagiarized from David Stodolsky :-).

---

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

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

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

> Please examine Net.Scum web pages for the self-appointed censors like
> Tim Brown (http://www.netscum.net/brownt0.html)

Tim Brown is clearly rouge I don't think he has any allies I do not
think he has support from the mainstream cancelers.

[...]

> Here's one counterexample. Yes, it's in the regional relcom.* hierarchy.

You know very well that regionals are not part of UseNet.  You would have
to bring that up with the admins within the relcom.* hierarchy.

> Yes, there are lots of folks who forge cancels for "inappropriate 
> cross-posts" in the "big 8".

The standard of everdence is lower then normal for that last stament.
Please supply everdence.

[...]

> And now some friends of Tim are forging cancels for any traffic originating
> from UUNet,

We are undermineing UUNets atemp to gain a monopoly on newsgroups. :D

> irrespective of contents,

Thats what content free canceling is noramly about.

- -- 
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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Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:
> At 02:03 AM 7/31/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:
> 
> >It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
> >cancelling it.
> 
> Have you considered the actions of the news-admins that are auto-canceling 
> anything with more than a certain number of cross-posts, or posts with "Make 
> Money Fast" in the subject? 

Here's the problem: once you start censoring anything, you've started
on the slippery slope.  Everyone has their pet things which annoy
them.

Newsadmins who auto-cancel cross-posts are acting counter-productively
and censorously.  Cross-posts result in only one copy in the
news-spool.  Most newsreaders will only display the article once to
each reader -- it doesn't save the readers time to cancel 99 of the
100 articles leaving 1 in a random group.  Probably these admins are
cancelling all 100 on the assumption that anything cross posted that
widely is garbage anyway.  That is a value judgement and something I'd
prefer not done to a newsfeed I read.  

Dumb spammers who individually post to each of 100 groups are the ones
who really consume bandwidth.  What they should be doing is
compressing their news spools and down-stream feeds by converting the
same article individually posted to many groups to articles
cross-posted to the same set of groups.

If they take issue with the number of posts an individual is making
total (eg a bot perhaps auto posting in response to articles
containing certain keywords), they should be thinking of working
towards a (low) postage requirement for each post.  Hashcash might be
an interesting interim payment method.

That'll slow down the bots and people who repost large posts too
frequently.

Other than that I think getting involved in cancelling posts is
getting dubious.  A better way to do register your negative opinion of
some posts is to issue NoCems.

> "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
> think in most of the world.

Foo on illegal.  Cryptography is illegal in some parts of the world.
Showing pictures of females revealing leg above the ankle, or showing
their faces is illegal in other parts.

If suckers want to fall for the pyramid scams let them.  Why should we
have dumb laws protecting dumb people.  There are scant enough
evolutionary pressures as it is.  Think of dumb pyramid scams, and
lotteries with sub 50% pay-outs as evolution in action.

There is no place for dumb laws on USENET.  This is the Internet man,
we don't need politicians or governments messing with it's content
thanks kindly.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:

> At 02:03 AM 7/31/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:
>
> >It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
> >cancelling it.
>
> Have you considered the actions of the news-admins that are auto-canceling
> anything with more than a certain number of cross-posts, or posts with "Make
> Money Fast" in the subject? ...

I posted an MMF parody (PGP as MLM) to the cypherpunks mailing list last
January and was threatened by more than one person too stupid to recognize a
parody.

The Net.Scum who forge cancels for Usenet articles that are cross-posted into
"too many" newsgroups a) are not usually sysadmins - just control freak users,
who often get spanked from their ISPs for forging cancels, harrassing posters,
and other net-abuse, 2) have no clue how Usenet works - they claim that
cross-posting wastes bandwidth, 3) suppress not only MMF but any content they
don't like (like Guy Macon, the retromoderator of the formerly
unmoderated soc.religion.quaker, has been forging cancels for the leprosy
thread which he thinks is "off-topic")

The solution is to disable all cancels now.

> "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I
> think in most of the world.

Who are you to decide that a particular content is illegal, or that a Usenet
article soliciting an activity that's illegal in some jurisdictions should
be suppressed?

Unlike you, I am a news admin.  Many years ago I used to forge cancels for
MMF articles on Usenet.  Then I realized that I was very wrong to do that.

---

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

Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:

> "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
> think in most of the world.

	Make.Money.Fast is killed because it's spam a few thousand times 
over.  The legality of it doesn't come into question.

				- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@uiuc.edu)
-- 
Skirv's Homepage<*>
The Killfile Dungeon

Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

> Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:
> 
> > "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
> > think in most of the world.
> 
> 	Make.Money.Fast is killed because it's spam a few thousand times 
> over.  The legality of it doesn't come into question.

If you examine the forged cancels for MMF in your control group, you'll
see the cancel issuers frequently stating that they're forging the cancels
because they believe MMF to be "illegal".

Sort of reminds of the war on (some) drugs, doesn't it?

---

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

Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

>
> Ryan Anderson <randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu> writes:
>
> > "Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I
> > think in most of the world.
>
> 	Make.Money.Fast is killed because it's spam a few thousand times
> over.  The legality of it doesn't come into question.

Look in your "control" newsgroup, and you'll see that most of the
cancels forged for the MMFs state in the body that they're being
cancelled because they're "illegal". To save bandwidth, here's one
counterexample to Tim's claim:

]Path: ...!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!cyberspam!not-for-mail
]From: news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
]Newsgroups: sci.physics
]Subject: cmsg cancel <32684BAE.68B3@computer.mic> no reply ignore
]Message-ID: <cancel.32684BAE.68B3@computer.mic>
]Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 15:07:31 GMT
]Control: cancel <32684BAE.68B3@computer.mic>
]Sender: listentome <determin@computer.mic>
]Reply-To: bitbucket@news.msfc.nasa.gov
]Organization: Semi-Automatic Chain Letter Remover
]Lines: 3
]Approved: news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
]X-No-Archive: Yes
]X-Canceled-by: news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
]
]ignore
]
]Illegal MMF canceled by news@news.msfc.nasa.gov

You will notice that the anonymous cancel came from a .gov site. :-)

---

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

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

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

> Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@math.uiuc.edu> writes:

[...]

> Look in your "control" newsgroup, and you'll see that most of the
> cancels forged for the MMFs state in the body that they're being
> cancelled because they're "illegal".

No thay state the MMF are illegal.  It dosn't say that its becuase its
illegal that there being canceled.

- -- 
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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