HipCrime: A History in URLs May - June 1998
Rob Mitchell
HipCrime: A History in URLs July 1996 - May 1998:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=c1c401c4d0765aa3
HIPCRIME: A HISTORY IN URLS MAY - JUNE 1998
5-12-98: Regarding the momentous announcement made by HipCrime of his
new software which was discussed at the end of the previous
installment in this series, one sees here in the thread cited below
the learnéd Mr. Steven Boursy (a man with the kindest of hearts, with
a giant sidekick who supposedly had a doctoral degree) who had earned
the affectionate nickname of "Speedbump," & who had previously opposed
any cancelling of Usenet articles whatsoever unless they were
cancelled by the original poster, suddenly embracing the NewsAgent
cancels. Fascinating statements were made regarding Chris Lewis et
al, such as:
"Yes--if you publically disagree with them many of them will try to
cancel or filter out your posts or complain to your service provider
trying to get your plug pulled but they are in decline as they've been
caught just too many times engaging in content filtering."
It is interesting that the actual evidence suggests that no posts were
cancelled merely for "disagreement," & in fact I see no evidence that
either of Mr. Boursy's posts in this thread were cancelled. Nor have
I seen any evidence whatsoever that Mr. Lewis has ever complained to a
service provider merely because he "disagreed" with a poster using
that provider & for no other reason. This is reminiscent of a much
more recent poster (whom I fondly call "The USWest Troll") claiming
repeatedly that Mr. Lewis' cancelling of Usenet articles was
"illegal," without, however, being able to cite even a single statute
in any North American country that was being broken, & without being
able to cite any case history to support this assertation.
In fact, in an earlier article of 4-17-98, Mr. Lewis, addressing Mr.
Boursy, gave an amusing account for posterity of the ridiculousness of
the claims of the "illegality" of his Usenet cancelling:
"Ah, no Stevie, I've never claimed that I visited your house. Didn't
happen. What I did do, with over 25 people to personally verify it,
was visit your fair city in broad daylight, for almost a week, in part
to test out your claims that I would be arrested if I stepped foot in
the US. Nope. Wasn't arrested. Wasn't arrested later in San Jose
either. Wasn't arrested when I visited Boston and Cambridge again
last June, and got to see many of the same people I saw the first time
- such as Ron, Nathan and Marty."
Astounding how these people such as Boursy & the USWest entity spin
such silly nonsense, when it is so easily undermined by solid
evidence. ;-)
Some other readers in the newsgroups to which Mr. Boursy was posting,
surprisingly, became weary of his articles, & put his posting
addresses into their newsreader killfiles, rendering them invisible.
But this Mr. Boursy simply couldn't allow, as he strongly felt that
his "vitally important message" simply MUST be seen by everyone,
whether they wanted to see it or not. So he embarked on a campaign to
change his identity & email address frequently in his posts, often
using non-existent addresses. Among the many different identities &
addresses he hurled onto the From line of his articles were Andy
Warhol (war...@velvet.underground.art), Baba Yaga
(baba...@cannibal.witch.hat), Benjamin Spock (bsp...@babyguide.net),
Bilbo Baggins (bi...@hobbits.net), Billy the Kid
(the...@bangbang.org), Felix the Cat (fc...@kittylitter.net), Hillary
Clinton (hil...@bondage.gov), Joan Baez (joan...@whineandmoan.com),
Joe Camel (jca...@penisnose.net), Little Red Riding Hood
(ridin...@wolfmeat.com), Mohandas Gandhi (moha...@satyagraha.in),
Orson Welles (or...@citizen.kane.uk), & Prune Juice
(pru...@laxitive.com). This did not endear him to those who were
trying to avoid reading his erudite pronouncements at practically all
costs, & contributed greatly to the reputation of his Usenet provider,
alt.net (Altopia) becoming widely-known as a "troll-haven." Providers
such as Supernews do have policies against constant "morphing" of
identity & address, especially if it is done in posts to the same
newsgroups, but Altopia had no such policy at that time, nor does it
to this day as far as I know, & in nanae at least, there appears to be
no one left except for a single troll at this writing who uses the
service to post articles.
For more of this author's commentary on Altopia, see "Terri DiSisto: A
History in URLs Aug.-Nov. 1999."
Some of the cancel floods which had begun during May 1998 were not
only directed at the nana* hierarchy, but also HipCrime's software was
used to cancel virtually every article in some Singapore-related
newsgroups. It is interesting that many in these groups viewed this
as "censorship" far more than anything the Usenet despammers had ever
done.
In the 3rd article Mr. Boursy made a statement that he would
essentially repeat a number of times subsequently, "If one may cancel
all may cancel..." This of course ignores the purpose of proper
cancels, which is to ensure the continued functionality of Usenet.
Quite obviously, if everyone on Usenet cancelled every article they
didn't like, very little would be left to read, & the very purpose of
the network would be destroyed. Very much the same thing as if
everyone on Usenet was allowed to post anything they wanted, any time
they wanted, as many times as they wanted, in whatever newsgroups they
wanted; quite obviously the purpose for which the newsgroups were
created, to discuss particular topics, would be obliterated, since
there would be a far greater number of articles not on the topics of
the newsgroups.
Yet this is exactly what Boursy & HipCrime wanted: to be able to post
whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted,
regardless of whether or not it interfered with anyone else's ability
to use Usenet. Again, it is blindingly obvious that the true
motivation of such people is that they do not want their own
communications to be interfered with in the slightest; they do not
care at all if anyone else's communications are interfered with.
Their communications are more important to them than everyone else's
combined.
Some such kooks have been fond of frequently citing Constitutional
issues of "freedom of speech"; what they routinely & conveniently omit
(I have never seen a single one of them ackowledge this, because
obviously it does not fit with their agenda) that there is also
something in the Constitution about "freedom of assembly,"
guaranteeing that people may assemble to discuss whatever issues
concern them, without fear of disruption. Though this applies really
only to disruption by the government (as does freedom of speech, which
these people also often omit), in many analogous situations outside of
the Internet we find that the law does indeed protect the prevention
of private disruptions of assembly. A person charging into a church
service or a college classroom lecture or a boy scout meeting or any
other of a huge number of types of gatherings & disrupting the
proceedings can most definitely be removed immediately, with the full
support of law enforcement, & I know of no Constitutional challenge to
this which has ever occurred in the entire history of the United
States. A newsgroup is essentially no different: people have gathered
together for the specific purpose of discussing certain topics, & they
have a right not to be disrupted. Cancelling articles is not a matter
of preventing someone from expressing their opinion on Usenet; it is
rather a matter of preventing individuals from preventing many other
people from expressing *their* views on the topics they have gathered
together to discuss. People such as HipCrime interfere routinely with
the freedom of expression & the freedom of assembly of a huge number
of people, yet I cannot recall anyone ever making the slightest
attempt to prevent HipCrime from expressing his opinions in the
appropriate venues.
This author has certainly never made the slightest attempt to prevent
HipCrime from expressing his opinions; HipCrime has, however, made
many attempts to prevent me from expressing mine, which, I assure the
reader, will be discussed extensively later in this series.
A series whose public appearance he will be utterly unable to prevent,
though almost certainly he will make further attempts to silence me,
as he attempted to do before.
And of course, in hindsight, with the perspective of 4 years having
passed, his methods have failed utterly. He was attempting to
convince all ISPs to stop honoring the legitimate cancels of Usenet
spam, which rely almost solely on criteria of volume, by posting so
many other cancels of non-spam articles that ISPs would be forced to
take this step. But it didn't work. Spam cancelling on Usenet is
alive & well, & HipCrime himself contributed inadvertently to its
further refinement. His floods to the present day disappear routinely
& quickly off of the NNTP servers that I read, as well as other Usenet
spam which interferes with the freedom of assembly of Usenet posters &
readers, due to cancels from known & trustworthy sources:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b89ff29dc2650629
On the same day the announcement began appearing in other groups. It
is perhaps rather an understatement to say that the reviews of it were
"mixed":
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=894980198.698635%40michelob
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=34cf8fa9a66aea1d
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2bd3d5addcedb06f
The April 17 1998 article by Mr. Lewis quoted in part above was part
of a thread of fine proportions, which was still ongoing by May 12.
Numerous accusations continued to be hurled at Mr. Lewis by Boursy et
al that he cancelled posts based on content alone, ignoring the volume
of the posts, most of which does not need to be cited here, although
the interested reader can view the entire discussion by clicking on
"Complete Thread" at the top right of the page cited below. Of some
interest to this present study, however, is one of the individual
articles in the thread by Mr. Lewis, in which, responding to one Dave
Hayes, he wrote:
"Who could miss HipCrime boasting about the cancel bot he's just
unleashed on news.admin.net-abuse.email and a host of other groups,
with Boursy, Blanc, Grubor and friends cheering him on? Don't you
think it a trifle hypocritical of you to castigate me for cancelling
spam without regard for content, when you cheer on people attempting
to destroy all discussion completely?"
Exactly so:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6j9p9s%24hb%40bcarh8ab.bnr.ca
5-13-98: vsnl.net.in did itself no favors by failing to act quickly
regarding the unsecured servers which had been used for the
rogue-cancel-attacks during the past 48 hours;
newsfeed.internetmci.com, which at the time was VSNL's primary
newsfeed to the rest of Usenet, promptly cut its connection.
Sadly, this Indian ISP's competence in dealing with unsecured servers
has apparently not improved to the present day; writing to them on
5-23-02 about a proxy which had been abused by HipCrime several days
earlier, I said:
"I am also curious as to why on earth it is taking you over 4 years to
deal with this problem of insecure servers. HipCrime was first known
to have posted a flood of articles to this same newsgroup on May 11
1998...That was through your system as well, & he has committed such
abuse through your system many times since."
I then produced one of the very Google URLs for that flood of 4 years
ago which is cited in the previous installment of this series, & told
VSNL exactly how this problem could quite easily be ended permanently:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3559B7C2.48EC%40concentric.net
5-31-98 to 6-2-98: Enter S.P.U.T.U.M. The site www.sputum.com began
being mentioned in Usenet in August 1997 in connection with the UDP
(Usenet Death Penalty) of uu.net. It also produced parodies
(extensively mirrored) of that luminary, Mike Enlow. It was, & still
to some extent remains, an irreverent anti-Usenet-spam site. One of
the people connected to it was Douglas Mackall, who passed away in
November 1999 at the age of 41 & who is currently memorialized on the
main page of the site.
At the end of May 1998 it became apparent that someone in the pgh.org
"Freedom Knights" mailing list, which included, among others, Mr.
Boursy, Dr. John "the giant" Grubor (who had in the past been
incarcerated), & HipCrime, had decided to, in a sense, "defect."
Email correspondence among these & other distinguished gentlemen, all
of whom had pgh.org addresses at this time, began being produced
publicly to the delight & mirth of anti-spammers, & one can see that
the first article here was posted by Mr. Mackall himself. There was
also a newsgroup called pgh.org which was frequented by some of these
persons; to say that the newsgroup enjoyed "ill-repute" is perhaps an
understatement. Interestingly, Deja ceased archiving the group in
November 1997 & did not resume carrying its articles until July of the
following year, a gap which can still be seen in the archives as now
hosted by Google. Mr. Boursy & Dr. Grubor did not seem to be terribly
pleased about this at the time. But posts to the group gradually
became less frequent (during all of 2000 only 13 threads were started
in it, most of them fairly small), & the last article archived in the
ill-fated group was posted in August 2001.
The emails contain many amusing rants about anti-spammers, & some
"sensitive" details of the personal lives of some of the participants,
which one would suspect they would have preferred not to make public.
Alas, made public they were anyway. And of course there were some of
the same old tired pro-spam arguments that we've seen many times
before & since, & there was even talk of "destroying" the nana*
hierarchy, which rather obviously never occurred. Evidence surfaced
in these as well of complicity in email-bombing certain persons with
whom they were displeased. Many more of the emails besides those that
were reproduced in these articles were displayed on several websites,
one of which is cited below. I find it also fascinating that this
group was most definitely discussing cancel attacks based on content
alone, as in cancelling many articles dealing with pornography to
bring the attention of the media to their cause, although this never
came to fruition. Also contemplated were mass cancels in certain
religious & politically-oriented groups, some of which were indeed
carried out. They also discussed cancelling all the articles of
certain individual persons, especially those of Chris Lewis. And yet
they still continued to accuse the Usenet despammers of "censorship,"
the hypocrisy of which should be obvious to even the most uncommitted
reader.
Sigh.
In some of these one can see HipCrime perpetuating the India notion by
repeatedly stating that he did not reside in the "USSA," & at one
point expressing doubt as to whether despammers would come to Asia
looking for him.
One can also see the planning for the big May 11 cancel flood (a great
number of the emails are from the previous day), & it is quite obvious
that HipCrime did it by himself, as the others did not report success
in running the program. Poor Dr. Grubor especially had a great deal
of trouble with it (several attempts to download it resulted in it
failing to appear on his C drive), & then he couldn't get it to
connect to a news-server, etc.
Much later, in May & June 2002, HipCrime would conceive (if that is
the correct word for it) of the charming notion of flooding nanae with
thousands of articles in which these old 1998 emails were reproduced:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f26cd3df3c5a25fe
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=cf78f11f014c08c7
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a49706aaf64feb42
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3573614c.3221793%40enews.newsguy.com
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=382503a93bee5b2c
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/4275/kook.html
As of this writing [6-15-02] pgh.org resolves to 66.79.10.212. It is
interesting in what contexts this IP has been mentioned on Usenet,
including quite recently:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=66.79.10.212&num=100&scoring=d
6-5-98 to 6-12-98: But the emails began also to reveal that by May 15
1998 the resolve of the pgh.org Freedom Knights to try to achieve
their goals through network abuse had begun to waver (Ms. Thomas
reproduced the crucial email in the 1st article below, although it is
also to be found in the more complete correspondence at the Geocities
page above), & although Mr. Boursy would continue ranting & raving
publicly a bit longer before fading into obscurity, soon enough
HipCrime would be left to fight this battle virtually alone. In the
2nd article it was revealed that the same person who wrote this email
was also the person who supplied the emails to the despammers:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3577bd67.10184083%40news.wwa.com
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6ls138%24juo%40bcarh8ab.bnr.ca
6-12-98 ff: HipCrime meanwhile was doing a few things here & there.
In the email correspondence he had said that soon after the May 11
attack he would be "out of town" for a few weeks, & indeed he did
disappear from the discussions. But he was back in mid-June, posting
ads for his software, which weren't taken very seriously; sadly, to
this day, the expected rush of "common Netizens" to obtain & use this
software has never occurred, & it remains in use only by an extremely
tiny number of people. There were also a few cancel attacks using the
software during this period:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=e06f90e249de2515
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8936c14d5ebcf356
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1ce12ee8692040b2
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b85bbf0e3804847d
6-18-02: Notable words of wisdom from the gargantuan Dr. Grubor:
"We must have AMERICAN rule of this Usenet so we may execute contracts
which can be enforced in Federal Court."
I wonder that he was perhaps a private embarrassment even to his
colleagues in the "anti-Usenet-'censorship'" camp:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.3.96.980618101455.21562B-100000%40www3.localweb.com
In the article to which Dr. Grubor was responding, Mr. Boursy, holding
forth as Elvis Costello (el...@red.shoes.gov), had said, "Well I can't
speak for Hipcrime but I do know there is a very strong sentiment--one
that I agree with--that if the cancels [of Usenet despammers] continue
software distribution to the masses will become a necessity." To
this, Fluffy the Cat, owner of Usenet, made this reply:
"That doesn't follow. Canceltoys like that won't have the effect you
desire. They won't take away cancels; instead, they'll make cancels
the exclusive domain of high-volume despammers and take the ability
away from the end user. Software like that _encourages_ the growth of
a cabal by restricting the ability to delete messages to an anointed
few."
Just so, & there is no evidence to date, 4 years later, that the
software has become especially popular with anything like "the
masses," or that it ever seriously undermined the ability of Usenet
despammers to do what they set out to do:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Mw.5mtmu_e8q%40fluffy.meow.org
6-20-98: HipCrime himself, condescending to speak unto the masses in
nanau, said of his software, "When a few more people use it, cancels
will be dead (and the Cancel Cabal will lose its already tarnished
luster)."
Four years later, we're still waiting for this to happen:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=358b685f.0%40lightning.ica.net
More of the usual from Mr. Boursy, who made routinely made claims such
as this which never came within light-years of being proven true:
"Take a look at the many cancels by Mr. Bellomy issued with the full
support of Lewis--note the failure of Dave the Resurrector on these
content cancels and the past objection to Lewis's partisain politics
over this. Lewis has engaged himself in may content cancels--
especially with the good Dr. Grubor that completely disregarding this
'N' number nonsense and he's presently engaged in NoCems which are
purely content based directed against those he personally doesn't
like."
This brings up another interesting aspect of HipCrime's failures, that
the Resurrector bots have consistently through the years to the
present day reposted articles cancelled by him, yet almost never
reposted any of his own disruptive floods. The bots, & their
maintainers, seem to have little trouble at all determining the
difference:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6mg9de%24qr%241%40supernews.com
To be continued.