Now comes the C&S crunch... let's see if they're predictable...
Anonymous
From: mhu...@pms144.pms.ford.com (Mark Hughes)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.admin.policy,alt.current-events.net-abuse
Subject: Re: Spambot II has arrived!
Date: 12 Jun 1994 18:51:36 GMT
My compliments to the cancel-bots. I looked in all the newsgroups
mentioned and only found 1 copy of the new spam.
Mark
I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
open season.
Can we all spell "Barratry", folks?
Brian Gordon
> [...]
>I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
>invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
>is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
>predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
>or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
>or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
>open season.
>
>Can we all spell "Barratry", folks?
>
Can we all say "Good luck filing your suit in Norway, where the cancels
originated"? I _knew_ you could :-)
--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
+ Brian G. Gordon bri...@netcom.COM bgg on DELPHI +
= 70243,3012 on Compu$erve BGordon on GENie BGordon2 on AOL =
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Arnt Gulbrandsen
>I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
>invoked and worked? Good work!
Sort of -- didn't quite work, but it was written in about a minute
today... I fixed it afterwards.
> Unfortuunately, my suspicion
>is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for.
Not quite; I suspect that they wanted people they could sue, or
threaten to sue, to cancel the spam. I'm neither.
Further, I suspect that they used a manual DOS-based system to spam
this time, unlike the shell script they used last time.
--Arnt
Larry Dresser
: originated"? I _knew_ you could :-)
Unfortunately, they probably have enough evidence to call it a
_conspiracy_ and file against the US deep pockets whose representatives
publicly participated. Hey, I've been lurking for quite awhile and who
knows who else has might have been watching... I'm not saying that a
conspiracy charge would stick but who wants to pay legal fees?
There has to be a better way than this to accomplish the same means.
Lawyers can eat vigilantes alive in the court system and sooner or later
someone is going to sue, if this method of combatting spamming continues.
Granted that the Usenet is a sort of cooperative anarchy, that doesn't
mean that if the Usenet leaders took charge and wrote some real rules
that these rules wouldn't form the basis of a common law defense against
attacks of this kind. Perhaps a type of democracy could be formed to
help give these rules a stronger legal basis. We see what is going to
happen if someone goes into court with "Usenet is an anarchy" as a
defense. I'm not a lawyer but I think some of you who represent large
companies should consult your company lawyers real soon now.
Larry Dresser
--
----------------------------------------------------------
| Larry Dresser (ldre...@netcom.com) |
----------------------------------------------------------
Sridhar Venkataraman
| I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
| invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
| is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
| predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
| or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
| or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
| open season.
Suing the Norway person is open acknowledgement that they advertised
not just in Arizona where they are free to, not just in the whole of
the USA where they are not supposed to but all over the world which is
plainly illegal, isn't it?
Sridhar.
--
Sridhar Venkataraman ASU, Tempe, Arizona USA sri...@asuvax.eas.asu.edu
<A HREF="http://enuxsa.eas.asu.edu:8080/~sridhar/">Home page</A>
Ed Ellers
>Suing the Norway person is open acknowledgement that they advertised
>not just in Arizona where they are free to, not just in the whole of
>the USA where they are not supposed to but all over the world which is
>plainly illegal, isn't it?
other countries for trial when the alleged offense occurred while the accused
was on U.S. territory.
Arnt Gulbrandsen
Ed Ellers <edel...@delphi.com> wrote:
> Illegal under whose laws? I can't see the U.S. extraditing its own
> citizens to other countries for trial when the alleged offense
> occurred while the accused was on U.S. territory.
If they were to sue me, they'd have to come here here -- extradition
wouldn't be necessary. Or they could sue me in the US, and ask
Norway to extradite me (fat chance).
I don't know whether lawyers are allowed to advertise in Norway, but
I've certainly never seen an ad (well, one actually, but that was
from the bar, not any lawyer).
Why don't you forget all this? It's not going to happen. C&S
wanted to see whether they could sneak in some postings early-early
Sunday morning, we showed them no, and that's all.
--Arnt
Scott Hagie
: invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
: is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
: predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
: or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
: or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
: open season.
For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
U.S.
Good job BTW, I never even saw one, I wouldn't have even known it had
happened if I didn't read this group. Anyone feel like sending me a copy,
I'd like to see if I can harass them a bit.
Scott
Casper H.S. Dik
>: Can we all say "Good luck filing your suit in Norway, where the cancels
>: originated"? I _knew_ you could :-)
> Unfortunately, they probably have enough evidence to call it a
>_conspiracy_ and file against the US deep pockets whose representatives
>publicly participated. Hey, I've been lurking for quite awhile and who
>knows who else has might have been watching... I'm not saying that a
>conspiracy charge would stick but who wants to pay legal fees?
Well, the machines that store and forward C&S posts are not
owned by C&S. If enough of us testify that we approve of the
removal of C&S posts by anyone through the means of cancel messages,
how can they maintain that what the auto-canceller did is illegal
or harmful to them? We own the disks, we decide what we want to keep
on them.
Casper
Thomas Koenig
>Illegal under whose laws? I can't see the U.S. extraditing its own citizens to
>other countries for trial when the alleged offense occurred while the accused
>was on U.S. territory.
Interesting question... would the U.S. extradite one of their citizens
who fired a bullet, while being in the U.S., across a border and killed
somebody on the other side?
--
Thomas Koenig, ig...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig...@dkauni2.bitnet,
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.
Tim Irvin
If it's the people doing the cancelling, then maybe we need a legal defense
fund for anti-spam heroes...
Anyway, I've heard that our hero is Norwegian in this case. How does an
American sue a Norwegian over something like this?
Tim Irvin, Programmer/Analyst/Woolly Mammoth Jockey
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc., Sunnyvale, California
Proud Warrior of the GenX Army--13th Brigade, Division #100865
***** all standard disclaimers apply *****
SOFTBALL '94--Games: 5 Team Record: 2-3 Tim's Batting Avg: .692, 1 HR
David DeLaney
>Good job BTW, I never even saw one, I wouldn't have even known it had
>happened if I didn't read this group. Anyone feel like sending me a copy,
>I'd like to see if I can harass them a bit.
There's one still left in one of alt.comp.acad-freedom.{talk,news}; I guess
either the canceller lissed it or figured it was actually on-meta-topic
there...
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney: d...@utkux.utcc.utk.edu; "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. Disclaimer: IMHO; VRbeableFUTPLEX
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ for net.legends FAQ+miniFAQs; ftp: cathouse.org
Tim Pierce
>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>U.S.
If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
difference is.
--
____ Tim Pierce /
\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / No relation to Mary.
\/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /
Jim Gillogly
Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>In article <hagieCr...@netcom.com>, Scott Hagie <ha...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>U.S.
>
>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>difference is.
A law that would make this illegal would also make it illegal for you to
walk into my unlocked office and add a few files to my PC. Looks like a
flawed analogy to me.
Canter & Siegel assert that since there is no anti-spamming law, they are
Allowed. If we believe their position in this regard (and they <are>,
after all, lawyers -- depending on whether TN has acted yet), then the
absence of anti-cancelling laws would make <that> Allowed also. A
small-minded person might craft smug metaphors about sauce, geese,
ganders, hoisting and petards...
Welcome to HappyNet... it's <all> Allowed. Maybe we need Detweiler's
MUSENET instead.
--
Jim Gillogly
Mersday, 23 Forelithe S.R. 1994, 18:36
Dale Shuttleworth
Larry Dresser (ldre...@netcom.com) wrote:
: : Can we all say "Good luck filing your suit in Norway, where the cancels
: : originated"? I _knew_ you could :-)
: Unfortunately, they probably have enough evidence to call it a
: _conspiracy_ and file against the US deep pockets whose representatives
: publicly participated. Hey, I've been lurking for quite awhile and who
: knows who else has might have been watching... I'm not saying that a
: conspiracy charge would stick but who wants to pay legal fees?
In order to be successfully prosecuted for consipracy, there are two
conditions that need to be satisfied. Firstly, it is necessary to
prove that people conspired (eg communicated with each other to a
common end). I have no idea if this can be proven - probably not,
unless you have samples of email between the two parties, or perhaps
a news thread where both parties took part. Secondly, the act that
these people are conspiring to commit has to be illegal. It is quite
legal to consipre to go and play baseball, and people do it all the
time. I think that it would be as difficult to prove that cancelling
posts is not as legal as making them in the first place. Or to put
it another way, winning the case would make the victor liable to
prosecution themselves. I don't think I would want to clarify the
situation in law if I was in a similar situation to C&S, I might
find that I end up shooting myself in the foot.
: There has to be a better way than this to accomplish the same means.
: Lawyers can eat vigilantes alive in the court system and sooner or later
: someone is going to sue, if this method of combatting spamming continues.
Sue for what? No-one has a right to post news (except on their own
machine any machines whose owners they have agreements with). By
accepting usenet, you are also authorising people to delete news
articles on your machine (ie cancels) just as you are authorising
people to post articles on your machine (ie C&S).
: Granted that the Usenet is a sort of cooperative anarchy, that doesn't
: mean that if the Usenet leaders took charge and wrote some real rules
: that these rules wouldn't form the basis of a common law defense against
: attacks of this kind. Perhaps a type of democracy could be formed to
: help give these rules a stronger legal basis. We see what is going to
: happen if someone goes into court with "Usenet is an anarchy" as a
: defense. I'm not a lawyer but I think some of you who represent large
: companies should consult your company lawyers real soon now.
There are no Usenet leaders. If you don't like the term anarchy, try
decentralised democracy :-) Besides, there are probably some company
lawers who are just dying to get their teeth into a baratry case :-)
It is impossible for anyone to force something onto Usenet which the
majority do not want, and that includes mass cancels. If they become
a problem (I don't see anybody complaining about the current ones
though) then a way will be found round it.
Dale.
--
******************************************************************************
* Dale Shuttleworth *
* Dept of Elec Eng, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK *
* ee9...@brunel.ac.uk *
******************************************************************************
Tim Pierce
>In article <2ti3uv$o...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>
>>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>>difference is.
>
>A law that would make this illegal would also make it illegal for you to
>walk into my unlocked office and add a few files to my PC. Looks like a
>flawed analogy to me.
You mean the law can't distinguish between the destruction
and the creation of information?? Wow! Where do I sign up
for a job with these people?
Anyway, both would almost certainly fall under the
unauthorized use and tampering of your equipment. Are you
saying that it would or should not be illegal to walk into
your office and copy a few files to your computer? What if
one were a virus?
Noel Hunter
: If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
: be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
: a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
: difference is.
This analogy doesn't quite work. Your PC is most likely a private machine.
If you allowed anyone to enter your office and use your PC to read or
write information onto your hard disk, then the analogy would work.
That's essentially what news is-- an open service where articles are
accepted. Mechanisms are there to control what comes in. If someone
submits a cancel control message to your server, and clearly indicates in
the body of the message that the cancel is for someone else's article,
then it's hard for me to see how that would be illegal. On the other
hand, if they deliberately made the message appear to come from someone
else, and provided no information otherwise, then I can see your point.
Imagine that someone uses this hypothetical PC in your office to post
advertisements for their business. In addition, they post so many copies
of it that it fills up the hard disk so that no one else can use it. How
would you feel about it if someone else came in and said "Hi, I am now
deleting the advertisements. My name is so and so, and I deleted these
files because they were interfering with the operation of your PC. If you
do not want me to delete things in the future, feel free to stop allowing
me to use your computer (by rejecting my input)."
Just my opinion. I am not issuing cancels, but I appreciate those who
did, because they kept C&S from crashing our server. That's the long and
short of it. If no one cancels these spams, the increase on traffic
shuts us down. And even when we are back up, the sites that feed us stay
down.
--
* Noel Hunter, Academic Systems Administrator, Wake Forest University *
* email: no...@wfu.edu http://www.wfu.edu/~noel *
Peter J. Scott
> If they were to sue me, they'd have to come here here -- extradition
> wouldn't be necessary. Or they could sue me in the US, and ask
> Norway to extradite me (fat chance).
Thank you for the cancels. I am truly sorry that the legal
situation in this country runs so contrary to common sense that
we needed someone outside the U.S. to save the rest of the world
from the destructive behavior of one of the worst representatives
of that legal profession. I only wish I had the authority to
apologize in some meaningful form for the embarrassment this
has caused.
--
This is news. This is your | Peter Scott, NASA/JPL/Caltech
brain on news. Any questions? | (p...@euclid.jpl.nasa.gov)
to...@netcom.com
>
>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>U.S.
>
>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>difference is.
Isn't a cancel more like a message to the computer asking it to delete the
file? If you choose to go along with that message, or for that matter
set up your computer to automaticaly honor such requests, that's hardly
the same thing as deleting the file without permission.
--
--
On the whole, I'd rather be reading Proust.
Lee Rudolph
>In article <hagieCr...@netcom.com> ha...@netcom.com (Scott Hagie) writes:
>>Good job BTW, I never even saw one, I wouldn't have even known it had
>>happened if I didn't read this group. Anyone feel like sending me a copy,
>>I'd like to see if I can harass them a bit.
>There's one still left in one of alt.comp.acad-freedom.{talk,news}; I guess
>either the canceller lissed it or figured it was actually on-meta-topic
>there...
The odd thing is that the example posted there (one of about 28, each
with four or so cross-posts, that made it here before Norway took over)
features among its headers
Sender: dae...@eff.org
Approved: use...@eff.org
though as far as I can tell, the group (a.c.a-f.talk) isn't moderated
anyway.
Lee Rudolph
Alex Morando
>
>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>U.S.
>
>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>difference is.
>
is on my news server and I can delete them if I want. I didn't have
to thanks to the cancel messages.
The spam is still at C&S, so nothing of C&S was deleted on their
personal machines.
>--
>____ Tim Pierce /
>\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / No relation to Mary.
> \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /
--
! Alex Morando, Engineer-at-large and an all-around good guy
! Internet: a...@netcom.com, amo...@aol.com
! No way on God's green Earth does this post reflect my employer's views.
Don Hurter
wrote:
> Good job BTW, I never even saw one, I wouldn't have even known it had
> happened if I didn't read this group. Anyone feel like sending me a copy,
> I'd like to see if I can harass them a bit.
I never saw one either. Now I'm worried that I'll miss the big ad for
superoxygenated water when it hits the wires, and I'll miss my chance to
snap up a case or two :*(
Here's an idea for a service:
We'll uncancel advertising for a small monthly fee to ensure that you
recieve the ads you've come to expect!
Would this be called a 'live' file? Quite frankly, I'd be grateful to the
cancel squad if advertising is off by default on my server. Thanks to all
who have effectively pre-sorted my junk mail.
The Little Mermaid
>
>I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
>invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
>is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
>predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
>or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
>or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
>open season.
I don't think they're gonna sue, I think they're gonna go to the media
and start bashing newsadmins... They're going to try to look as if they (C&S)
are the victims...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To find out more about the anon service, send mail to he...@anon.penet.fi.
Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized,
and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned.
Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to ad...@anon.penet.fi.
Tim Pierce
>In article <2ti3uv$o...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>
>>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>>difference is.
I'll phrase that another way. If I leave my briefcase on
the bus and someone walks off with it, is it not theft? It
was unquestionably stupid of me to have done that, but does
it mitigate the crime that was committed?
>I think you damn well know what the difference is. The files/spam
>is on my news server and I can delete them if I want. I didn't have
>to thanks to the cancel messages.
>
>The spam is still at C&S, so nothing of C&S was deleted on their
>personal machines.
Disingenuousness will get you nowhere. I think *you* damn
well know that there is a difference between "rm" and
"cancel."
Jim Gillogly
Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>Anyway, both [adding and deleting files on somebody else's computer]
> would almost certainly fall under the
>unauthorized use and tampering of your equipment. Are you
>saying that it would or should not be illegal to walk into
>your office and copy a few files to your computer? What if
>one were a virus?
Agreed. That's why your analogy is faulty: sending articles and cancels
to a computer via Usenet is not illegal, unlike trespassing and tampering
directly with the the disks. Let's go back to talking about Usenet
instead of flawed analogies. C&S Law's point of view is that there are no
laws regulating Usenet, so spam is Allowed. If anything not prohibited is
Allowed, then cancels are Allowed and they have no grounds to complain.
If their green card info is allowed to survive in alt.visa.us, their
hyperoxygenated water ad is allowed to survive in misc.health.alternative
or somewhere, and their thigh cream ad is allowed to survive in
alt.support.obesity (for example), then nobody's free speech is violated...
if that's your complaint here. Also, nobody's rights are violated if those
messages are followed up with their Florida history.
I have no objection to advertizing in moderation: tasteful notes in
relevant newsgroups, blatant ads in biz.*, colorful brochures in WWW
pages, and so on. I also have no objection to encouraging cooperative
behavior on Usenet, and this particular mule needs a metaphorical 2x4
upside its figurative head to get its attention.
--
Jim Gillogly
Mersday, 23 Forelithe S.R. 1994, 22:13
Jason Steven O Rourke
>I'll phrase that another way. If I leave my briefcase on
>the bus and someone walks off with it, is it not theft? It
>was unquestionably stupid of me to have done that, but does
>it mitigate the crime that was committed?
Let me phrase it one more way:
If someone walk his dog and it shits on your front yard, do you not
have the right to clean it up?
Is not littering a crime?
Does American free speech really extend to commerical speech (no, not
completely).
You may rightfully be concerned about where cancelling is taking us but I
see no reason why we must play by the rules with C&S ignores them.
Jason O'Rourke
IAS Computing Support
Berkeley
David J Walton
>Ed Ellers (edel...@delphi.com) wrote in article <5m3vXRb....@delphi.com>:
>>Illegal under whose laws? I can't see the U.S. extraditing its own citizens to
>>other countries for trial when the alleged offense occurred while the accused
>>was on U.S. territory.
>Interesting question... would the U.S. extradite one of their citizens
>who fired a bullet, while being in the U.S., across a border and killed
>somebody on the other side?
I think the distinction here is that murder is a criminal offense. To get
someone extradited from Norway, C&S would have to file criminal charges
against him, not just a lawsuit.
Dave
--
==========================================================================
David Walton wal...@cs.ucdavis.edu djwa...@engr.ucdavis.edu
==========================================================================
Tim Pierce
>In article <2ti9r6$1...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>
>>Anyway, both [adding and deleting files on somebody else's computer]
>> would almost certainly fall under the
>>unauthorized use and tampering of your equipment. Are you
>>saying that it would or should not be illegal to walk into
>>your office and copy a few files to your computer? What if
>>one were a virus?
>
>Agreed. That's why your analogy is faulty: sending articles and cancels
>to a computer via Usenet is not illegal, unlike trespassing and tampering
>directly with the the disks. Let's go back to talking about Usenet
>instead of flawed analogies. C&S Law's point of view is that there are no
>laws regulating Usenet, so spam is Allowed.
With every minute this whole debate becomes more absurd. I
am not arguing this from Canter and Siegel's point of view,
but from the point of view of reality. If Canter and Siegel
are really arguing that *no* laws in the U.S. affect Usenet
whatsoever -- for example, those concerning public threats
on the life of the President -- then they are even more out
of it than anyone might previously have suspected. I am
certain, and am sure that you know too, that they are not
arguing that the Usenet is not some rarefied Valhalla where
the laws of men may not touch, but that most laws which had
been invoked upon them could not be extended to cover their
activity. The destruction of others' data certainly would
fall under existing laws.
>If anything not prohibited is
>Allowed, then cancels are Allowed and they have no grounds to complain.
Rubbish.
Alex Morando
Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>In article <armCrC...@netcom.com>, Alex Morando <a...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <2ti3uv$o...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>>>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>>>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>>>difference is.
>
>I'll phrase that another way. If I leave my briefcase on
>the bus and someone walks off with it, is it not theft? It
>was unquestionably stupid of me to have done that, but does
>it mitigate the crime that was committed?
>
Wrong, try again.
The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
No crime was committed, certainly not one persecutable under
US law. I can allow the spam to get through as much as the cancels.
As for information being created/destroyed, see the above
analogy, which is a lot more appropriate than yours.
It's unquestionably stupid for you to even discuss it here.
This is a dicussion about proper use of Usenet, which will be
resolved RSN. And you siding with C&S puts you in a minority,
a minority that believes that their rights don't end where
others' begin.
>
>Disingenuousness will get you nowhere. I think *you* damn
>well know that there is a difference between "rm" and
>"cancel."
>
Right, I basically got the spam "cancelled". C&S are welcome
to recreate ther post, since it still exists in some shape or
form. I wish them luck.
>--
>____ Tim Pierce /
Twit.
Tim Pierce
>The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
>case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
>anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
>away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
committed a crime.
>And you siding with C&S puts you in a minority,
The horror! The agony!
Believe me, there is no love lost between Canter and Siegel
and myself. Fallacious arguments drive me bugshit, however,
and "there's no *specific* law against cancelling someone
else's articles" holds about as much water as "there's no
*specific* law against my whanging Lawrence Canter over the
head with a sledgehammer."
>Twit.
AOL user.
--
____ Tim Pierce /
Trif
Heck, then I'm just asking your operating system to delete that file,
and hey if it decides to go along with it, that's your problem. You
could, after all, disable the operating system keywords so you're not
automatically honoring such requests.
Cancels were designed to be executed automatically, just like deleting
a file on your PC. Calling them "just a request" is about as bogus
as saying that "format c:" is "just a request" to reformat the disk.
Trif
>In article <2ti3uv$o...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>In article <hagieCr...@netcom.com>, Scott Hagie <ha...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>>U.S.
>>
>>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>>difference is.
>>
>I think you damn well know what the difference is. The files/spam
>is on my news server and I can delete them if I want. I didn't have
>to thanks to the cancel messages.
True, but what gives you the right to do it to everyone else's machines
too? Do what you will with your own news server, but leave everyone
else's alone.
Trif
Jason Steven O Rourke <j...@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>I'll phrase that another way. If I leave my briefcase on
>>the bus and someone walks off with it, is it not theft? It
>>was unquestionably stupid of me to have done that, but does
>>it mitigate the crime that was committed?
>
>Let me phrase it one more way:
>
>If someone walk his dog and it shits on your front yard, do you not
>have the right to clean it up?
Sure, no one is disputing your right to clean up spam from your own
server, and to even refuse it outright. What is being disputed is
whether you have the right to trespass onto other people's servers
to "clean them up". They may not appreciate your actions.
>Is not littering a crime?
>
>Does American free speech really extend to commerical speech (no, not
>completely).
>
>You may rightfully be concerned about where cancelling is taking us but I
>see no reason why we must play by the rules with C&S ignores them.
The problem is that it isn't "us" against C&S. When you use cancels,
it's you against C&S, *and* the owners of other systems. Just clean
up your own server, then you can rightfully cast it as the black hats
and the white hats.
Trif
>In article <2tiifo$a...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
>case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
>anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
>away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
>No crime was committed, certainly not one persecutable under
>US law. I can allow the spam to get through as much as the cancels.
It is perfectly legitimate for you to throw away anything arriving
on your system. It is not legitimate to use an automatic command
to force everyone else to also throw it away.
>As for information being created/destroyed, see the above
>analogy, which is a lot more appropriate than yours.
>
>It's unquestionably stupid for you to even discuss it here.
>This is a dicussion about proper use of Usenet, which will be
>resolved RSN. And you siding with C&S puts you in a minority,
>a minority that believes that their rights don't end where
>others' begin.
I highly doubt that Tim Pierce is siding with C&S. He is siding with
all the sysadmins who don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry deciding
that they may use cancels for any reason whatsoever because they are
only "requests".
Wolfgang Schelongowski
>I take it there has been a spam and the cancel-bots were
>invoked and worked? Good work! Unfortuunately, my suspicion
>is that this is *exactly* what C&S were hoping for. I confidently
>predict that C&S will now sue the people who cancelled the articles,
>or the system owners of the sites that the cancels were posted from,
>or the network providers of these sites. basically it will be
>open season.
??? Cancels ? Which cancels ? I saw just one cancel here with a broken
header line, and I get several alt groups. Congratulations to the guys
who did that. There should be no discussion about _how_ they did it
because "loose mouths sink ships".
>Can we all spell "Barratry", folks?
Only if I get my dictionary. But seriously, the objective of C&S is
certainly different from what they publicly state. Maybe they were hired
to make UDP enforcable, and now (US) government may step in and say:
"We want no discussions about the following subjects: ..."
"We want no postings from the following sites: ..."
Any other ideas about the *real* motives of C&S ?
--
Wolfgang Schelongowski w...@xivic.bo.open.de
"If you don't look after knowledge, it goes away."
-- Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People
Roy M. Silvernail
> No-one has a right to post news (except on their own
> machine any machines whose owners they have agreements with).
OK, but contrast this with your next sentence:
> By
> accepting usenet, you are also authorising people to delete news
> articles on your machine (ie cancels) just as you are authorising
> people to post articles on your machine (ie C&S).
"[A]uthorising" is the issue here. My acceptance of Usenet articles in
no way obligates me to accept or propogate any arbitrary traffic. I am
perfectly free to erect a barrier to any traffic I so choose to block.
In fact, since I do not take a full feed, accepting traffic is an
exception for this site, rather than a norm.
This also means that I need not authorize deletions (Cancel commands can
be disabled).
In the future, I'd like to be able to receive lists of spam Message-IDs
via a secured mailing list. Then I could add them to my history file,
and simply drop the offensive traffic on the floor. No muss, no fuss,
no spam stains.
--
Roy M. Silvernail -- r...@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org
"I'm a family man, model citizen."
-- Warren Zevon
Clayton Haapala
Larry Dresser <ldre...@netcom.com> wrote:
>defense. I'm not a lawyer but I think some of you who represent large
>companies should consult your company lawyers real soon now.
That may be a good idea, if for no other reason that a swift response
by net-aware counsel would serve to deter further legal action. They
are counting on company lawyers not having a clue.
My opinion on this is that a cancel control message is just as valid a
message as these damn ads articles on USENET, and because I run my own
site and control what it takes in and sends out, I can send out cancels
if it pleases me. Note, however, that unlike C&S and a few others, I
understand that my site's participation in USENET is a matter of privilege
and professional courtesy, not a right. This forms the basis of administration
ethics and netiquette, and the mutual cooperation that maintains USENET.
Therefore, I would encourage all of you out there who sell network services
to NOT bundle "USENET newsfeed" in with your services, or even have it
as a separate line item, because you then lose control of the feed to
your customers, and are forced to fall back to "common carrier" positions.
Your customers are buying connectivity -- they are free to find someone
out on the 'Net to send their news to, and the traffic will still flow over
the wire you sold 'em. That somebody may even be your own USENET site,
separated by a virtual wall from the network services. If they are such
a poor USENET citizen that nobody wants to exchange news with them, it
remains entirely their problem, and not yours.
I'll get off the soapbox now. Guess a month of Green Card postings has
been getting to me.
--
Clay Haapala "Well, there was the process of sitting around
cl...@haapi.mn.org and wishing I had more computer stuff."
-- Dilbert
mathew
Trif <d...@hardy.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <armCrD...@netcom.com>, Alex Morando <a...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>In article <2tiifo$a...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>>The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
>>case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
>>anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
>>away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
>>No crime was committed, certainly not one persecutable under
>>US law. I can allow the spam to get through as much as the cancels.
>
>It is perfectly legitimate for you to throw away anything arriving
>on your system. It is not legitimate to use an automatic command
>to force everyone else to also throw it away.
Nobody was forced. They were all quite free to ignore the cancel
messages, and anyone who'd been watching news.admin.* (as all good
news admins should) would have known how to set up his software to do
so.
Personally, I'd like to thank everyone who issued cancel messages for
the C&S spam. I felt that those cancels were a valuable service to
the net. I'd be quite happy to say so in court, too.
mathew
--
http://www.mantis.co.uk/~mathew/
Looking for: Bug-tracking systems for UNIX, DOS and Windows
mathew
Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>In article <armCrD...@netcom.com>, Alex Morando <a...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
>>case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
>>anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
>>away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
>
>I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
>send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
>with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
>committed a crime.
Bull. INN has a specific file, control.ctl, which specifies which
control messages you want your news system to obey, and what you want
it to do with them.
The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
maintainer, *not* commands which it will obey. Furthermore, people
setting up news sites are implicitly agreeing to accept such requests
from absolutely anybody on the net.
That's why "cancel" isn't like "rm". There's no file of rules telling
rm what it will or won't do, and more importantly there's no prior
agreement (implicit or explicit) that everyone in the world be allowed
to issue rm commands for this machine.
In this case, there was also ample warning that people would be
cancelling the C&S postings, and enough information was posted that
you could have set up your news system to ignore the spam-cancels
and keep the C&S spam. You chose not to. That was *your* choice.
And in any event, no information was lost; the C&S ad was left in a
couple of *appropriate* newsgroups, so you could still read it.
If someone goes around mass-cancelling *all* copies of some information
*without warning*, then you have good grounds for complaint. In this
case, only unnecessary duplicates were removed, and you were warned,
so what's the problem?
Chris Owen
>In article <hagieCr...@netcom.com>, Scott Hagie <ha...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>U.S.
>
>If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>difference is.
Of course that wouldn't be legal - it'd be trespass, obviously. But if I
cancel an article that is held on your PC, there's nothing you can do about
it. I'm not *physically* present; you don't have to accept my cancel, but you
have chosen to do so; you have not issued any warnings saying that I can't
cancel articles on your PC; I'm not misusing your machine (a la hacking)
because you have deliberately chosen to give me full access to your news
spool for the purpose of adding or removing articles; there are no passwords
or other limitations that I have to get through.
There's no comparison.
--
| Chris "Chris" Owen, Trinity College, Oxford | tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Canter and Siegel's criminal Armenian grandparents have committed |
| genocide on 2.5 million Green Cards in order to MAKE.MONEY.FAST... |
Dale Shuttleworth
Tim Pierce (twpi...@unix.amherst.edu) wrote:
: Believe me, there is no love lost between Canter and Siegel
: and myself. Fallacious arguments drive me bugshit, however,
: and "there's no *specific* law against cancelling someone
: else's articles" holds about as much water as "there's no
: *specific* law against my whanging Lawrence Canter over the
: head with a sledgehammer."
OK. Which non-specific law says that I cannot cancel someone else's
article? I would have thought that by running a news system which
accepts cancels I am accepting the fact that anyone can cancel articles,
much as I am accepting the fact that anyone can post them. Whilst
posting an article and posting a cancel do two different things, it is
difficult to argue that one is more allowed than the other.
Dale.
--
******************************************************************************
* Dale Shuttleworth *
* Dept of Elec Eng, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK *
* ee9...@brunel.ac.uk *
******************************************************************************
Trif
Chris Owen <tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Of course that wouldn't be legal - it'd be trespass, obviously. But if I
>cancel an article that is held on your PC, there's nothing you can do about
>it. I'm not *physically* present; you don't have to accept my cancel, but you
>have chosen to do so; you have not issued any warnings saying that I can't
>cancel articles on your PC; I'm not misusing your machine (a la hacking)
>because you have deliberately chosen to give me full access to your news
>spool for the purpose of adding or removing articles; there are no passwords
>or other limitations that I have to get through.
Sorry, the fact that you aren't present and don't have to give passwords
has no bearing on whether something is unauthorized access. The only
thing that matters is whether you were authorized to do what you did.
In fact, since someone else's name has to be forged on the cancel, a
forge canceler *is* taking steps to sidestep the access precautions
that guard the use of cancels.
I'm tolerating the cancels being used against C&S right now simply because
the new software is not yet in place. But I don't pretend to come up with
some convoluted reasoning why using cancels is "perfectly okay". Once the
new software is in place, any argument for using third party cancels will
hold *no* water at all.
I note that the Spamhunters missed the "URGENT!" spam going around. Surely
this was as damaging to news spools as the C&S stuff that was recently
posted. I would hope that once the new software is in place, the spamhunters
will target this stuff too. Otherwise, sysadmins whose spools can't
tolerate spam won't be able to count on you.
Trif
mathew <mat...@mantis.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <2tj6ti$3...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
>>send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
>>with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
>>committed a crime.
>
>Bull. INN has a specific file, control.ctl, which specifies which
>control messages you want your news system to obey, and what you want
>it to do with them.
>
>The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
>which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
>maintainer, *not* commands which it will obey. Furthermore, people
>setting up news sites are implicitly agreeing to accept such requests
>from absolutely anybody on the net.
No they are not. Why do you think people have to forge the from line
in order to get cancels to take? Because the software has a safeguard
that is intended to explicitly refuse any "request" from "absolutely
anybody". I think a court would view forging someone else's name in
order to get around those safeguards as unauthorized access.
rm checks permissions on files before it deletes them, so obviously it
doesn't fulfill all requests from anybody. Should I somehow manage to
appear to rm to be someone else, am I then justified in saying that
"hey, it was just a request".
>That's why "cancel" isn't like "rm". There's no file of rules telling
>rm what it will or won't do, and more importantly there's no prior
>agreement (implicit or explicit) that everyone in the world be allowed
>to issue rm commands for this machine.
rm has no rules for its use? Then why can't I delete a root file unless
I somehow get rm to think I am root. Obviously, rm *does* have rules
telling it what it will or won't do.
Snowhare
Tim Pierce wrote on 13 Jun 1994 23:07:30 -0400:
: Alex Morando <a...@netcom.com> wrote:
: >The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
: >case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
: >anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
: >away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
: I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
: send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
: with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
: committed a crime.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I assume this means you will quit issuing rmgroups. After all, if you
send cancels (rmgroups) of other people's messages (newgroups) to other
systems with the intent of having the messages (entire groups!) deleted,
then you've committed a crime.
--
Benjamin Franz
"Waiting with bated breath for Tim's justification of why his rmgroups
are acceptable while cancels are not."
Tim Pierce
>The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
>which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
>maintainer, *not* commands which it will obey.
It's an interesting conclusion. I'd be thrilled if this one
actually held up, though I'm not sure if it would hold legal
water; doesn't RFC1036 specify that the cancel message
*will* delete an article? Hell, RFC1036 even treats rmgroup
as a destructive message.
Tim Pierce
Snowhare <snow...@xmission.com> wrote:
>I assume this means you will quit issuing rmgroups. After all, if you
>send cancels (rmgroups) of other people's messages (newgroups) to other
>systems with the intent of having the messages (entire groups!) deleted,
>then you've committed a crime.
In this case I am not under even the vaguest impression that
any site will accept my rmgroups, since I am well aware that
it is a no-op message; I issue them for a variety of reasons
involving net.politics. So as far as intent goes, I am in
the clear -- good point, though!
>--
>Benjamin Franz
>"Waiting with bated breath for Tim's justification of why his rmgroups
>are acceptable while cancels are not."
From a legal standpoint, probably neither is acceptable. I
do not object to the morality of cancels being sent for
Canter-and-Siegel-age, but to the statement that there's no
law against it.
David DeLaney
>Alex Morando <a...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>The problem here is that you only have one briefcase. In the
>>case of email, you can have thousands of copies. I have not stolen
>>anything, the same way it is perfectly legal for me to throw
>>away any junk mail or chain letters I may receive via USMail.
>
>I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
>send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
>with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
>committed a crime.
Um, no. No laws on UseNet (your previous example of "I'm sure that the law
applies to destruction of data" begs the question of "where?" and also fails
to see that, for instance, you can get the data perfectly well from Dave Hayes'
machine, which has disabled cancels; if you don't want *anyone* cancelling
things on your machine, you may follow Dave Hayes' example). He's committed a
*sin* - but not a *crime*. He then gets to come over here to news.admin.*,
stand up, and say "I took it upon myself to cancel this stuff" and see what the
reaction is; depending on what the stuff was, he may end up a Dick Depew or a
hailed spam-canceller, or something in between, and may or may not be absolved
of this sin. The cancellations of the C&S stuff were done with the *intent*
that spam be halted and contained before (for instance) it damaged systems
worldwide and caused them to crash or go offline... [and for those who remember
me arguing at length against Dick, cancelling spam *because it's spam* is okay
with me. Cancelling based on content isn't.]
>>And you siding with C&S puts you in a minority,
>
>The horror! The agony!
>
>Believe me, there is no love lost between Canter and Siegel
>and myself. Fallacious arguments drive me bugshit, however,
>and "there's no *specific* law against cancelling someone
>else's articles" holds about as much water as "there's no
>*specific* law against my whanging Lawrence Canter over the
>head with a sledgehammer."
There's a *specific* law against whanging LC, regretfully: laws against
assault. *Unless* LC had set up a mechanism, or had decided to use a mechanism
someone else had developed, by which people could occasionally come by and
whang portions of the environment near or on him (Whack-A-Luser, anyone?). The
News systems we use are *set up* to allow cancels to be handled automatically
if the site-owner wishes, and you *cannot* complain [if you haven't set your
site up (as, for instance, ANU-NEWS is set up) to not accept cancels whose
senders don't match the authors of the article] if your site goes ahead and
cancels messages from people who weren't the poster.
Dave "Martyr to gruesomely-cancelled posts' agonies doesn't become you, Tim"
DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney: d...@utkux.utcc.utk.edu; "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. Disclaimer: IMHO; VRbeableFUTPLEX
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ for net.legends FAQ+miniFAQs; ftp: cathouse.org
David DeLaney
>Tim Pierce (twpi...@unix.amherst.edu) wrote:
>: Believe me, there is no love lost between Canter and Siegel
>: and myself. Fallacious arguments drive me bugshit, however,
>: and "there's no *specific* law against cancelling someone
>: else's articles" holds about as much water as "there's no
>: *specific* law against my whanging Lawrence Canter over the
>: head with a sledgehammer."
>
>OK. Which non-specific law says that I cannot cancel someone else's
>article? I would have thought that by running a news system which
>accepts cancels I am accepting the fact that anyone can cancel articles,
>much as I am accepting the fact that anyone can post them. Whilst
>posting an article and posting a cancel do two different things, it is
>difficult to argue that one is more allowed than the other.
The relevant RFC says something on the order of "Cancels shall only be issued
by the poster or the admin of the site the post came from". It doesn't even
allow for moderators' cancels or third party cancels in any way; moderators'
cancels (of forgeries) are *interpreted* to be allowed because the moderators
are the only ones allowed to post there, and anyone else that does is forging
to look like them; thus the "by poster" is interpreted to apply, as it is
when you cancel an article by someone else forging to look like you did it.
Thus, *every* time you cancel an article that's by someone else, you're
violating the RFC (unless you're an admin at the site the article came from),
and you have to stand up and take responsibility for violating it, and say why,
and hope your reasoning's accepted.
Dave
Steve Brinich
> >not just in Arizona where they are free to, not just in the whole of
> >the USA where they are not supposed to but all over the world which
> >is plainly illegal, isn't it?
> Illegal under whose laws? I can't see the U.S. extraditing its own
>citizens to other countries for trial when the alleged offense occurred
>while the accused was on U.S. territory.
I don't expect anything like extradition and prosecution (and a good thing
too -- that would set a precedent we don't want).
However, wilful posting of the ad in areas where it violates local laws
and regulations about legal-services advertising (especially posting to
local newsgroups which are _targeted_ to jurisdictions with such laws and
regulations) is something that probably won't amuse the Bar one bit.
--
Steve Brinich | If the government wants us to respect the law, |
<ste...@access.digex.net> | it should set a better example. |
PGPrint (finger for key) 89 B9 92 BB E6 7F 7B 2F 64 FD F2 EA 14 37 4C 65
Gregory G. Wolfe Woodbury
> I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
> send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
> with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
> committed a crime.
That may be your opinion Tim. Please point out what class of tort
or criminal violation is being committed?
It may be somewhat unethical to remove a posted notice from a bulletin
board out in public -- however, very few folks are going to object to
someone removing the 40 *repetitions* of the posting that are plastered
all over the bulletin board (and covering up the other postings.)
> Believe me, there is no love lost between Canter and Siegel
> and myself. Fallacious arguments drive me bugshit, however,
> and "there's no *specific* law against cancelling someone
> else's articles" holds about as much water as "there's no
> *specific* law against my whanging Lawrence Canter over the
> head with a sledgehammer."
It is clear to see that banging LC with a sledgehammer is assault
and battery -- please explain what similar class of law is violated
by removing their messages from a series of private machines.
--
Gregory G. Woodbury @, but not speaking for Duke Univ.
System Admin Demographic Studies Box 90408 Durham NC 27708
g...@cds.duke.edu g...@acpub.duke.edu g...@wolves.durham.nc.us
Myth is metaphor,and ritual is the enactment of Myth-J.Campbell
Pete McKay
> >For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
> >U.S.
>
> If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
> be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
> a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
> difference is.
I think that there is a difference. If you walk into MY office and
delete MY files that I placed there, you are destroying MY work.
If someone places (or tries to place) something in my office that I
don't want, I have every right to remove/delete/destroy it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
| Pete McKay | Baker Hughes INTEQ | e-mail: pmc...@inteq.com |
| UNIX Sys. Admin. | 7000 Hollister St. | phone: (713)744-8050 |
| | Houston, TX 77040 | fax: (713) 744-3695 |
| | USA | |
------------------------------------------------------------------
| The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Baker |
| Hughes INTEQ, or any person either living or dead - including me.|
------------------------------------------------------------------
Trif
Pete McKay <pmc...@inteq.com> wrote:
>In article o...@amhux3.amherst.edu, twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
>
>> >For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>> >U.S.
>>
>> If you really think so, then ask yourself whether it would
>> be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>> a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>> difference is.
>
>I think that there is a difference. If you walk into MY office and
>delete MY files that I placed there, you are destroying MY work.
>
>If someone places (or tries to place) something in my office that I
>don't want, I have every right to remove/delete/destroy it.
Once again, no one is saying you don't have that right. What is being
disputed is your right to go into *my* office and do the same.
Alex Morando
Yes, I'd like to receive a copy of any of his attempted rmgroups. Since
I don't have any evidence. I'll refrain from calling him
a hypocrite for now.
Thanks, from one who has neither cancelled nor removed...
Noel Hunter
: It's an interesting conclusion. I'd be thrilled if this one
: actually held up, though I'm not sure if it would hold legal
: water; doesn't RFC1036 specify that the cancel message
: *will* delete an article? Hell, RFC1036 even treats rmgroup
: as a destructive message.
I wish you would just read the RFC, or re-read it if it's been a while. I
went to the trouble of posting some of it last week. Why not take the
time to read it thoroughly before commenting? The word *will* isn't
there.
Once again, I must point out that the RFC specifies a STANDARD, i.e. how
the software is supposed to work. If you read it thoroughly, you too
will probably realize that the RFC is NOT an attempt at creating news policy.
To refer to your flawed analogy-- suppose you put a sign on your computer
that says "to delete any file on this public computer, enter the author's
name and the title of the file. If the file is present and the proper
information is entered, the file is deleted." If you did that, you would
have essentially what news has with the RFC.
As long as people make it clear in cancels that they are NOT the original
poster, I cannot see how anyone could consider them illegal.
--
* Noel Hunter, Academic Systems Administrator, Wake Forest University *
* email: no...@wfu.edu http://www.wfu.edu/~noel *
Ralph Knapp
(Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury) wrote:
> It may be somewhat unethical to remove a posted notice from a bulletin
> board out in public -- however, very few folks are going to object to
> someone removing the 40 *repetitions* of the posting that are plastered
> all over the bulletin board (and covering up the other postings.)
Why not simply respect the "owner" (sys admin) enough to establish
the rules and regulations regarding what can be posted on their bulletin
board? The key question is - who made you (or someone in Norway)
"guardian of bulletin boards."
Are you going to be as happy when some self-appointed guardian decides
to issue cancels to all of the articles in alt.binaries.* or alt.sex.*
(for instance)?
Trif
Noel Hunter <no...@ac.wfu.edu> wrote:
>Tim Pierce (twpi...@unix.amherst.edu) wrote:
>: It's an interesting conclusion. I'd be thrilled if this one
>: actually held up, though I'm not sure if it would hold legal
>: water; doesn't RFC1036 specify that the cancel message
>: *will* delete an article? Hell, RFC1036 even treats rmgroup
>: as a destructive message.
>
>I wish you would just read the RFC, or re-read it if it's been a while. I
>went to the trouble of posting some of it last week. Why not take the
>time to read it thoroughly before commenting? The word *will* isn't
>there.
I have read the RFC, and while the word will isn't in there, there is
no way you can claim that the RFC makes provision for cancels to be
optional.
>Once again, I must point out that the RFC specifies a STANDARD, i.e. how
>the software is supposed to work. If you read it thoroughly, you too
>will probably realize that the RFC is NOT an attempt at creating news policy.
>
>To refer to your flawed analogy-- suppose you put a sign on your computer
>that says "to delete any file on this public computer, enter the author's
>name and the title of the file. If the file is present and the proper
>information is entered, the file is deleted." If you did that, you would
>have essentially what news has with the RFC.
>
>As long as people make it clear in cancels that they are NOT the original
>poster, I cannot see how anyone could consider them illegal.
No, it's more like "To delete a file of yours on this public computer,
enter your name and the title of the file." Leaving behind a comment
that you aren't actually the person implied in "your" is not going to
get you very far. I ran a PC LAN back in the very primitive days that
operated very much like this. You entered your class and your student
ID, none of which was secret information. We certainly would have taken
a very dim view of any student who logged in as someone else, deleted
files, and tried to justify it by leaving a note stating that they
weren't really the person they identified themselves as being.
Falsely presenting yourself as an authorized person in order to delete
files is not a trivial matter, and I doubt that you'd cut much slack
to a user who tried to justify a breakin by pointing out the he/she'd
typed in the line "I am not actually So-and-So, I'm just requesting
the operating system to delete their files."
Seth Breidbart
Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
> I
>do not object to the morality of cancels being sent for
>Canter-and-Siegel-age, but to the statement that there's no
>law against it.
Please tell me specifically which law prohibits me from sending a
cancel for a C&S article that will remove it from your machine, and
explain how that law does *not* prohibit me from sending a cancel for
an article I posted that will remove it from your machine.
(I'd doubtless not be the only person extremely surprised to find that
RFCs have the force of law.)
Seth
Russell Nelson
Anyway, both would almost certainly fall under the
unauthorized use and tampering of your equipment. Are you
saying that it would or should not be illegal to walk into
your office and copy a few files to your computer? What if
one were a virus?
Don't be silly. My news server approves all cancel messages. I
installed the software that way. "Inappropriate" cancels are as
legitimate as inappropriate posts.
--
-russ <nel...@crynwr.com> ftp.msen.com:pub/vendor/crynwr/crynwr.wav
Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key
11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | Quakers do it in the light
Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.
Tim Pierce
>In article o...@amhux3.amherst.edu, twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
>
>> ... ask yourself whether it would
>> be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>> a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>> difference is.
>
>I think that there is a difference. If you walk into MY office and
>delete MY files that I placed there, you are destroying MY work.
Right. And if I walk into your office and delete files
created by someone else, which you copied onto your machine,
I am still destroying your property. (Or theirs, depending,
but that gets us into a particular area of intellectual
property that I don't feel prepared to discuss.) Being
unauthorized to do so, I have committed a criminal act.
In this particular case, no one -- or at least almost no one
-- whose files were deleted from their machines cares. No,
I'll rephrase that: it seems that nearly everyone whose
files were deleted is happy that it happened. Great, but it
is no less a crime for that fact. You might call it a
trivial crime.
In this instance I side pretty firmly with Trif's statement
that we shouldn't fool ourselves about what's really
happening here. I have no problem looking the other way
in this particular case, but I think it does not serve us
well to persuade ourselves that someone will not eventually
be able to file tort against a mass canceller.
Seth Breidbart
Trif <d...@hardy.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>True, but what gives you the right to do it to everyone else's machines
>too? Do what you will with your own news server, but leave everyone
>else's alone.
Then why are you posting other than with a Distribution: local?
Seth
Gregory G. Wolfe Woodbury
kna...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu (Ralph Knapp) wrote:
> In article <ggw-1406...@suemac.cds.duke.edu>, g...@dukcds.cds.duke.edu
> (Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury) wrote:
>
> > It may be somewhat unethical to remove a posted notice from a bulletin
> > board out in public -- however, very few folks are going to object to
> > someone removing the 40 *repetitions* of the posting that are plastered
> > all over the bulletin board (and covering up the other postings.)
>
> Why not simply respect the "owner" (sys admin) enough to establish
> the rules and regulations regarding what can be posted on their bulletin
> board? The key question is - who made you (or someone in Norway)
> "guardian of bulletin boards."
You miss the point. I point out that the "spam" by CSLaw is equivalent
to a small group of people going around to every bulletin board in your
town/city/neighborhood/etc... and plastering all the space on the board
with *many* copies of their posting.
This covers up all the other posted notices, hogs the space available,
and destroys the usefullness of the bulletin board.
Are you saying that this action (hogging, etc..) is not unethical?
In a situation similar to this, it is *not* unusual for the community
to find that someone has "volunteered" to go around to some of the more
popular/usefull bulletin boards and to "undo" some of the damage that
the small group/person has done to the community.
If the "cleaner upper" is reasonable in their own right, all they do
is remove the repetitions of the posting, leaving a copy or two in each
place so that "their" message consumes its "fair amount" of the resources
that are available.
> Are you going to be as happy when some self-appointed guardian decides
> to issue cancels to all of the articles in alt.binaries.* or alt.sex.*
> (for instance)?
You don't think that that is already occurring? Wake up and look around
a bit. There are quite a few folks around who do issue cancels for
some of the postings to alt.binaries.pictures.* and/or alt.sex.*
articles that they disagree with.
The owners of sites that are really concerned about their actions have
modified the cancel message processing to ignore cancels from certain
"idiot" users so that they can serve the community in quiet enjoyment.
Other sites have ceased honoring cancel messages altogether, depriving
the poster of control over the distribution of their work. Most sites
just ignore the issue, and figure that those of us who care will scream
loud enough about it to get the offending "canceller" or net.idiot
suppressed by their providers.
I *never* said I was happy that it had come down to such a situation
as we face now, but I'm glad to see that there are reasonable people
caring for the operation of the net and acting to correct problems
in the most direct and effective fashion possible.
Tim Pierce
>Tim Pierce (twpi...@unix.amherst.edu) wrote:
>
>: doesn't RFC1036 specify that the cancel message
>: *will* delete an article?
>
>I wish you would just read the RFC, or re-read it if it's been a while. I
>went to the trouble of posting some of it last week. Why not take the
>time to read it thoroughly before commenting? The word *will* isn't
>there.
By golly, you're right! I can't find the word "will"
anywhere in this sentence:
If a message with the given Message-ID is present on the local
system, the message is cancelled.
It's nice that people like you are around to correct me.
>Once again, I must point out that the RFC specifies a STANDARD, i.e. how
>the software is supposed to work. If you read it thoroughly, you too
>will probably realize that the RFC is NOT an attempt at creating news policy.
That seems to me like a distinction without a difference,
since in some cases the operation of the software will
implicitly determine or at least shape news policy. Like
right now.
Legion and Chelle
>
>OK. Which non-specific law says that I cannot cancel someone else's
>article? I would have thought that by running a news system which
>accepts cancels I am accepting the fact that anyone can cancel articles,
>much as I am accepting the fact that anyone can post them. Whilst
>posting an article and posting a cancel do two different things, it is
>difficult to argue that one is more allowed than the other.
>
> Dale.
As much as I detest C&S and their tactics(and their philosophy, and their
sense of taste, and their...) I have to rain on your parade. It's not so
much a law as general'proper-use' standards:
Yes, anyone can post articles, but if someone posts an article by pretending
to be another person's account, that's net.forgery, and can get your
access revoked by most providers. The same principle applies (or would
apply, if anyone felt like defending C&S...any takers?) to generically
cancelling someone else's posts.
In other words, make your own kill-files if you must, but a cancel-bot
acting as _everyone's_ kill-file is a bit disturbing.
legion
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
| / "And all this science, I don't understand |
| leg...@netcom.com / It's just my job, five days a week." |
| / -Rocket Man-, EJ & BT |
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Trif
There is no legal precedent to demonstrate this issue conclusively one
way or another, but it is possible to put together a quite plausible
case in order to establish one.
In order to properly be a cancel, the cancel message From: line must
match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
Usenet, placing someone else's address in either of these headers is
termed a forgery, and is deemed an attempt to falsely appear to be
someone else. The court would probably consider this to be "industry
standard practice", and the From: and Sender: headers methods of
establishing identity to both news software and humans. There are
laws against unauthorized access to computers, and a strong case can
be made that using someone else's identity to destroy data on a
computer is against those laws.
Unless you can make a case that the Usenet community does not, in fact,
regard From: and Sender: lines as establishing identity, then I believe
that a good case can be made that forging a cancel is unauthorized
destruction of data. The fact that forgeries do in fact exist and that
sysadmins know that they exist won't mitigate this fact. The fact that
they are *called* forgeries and that people treat them as attempts to
falsify identity is likely enough for a court to decide that the
destruction of the data was in fact unauthorized.
Trif
Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury <g...@dukcds.cds.duke.edu> wrote:
>twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) wrote:
>
>> Pete McKay <pmc...@inteq.com> wrote:
>>
>> >twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
>> >
>> >> ... ask yourself whether it would
>> >> be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>> >> a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>> >> difference is.
>> >
>> >I think that there is a difference. If you walk into MY office and
>> >delete MY files that I placed there, you are destroying MY work.
>>
>> Right. And if I walk into your office and delete files
>> created by someone else, which you copied onto your machine,
>> I am still destroying your property.
>
>class as files individually gathered or created for "private"
>use. An article is "posted" and exposed to public view. The Netnews
>process takes that posting, and at your direction, gives copies of
>it to anyone participating in the Netnews process.
>
>This presumes that you were the "creator" of the posting. If you were
>not, then the "owner" of the work has a right to have an agent attempt
>to correct the improper distribution of the work. [Really, the
>intellectual property laws are quite clear in concept!]
Certainly the *owner* has that right and is explicitly given that
right via the cancel. But you have no right to say that my collection
of Usenet news articles is public property, and to then pretend to
be the owner in order to get it removed from *my* machine.
>The CSLaw "spam" is taking their posts and placing copies all over
>the available bulletin board space, making it unavailable to all
>the other users.
>
>It is certainly proper for the community to react by stripping down
>the excess postings and trashing them.
It is certainly not proper for someone to pretend to be the original
poster, and strip the postings from *my* machine and trashing them.
That is up to me not you.
>Furthermore, your hypocrisy is showing - your rmgroup messages are
>no different in kind from cancels.
I won't defend Tim's use of rmgroups (I think it stinks, in fact), but
there is one important difference. I've never seen Tim forge someone
else's name to an rmgroup.
Gregory G. Wolfe Woodbury
> Pete McKay <pmc...@inteq.com> wrote:
>
> >twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
> >
> >> ... ask yourself whether it would
> >> be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
> >> a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
> >> difference is.
> >
> >I think that there is a difference. If you walk into MY office and
> >delete MY files that I placed there, you are destroying MY work.
>
> Right. And if I walk into your office and delete files
> created by someone else, which you copied onto your machine,
> I am still destroying your property.
Come off it Tim. Usenet news articles are clearly not in the same
class as files individually gathered or created for "private"
use. An article is "posted" and exposed to public view. The Netnews
process takes that posting, and at your direction, gives copies of
it to anyone participating in the Netnews process.
This presumes that you were the "creator" of the posting. If you were
not, then the "owner" of the work has a right to have an agent attempt
to correct the improper distribution of the work. [Really, the
intellectual property laws are quite clear in concept!]
The CSLaw "spam" is taking their posts and placing copies all over
the available bulletin board space, making it unavailable to all
the other users.
It is certainly proper for the community to react by stripping down
the excess postings and trashing them.
Furthermore, your hypocrisy is showing - your rmgroup messages are
no different in kind from cancels.
--
Chris Owen
>
>of this sin. The cancellations of the C&S stuff were done with the *intent*
>that spam be halted and contained before (for instance) it damaged systems
>worldwide and caused them to crash or go offline...[and for those who remember
>me arguing at length against Dick, cancelling spam *because it's spam* is okay
>with me. Cancelling based on content isn't.]
Just out of curiosity, what were the details of the post that set off Dick's
(in)famous ARMM cancel cascade?
>There's a *specific* law against whanging LC, regretfully: laws against
>assault. *Unless* LC had set up a mechanism, or had decided to use a mechanism
>someone else had developed, by which people could occasionally come by and
>whang portions of the environment near or on him (Whack-A-Luser, anyone?).
Sounds just what Usenet needs: a real-world analogue of alt.flame. Anyone
care to produce a design?
--
| Chris "Chris" Owen, Trinity College, Oxford | tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Canter and Siegel's criminal Armenian grandparents have committed |
| genocide on 2.5 million Green Cards in order to MAKE.MONEY.FAST... |
Trif
Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury <g...@dukcds.cds.duke.edu> wrote:
The difference is that the "bulletin boards" in Usenet are all owned by
someone, and if they've said you can remove your own messages but not
someone else's, and you do in fact remove someone else's, you are using
their bulletin board in an unauthorized fashion. The fact that you use
and enjoy Usenet gives you no right to make unauthorized access to
someone else's server to "clean it up".
When the new software comes out that allows admins to refuse postings
on a user or site level, and to automatically receive and execute
"clean up" instructions from third parties that they trust, are you
still going to claim the right to "clean up" everybody's servers? Or
are you going to let admins have that right for themselves, the way
it should be.
>> Are you going to be as happy when some self-appointed guardian decides
>> to issue cancels to all of the articles in alt.binaries.* or alt.sex.*
>> (for instance)?
>
>You don't think that that is already occurring? Wake up and look around
>a bit. There are quite a few folks around who do issue cancels for
>some of the postings to alt.binaries.pictures.* and/or alt.sex.*
>articles that they disagree with.
>
>The owners of sites that are really concerned about their actions have
>modified the cancel message processing to ignore cancels from certain
>"idiot" users so that they can serve the community in quiet enjoyment.
>Other sites have ceased honoring cancel messages altogether, depriving
>the poster of control over the distribution of their work. Most sites
>just ignore the issue, and figure that those of us who care will scream
>loud enough about it to get the offending "canceller" or net.idiot
>suppressed by their providers.
>
>I *never* said I was happy that it had come down to such a situation
>as we face now, but I'm glad to see that there are reasonable people
>caring for the operation of the net and acting to correct problems
>in the most direct and effective fashion possible.
But why use cancels? Using cancels to achieve this is like starting
a forest fire in order to get rid of an unsightly pile of leaves. Burn
your pile and let everyone else worry about theirs.
Trif
Because I am posting on a topic relevant to news administration that
affects sites all over the world. I am authorized. I am allowed.
Admins have made their machines available for just such a purpose.
The very fact that you have to forge your identity to cancel someone
else's post ought to clue you in that it is not authorized or allowed,
and that admins do not make their cancel mechanisms available for
third parties to cancel others' posts.
If you're worried about spam because of the effect it has on your
machine (crashing it or whatnot), then take the proper steps to keep
it off your machine. This gives you no right to remove it from
everyone else's machines, however.
If you're worried about its effect on Usenet as a whole, and justify
cancels on those grounds, then you have justified the use of cancels
whenever someone feels that something has a bad effect on Usenet,
whether that be pornography, flaming, whatever. Do you really want
to open that can of worms?
Arnt Gulbrandsen
David DeLaney <d...@martha.utcc.utk.edu> wrote:
>Thus, *every* time you cancel an article that's by someone else, you're
>violating the RFC (unless you're an admin at the site the article came from),
>and you have to stand up and take responsibility for violating it, and say why,
>and hope your reasoning's accepted.
OK. I cancelled six more C&S postings today, in
alt.culture.tamil alt.culture.tuva alt.education.bangkok
alt.education.bangkok.cmc alt.education.bangkok.databases
alt.meditation.transcendental alt.misc alt.music.world alt.newbie
alt.news.macedonia biz.comp.services biz.comp.software
I used Rahul Dhesi's unspam script to output the paths, less to
check that the postings were genuine spam, and a small script of my
own (send email for a copy, I will NOT post it, for good reasons) to
cancel them.
My reason is that I think C&S are trying to establish a precedent,
and I wish to stop that.
--Arnt
Trif
Chris Owen <tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <1994Jun14....@martha.utcc.utk.edu> d...@martha.utcc.utk.edu (David DeLaney) writes:
>>
>>of this sin. The cancellations of the C&S stuff were done with the *intent*
>>that spam be halted and contained before (for instance) it damaged systems
>>worldwide and caused them to crash or go offline...[and for those who remember
>>me arguing at length against Dick, cancelling spam *because it's spam* is okay
>>with me. Cancelling based on content isn't.]
>
> Just out of curiosity, what were the details of the post that set off Dick's
>(in)famous ARMM cancel cascade?
It was his own test post. And it wasn't actually a cancel. I believe
he used Supersedes:. The problem was that his script was triggering on
the articles it was generating itself, and would therefore generate a
new article superseding the old one every second or so, with a growing
subject line of ARMM! ARMM! ARMM! [...].
>>There's a *specific* law against whanging LC, regretfully: laws against
>>assault. *Unless* LC had set up a mechanism, or had decided to use a mechanism
>>someone else had developed, by which people could occasionally come by and
>>whang portions of the environment near or on him (Whack-A-Luser, anyone?).
>
> Sounds just what Usenet needs: a real-world analogue of alt.flame. Anyone
>care to produce a design?
Already been designed. Someone post it. :)
Arnt Gulbrandsen
Ralph Knapp <kna...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>Why not simply respect the "owner" (sys admin) enough to establish
>the rules and regulations regarding what can be posted on their bulletin
>board? The key question is - who made you (or someone in Norway)
>"guardian of bulletin boards."
I'm that someone, and this is the last post I'm going to make on
this subject. Send me mail if you want to talk to me, I'll read
n.a.m cursorily, maybe, or not at all.
I made myself that guardian in a fit of impatience. I have never
forged a cancel before except on behalf of users who didn't know how
to do it, and don't intend to ever cancel again once this spam is
over.
C&S want to change the conventions of USENET, a lot of us others
don't want that, and I stepped forward to challenge C&S' attempt to
establish a precedent. I did it because there _is_ no "owner" or
central authority, USENET is cooperative (in principle) and I want
to see USENET stay that way.
As far as I know C&S have posted to only about 70-80 groups, not any
big spam, but I do think they're trying to set a precedent, and that
HAS to be challenged.
>Are you going to be as happy when some self-appointed guardian decides
>to issue cancels to all of the articles in alt.binaries.* or alt.sex.*
>(for instance)?
If someone does that, let the n.a.m. crowd discuss it.
--Arnt
David DeLaney
>d...@martha.utcc.utk.edu (David DeLaney) writes:
>>worldwide and caused them to crash or go offline...[and for those who remember
>>me arguing at length against Dick, cancelling spam *because it's spam* is okay
>>with me. Cancelling based on content isn't.]
>
> Just out of curiosity, what were the details of the post that set off Dick's
>(in)famous ARMM cancel cascade?
There were two that actually got cancelled, I believe; I also think the total
distinguishing characteristics of the posts were: that they dared to post from
anon.penet.fi to the sci.* hierarchy - Dick was all het up at Julf and/or
people disrupting the orderly flow of information on sci.* for some reason. I
was *not* here at the time, but this is what I gather from the several
flamewars I've seen. Dick's welcome to correct or amplify this, of course.
>>There's a *specific* law against whanging LC, regretfully: laws against
>>assault. *Unless* LC had set up a mechanism, or had decided to use a mechanism
>>someone else had developed, by which people could occasionally come by and
>>whang portions of the environment near or on him (Whack-A-Luser, anyone?).
>
> Sounds just what Usenet needs: a real-world analogue of alt.flame. Anyone
>care to produce a design?
Someone wanna repost the Whack-A-Luser Protocols description? I don't seem to
have it handy anywhere...
Mark Moraes
>In article <hagieCr...@netcom.com>, Scott Hagie <ha...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>For what? There is no law saying you can't cancel a post. In Norway OR the
>>U.S.
>be legal for me to walk into your unlocked office and delete
>a few files from your PC. Then ask yourself what the
>difference is.
Try a different analogy: Ask yourself if it would be legal for me to walk
around town tearing down posters that someone had plastered all over the
walls of buildings.
The possibility of roving cancel-generators on the net is a unpleasant
one, but let's face it; we don't have better solutions in place right
now. So in *this* particular instance, I'm going to say thank-you to the
canceller, who acted fast, effectively, decisively and, in my opinion,
correctly. Much better than endless kicking, screaming and quasi-legal
debating all over the net. No, I don't view this as a precedent that
makes auto-cancellers justifiable or legal. As with any other good tool,
a cancel generating script is a double-edged sword. (or a blaster that
points both ways :-)
Mark.
Seth Breidbart
Trif <d...@hardy.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <2tl54a$8...@panix3.panix.com>,
>Seth Breidbart <se...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In article <2tkdo6$a...@amhux3.amherst.edu>,
>>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I
>>>do not object to the morality of cancels being sent for
>>>Canter-and-Siegel-age, but to the statement that there's no
>>>law against it.
>>Please tell me specifically which law prohibits me from sending a
>>cancel for a C&S article that will remove it from your machine, and
>>explain how that law does *not* prohibit me from sending a cancel for
>>an article I posted that will remove it from your machine.
>>(I'd doubtless not be the only person extremely surprised to find that
>>RFCs have the force of law.)
>In order to properly be a cancel, the cancel message From: line must
>match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
>Usenet, placing someone else's address in either of these headers is
>termed a forgery, and is deemed an attempt to falsely appear to be
>someone else.
What if the body of the message contains the true identity of the
person sending it?
If I use an envelope with your return address, and start the letter
with "Hi, this is really Seth Breidbart" I doubt that any reasonable
person would consider that an attempt to claim the letter came from
you.
> The court would probably consider this to be "industry
>standard practice", and the From: and Sender: headers methods of
>establishing identity to both news software and humans.
It's "industry standard practice" to cancel spam. (Want to take a
vote?) Certainly that's more standard than to commit spam.
> There are
>laws against unauthorized access to computers, and a strong case can
>be made that using someone else's identity to destroy data on a
>computer is against those laws.
I'm not using somebody else's identity (computer accounts aren't
identity); I'm not using someone else's account (which exists only on
a computer I've never accessed); I am putting someone else's return
address on my message, but my name appears quite visibly in it.
>Unless you can make a case that the Usenet community does not, in fact,
>regard From: and Sender: lines as establishing identity,
It does not regard them as definitive, forgeries are too easy. That's
why people use digital signatures.
> then I believe
>that a good case can be made that forging a cancel is unauthorized
>destruction of data.
Unauthorized destruction of _whose_ data? C&S still have the data.
C&S don't have standing to sue me over destruction of the data in some
third party's computers, only that third party does.
> The fact that forgeries do in fact exist and that
>sysadmins know that they exist won't mitigate this fact. The fact that
>they are *called* forgeries and that people treat them as attempts to
>falsify identity is likely enough for a court to decide that the
>destruction of the data was in fact unauthorized.
Only sometimes are they considered attempts to falsify identity,
often they are attempts to hide it.
Seth
Tim Pierce
legal or that it is illegal, but damned if I haven't come
across a more fascinating flame war in a long time. Thanks
to everyone for their responses.
In article <2tli4s$h...@panix3.panix.com>,
Seth Breidbart <se...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <2tl7ha$6...@news.u.washington.edu>,
>Trif <d...@hardy.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>>In order to properly be a cancel, the cancel message From: line must
>>match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
>>Usenet, placing someone else's address in either of these headers is
>>termed a forgery, and is deemed an attempt to falsely appear to be
>>someone else.
>
>What if the body of the message contains the true identity of the
>person sending it?
>
>If I use an envelope with your return address, and start the letter
>with "Hi, this is really Seth Breidbart" I doubt that any reasonable
>person would consider that an attempt to claim the letter came from
>you.
I don't think so either, but we all know that the parties
responsible for verifying cancel messages are not reasonable
people. They are (unreasonable) programs. As far as a news
server is concerned, there is exactly one way for you to
identify yourself as the author of a particular message: the
method that Trif described. Everything else should be
considered noise for this purpose, including the body of the
message. That is, unless you're proposing that people begin
verifying and executing cancels manually.
>> The court would probably consider this to be "industry
>>standard practice", and the From: and Sender: headers methods of
>>establishing identity to both news software and humans.
>
>It's "industry standard practice" to cancel spam. (Want to take a
>vote?) Certainly that's more standard than to commit spam.
It's industry standard practice in the mob to murder your
competition, but -- oh, I'm sorry. I've digressed again.
>>Unless you can make a case that the Usenet community does not, in fact,
>>regard From: and Sender: lines as establishing identity,
>
>It does not regard them as definitive, forgeries are too easy. That's
>why people use digital signatures.
Hey, cool! We could take this over to news.future and talk
about embedding PGP verification in the cancellation
mechanism. I've heard whispers through the grapevine that
people are already working on this very concept.
>> then I believe
>>that a good case can be made that forging a cancel is unauthorized
>>destruction of data.
>
>Unauthorized destruction of _whose_ data?
The administrator of the system that processed the cancel.
All those who want to prosecute, raise your hands now.
(On the Internet, nobody knows you're a lurker.)
David Criswell
This Tucson Weekly story reminded me of something that's been
bugging me.
[...]
[Originally posted by lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
to alt.flame.canter-and-siegel and az.general]
[Original Message-ID is <9JUN1994...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>]
[Reposted by Ron Newman]
>From _The Tucson Weekly_, vol. 11, no. 13, June 8-June 14, 1994, p. 6:
>Caught in the Net: Two Phoenix Lawyers May Have Gotten More Than They
>Bargained For When They Hacked Off Internet Users
>By Jim Nintzel
>The Internet community is striking back at Phoenix lawyers Laurence
>Canter and Marsha Siegel.
> The pair hacked off thousands of computer nerds ...
From now on whenever I post I'm referring to journalists as
"newspaper geeks".
[spamming synopsis deleted, not relevant to my point]
> Among the highlights in the attorneys' past: In 1987, Canter and
>Siegel were both suspended from the Florida Bar for 90 days for
>"engaging in a deliberate scheme to misrepresent facts...in order to
>secure full financing of purchase for (a) law office."
To add a little detail here, the FL Bar told me that he used one
piece of collatteral to guarantee 2 purchases, the second of
which was the law office. The victim here would be the seller
of the office.
> The following year, the lawyers were in trouble again. A press
>release dated October 13, 1988, from the Florida Bar Association said
>Canter was charged with numerous violations of the attorney disciplinary
>rules, including neglect, misrepresentation, misappropriation of client
>funds and perjury.
> "Several of the complaints against Canter involved his failure to
>file the necessary or appropriate documents with the United States
>Immigration and Naturalization Services in matters of permanent
>residency and work visas," the release reveals. "In addition, Canter
>refused to return clients' funds and neglected to notify his clients
>that he has been suspended from the practice of law as a result of a
>previous discipline.
This sounds like the crime was basically that Canter continued to
portray himself as a lawyer to his then-clients, when in fact he
was suspended. Part of his duties as an immigration lawyer would be
to file the INS docs for foreign nationals - which he either didn't
(presumably to evade Bar detection) or couldn't (due to suspension).
The victims here are the foreign nationals who paid him.
> "The Florida Bar further alleges that Canter committed perjury by
>filing a false affidavit with the Bar and while testifying under oath
>in a deposition. These charges resulted after an audit of Canter's
>trust account by the Bar showed that trust funds were held in Canter's
>account during the time period when he denied any funds were present."
I'll go out on a limb here and surmise that after catching him, the
Bar required him to refund client monies. Canter claims "whoops,
already spent it, can't refund it". The Bar audits his accounts and
finds the money. Busted. The victim here is the Bar itself, having
been lied to. Presumably, the authorities would let the Bar police
itself in this matter, since courts weren't involved.
> While the charges were still pending, Canter successfully petitioned
>the Florida Bar to resign, thus avoiding being disciplined and quite
>possibly disbarred.
The "avoiding discipline" bit up there makes me wonder - that's a
pretty hefty list of crimes up there. I understand that resigning
from the bar keeps the _bar_ from disciplining him, but those
are criminal offenses that the state or the feds should be inter-
ested in. Further, they pretty clearly have victims that should
be interested in restitution. I called the Fla. bar way back when
the resignation got posted to verify it, and they didn't know if
authorities had punished him or not.
Certainly, he didn't spend much, if any, time in jail as he seems
to have jumped to TN while still with the FL Bar, then resigned
in FL under threats of nastiness. He seems to have left FL at
about the same time.
Could somebody in FL still want him? If so, who'd be the person
to call? The Attorney General, perhaps? I realize that statutes
of limitation probably come into play here.
> Canter and Siegel didn't return phone calls from _The Weekly_.
I'm very, very happy about that! They're starting to run from
the press, now that the press isn't buying Canter as the sole
source of data.
[.sig-away [TM] applied]
Dave Criswell Oracle Corporation
dcri...@us.oracle.com Redwood Shores, CA
Disclaimer: My employer doesn't taunt crooked lawyers, but I do.
Richard E. Depew
>tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk (Chris Owen) writes:
[...]
>> Just out of curiosity, what were the details of the post that set off Dick's
>>(in)famous ARMM cancel cascade?
>
>There were two that actually got cancelled, I believe; I also think the total
>distinguishing characteristics of the posts were: that they dared to post from
>anon.penet.fi to the sci.* hierarchy - Dick was all het up at Julf and/or
>people disrupting the orderly flow of information on sci.* for some reason. I
>was *not* here at the time, but this is what I gather from the several
>flamewars I've seen. Dick's welcome to correct or amplify this, of course.
You've confused the ARMM cascade with the earlier two-shot ARMM-ANON
Turkey Shoot. The ARMM cascade was when I shot *myself* in a most
embarrassing place... Would you like me to show you where I was
wounded? :-)
>>>There's a *specific* law against whanging LC, regretfully: laws against
>>>assault. *Unless* LC had set up a mechanism, or had decided to use a mechanism
>>>someone else had developed, by which people could occasionally come by and
>>>whang portions of the environment near or on him (Whack-A-Luser, anyone?).
>>
>> Sounds just what Usenet needs: a real-world analogue of alt.flame. Anyone
>>care to produce a design?
>
>Someone wanna repost the Whack-A-Luser Protocols description? I don't seem to
>have it handy anywhere...
I don't have the original, but I have a repost inspired by the April
Green Card mini-spam. :-)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: gi...@oslonett.no (Gisle Hannemyr)
Newsgroups: alt.internet.services,alt.tasteless,alt.cyberpunk,alt.culture.internet,news.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Green Card Lottery- Final One?
Date: 13 Apr 1994 21:59:57 +0200
Organization: Oslonett a.s.
Lines: 78
Message-ID: <2ohivt$n...@hasle.oslonett.no>
References: <2odmd7$5...@herald.indirect.com> <2ofure$j...@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu> <2oh96a$o...@mica.inel.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hasle.oslonett.no
In article <2oh96a$o...@mica.inel.gov> w...@inel.gov (W Brad Debow) writes:
>How about the whak-a-mole ethernet card? I was laughing so much at that
>one I forgot to save it. Anyone save that post a few months back? If so,
>PLEASE repost it, or mail it to me. Thanks a lot.
Here it is (slightly changed to accommodate local hatreds I think):
============
Original concept from: l...@panix.com (Larry Nathanson)
Subject: Solution to Make.Money.Fast (and other net.crimes)...
OK... I just got an idea -- anyone think we can combine an ethernet
card and a Whack-A-Mole machine to be used as pennance for various
net.crimes??? I can see it now...
panix: lan % finger @whack-a-luser.newbie.edu
[whack-a-luser.newbie.edu]
Welcome to the Whack-a-Luser Punishment Server
Currently doing pennance:
Login Name Mole-Hole WTD* Time-Rem. Crime
j...@uuhare.rabbit.net mhs5 413843 99y299d Rabbitnet, etc.
bk...@aol.com mhs4 2312 3d-5:30 MAKE.MONEY.FAST
se...@zuma.UUCP mhs8 134765 12y23d Roboposter
mcelwaine (no email) mhp1 45309 1y312d Bio. transmutations
Dick.Depew (withheld) mhp3 103412 3y12d ARMM fiasco
C.Thomas (no email!) console 57231 213d-5:58 Jesus is Coming
john....@euronetis.no mhs9 3141 6d-8:21 Wrong charset
d...@netcom.com mhs6 666 69d Spreading filth
* == Whacks To Date.
---------
panix: lan % /etc/whack C.Th...@whack-a-luser.newbie.edu
whack: <WHOOSH>... <BONK!!!>... <OWWWW!>.
panix: lan % /etc/whack -s C.Th...@whack-a-luser.newbie.edu
WHACK C.Thomas: x-tra large mallet
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=0. pain_level=34. <BONK!!>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=1. pain_level=12. <BONK!!>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=2. pain_level=18. <BONK!!>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=3. pain_level=16. <BONK!!>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=5. pain_level=113. <BONK!!>
... [let run for a while] ... >:-)
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=225. pain_level=23 <BONK!!>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=226. pain_level=12 <BONK>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=227. pain_level=5 <BINK>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=228. pain_level=0 <THUD_SQUISH>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=229. pain_level=0 <SQUISH>
1 whack from panix.com (198.7.0.2): thunk_seq=230. pain_level=0 <SQUISH>
ICMP Head Unreachable from mallet.luser.com for impact.linear.noggin from
panix.com. Error: skull has turned to thin paste. Mount scratch luser.
panix: lan %
-----------
Anyone wanna write an RFC for a new IPTP (Internet Pain Transmission
Protocol)??? I'd write it but I've just been contracted to do some
hardware development for lor...@ginsu.com. (If you finger this
machine, not only do we find out who you are, but we'll keep the
finger!)
--L
- gisle hannemyr (Oslonett A.S) | Send email til "in...@oslonett.no" |
X.400: gisle.h...@nr.no | for informasjon om Oslonett A/S. |
I-net: gi...@ifi.uio.no, gi...@oslonett.no -------------------------+
--
gisle hannemyr
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Cheers!
Dick
(It felt like more whacks than that. :-) )
--
Richard E. Depew, Munroe Falls, OH r...@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us (home)
``That they may have a little peace, even the best dogs are compelled
to snarl occasionally.'' -- William Feather
Trif
David DeLaney <d...@martha.utcc.utk.edu> wrote:
>tr9...@black.ox.ac.uk (Chris Owen) writes:
>>d...@martha.utcc.utk.edu (David DeLaney) writes:
>>>worldwide and caused them to crash or go offline...[and for those who remember
>>>me arguing at length against Dick, cancelling spam *because it's spam* is okay
>>>with me. Cancelling based on content isn't.]
>>
>> Just out of curiosity, what were the details of the post that set off Dick's
>>(in)famous ARMM cancel cascade?
>
>There were two that actually got cancelled, I believe; I also think the total
>distinguishing characteristics of the posts were: that they dared to post from
>anon.penet.fi to the sci.* hierarchy - Dick was all het up at Julf and/or
>people disrupting the orderly flow of information on sci.* for some reason. I
>was *not* here at the time, but this is what I gather from the several
>flamewars I've seen. Dick's welcome to correct or amplify this, of course.
Yes, but those cancels were done by hand, as I recall, and preceded ARMM.
The flamage that Dick got over them induced him to go and create ARMM in
an effort to justify what he'd already done, but those posts didn't actually
set the ARMM monster in motion.
Trif
Better solutions are on the way real-soon-now. But let's not shoot
ourselves in the foot with all these glorified justifications about
cancels being perfectly legit for anyone to use for any reason because
"they're just requests". How are we going to put the genie back in
the bottle?
Roy M. Silvernail
> In article <2tju9g$9...@sunforest.mantis.co.uk>,
> mathew <mat...@mantis.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
>>which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
>>maintainer, *not* commands which it will obey.
>
> It's an interesting conclusion. I'd be thrilled if this one
> actually held up, though I'm not sure if it would hold legal
> water; doesn't RFC1036 specify that the cancel message
> *will* delete an article?
Actually, no.
-- begin RFC 1036 quote --
RFC 1036 Standard for USENET Messages December 1987
3.1. Cancel
cancel <Message-ID>
If a message with the given Message-ID is present on the local
system, the message is cancelled. This mechanism allows a user to
cancel a message after the message has been distributed over the
network.
If the system is unable to cancel the message as requested, it
should not forward the cancellation request to its neighbor systems.
Only the author of the message or the local news administrator is
allowed to send this message. The verified sender of a message is
the "Sender" line, or if no "Sender" line is present, the "From"
line. The verified sender of the cancel message must be the same as
either the "Sender" or "From" field of the original message. A
verified sender in the cancel message is allowed to match an
unverified "From" in the original message.
-- end RFC 1036 quote
As you can see, it specifies that the article will be "cancelled",
without amplifying on the method.
> Hell, RFC1036 even treats rmgroup as a destructive message.
That much is true.
--
Roy M. Silvernail [ ] r...@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org
head -2 /usr/philosophy/survival | PGP 2.3a public key
#! /usr/local/bin/perl -n | available upon request
next unless /$clue/; | (send yours)
Ian G Batten
> match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
De jure, perhaps. De facto, perhaps not. Cnews, for example, says:
* In theory (RFC 1036 nee 850), we should verify that the user issuing
* the cancel (the Sender: of this article or From: if no Sender) is the
* Sender: or From: of the original article or the local super-user.
*
* In practice, this is a lot of work and since anyone can forge news
* (and thus cancel anything), not worth the effort.
ian
Trif
>Tim Pierce <twpi...@unix.amherst.edu> wrote:
>>I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
>>send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
>>with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
>>committed a crime.
>
>Bull. INN has a specific file, control.ctl, which specifies which
>control messages you want your news system to obey, and what you want
>it to do with them.
>
>The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
>which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
>setting up news sites are implicitly agreeing to accept such requests
>from absolutely anybody on the net.
No they are not. Why do you think people have to forge the from line
in order to get cancels to take? Because the software has a safeguard
that is intended to explicitly refuse any "request" from "absolutely
anybody". I think a court would view forging someone else's name in
order to get around those safeguards as unauthorized access.
rm checks permissions on files before it deletes them, so obviously it
doesn't fulfill all requests from anybody. Should I somehow manage to
appear to rm to be someone else, am I then justified in saying that
"hey, it was just a request".
>That's why "cancel" isn't like "rm". There's no file of rules telling
>rm what it will or won't do, and more importantly there's no prior
>agreement (implicit or explicit) that everyone in the world be allowed
>to issue rm commands for this machine.
rm has no rules for its use? Then why can't I delete a root file unless
I somehow get rm to think I am root. Obviously, rm *does* have rules
telling it what it will or won't do.
#! rnews 3338
Newsgroups: alt.sports.baseball.mn-twins
Path: pagesat.net!decwrl!amd!amdahl!pacbell.com!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!gatech!panther.Gsu.EDU!new
Tim Pierce
Roy M. Silvernail <r...@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org> wrote:
>-- end RFC 1036 quote
>
>As you can see, it specifies that the article will be "cancelled",
>without amplifying on the method.
I would be terribly amused to learn that the word
"cancelled" here was intended to mean "ignored."
Karl_Kl...@charcoal.com
qualifying paragraph:
If the system is unable to cancel the message as requested, it
should not forward the cancellation request to its neighbor systems.
I certainly think that one definition of "unable to" would be
"configured by the adminstrator not to accept."
It's all irrelevant, anyway.
Karl_Kl...@charcoal.com
> In order to properly be a cancel, the cancel message From: line must
> match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
i...@fulcrum.co.uk writes:
> De jure, perhaps. De facto, perhaps not. Cnews, for example, says:
Thus more evidence that, as a policy document, RFC 1036 is a failure.
Is there _anything_ in RFC 1036 regarding policy that is given strict
adherence?
1. Path headers routinely contain non-host entries (e.g.,
"not-for-mail") ("This line shows the path the message took to reach
the current system," RFC 1036 2.1.6).
2. References headers routinely are included when people change
subjects ("It is required for all follow-up messages, and forbidden
when a new subject is raised," RFC 1036 2.2.5).
3. Xref hosts routinely contain domains ("This line contains the name
of the host (WITH DOMAINS OMITTED)," RFC 1036 2.2.13, emphasis mine).
4. Cancels are not verified (at least in C News; haven't looked at
INN) (references to the "verified sender," RFC 1036 3.1).
5. Newgroup/rmgroup are not accepted unchallenged, generally ("Since
the newsgroup is removed from every host on the network..." RFC 1036
3.4).
The list goes on and on.
Noel Hunter
: In order to properly be a cancel, the cancel message From: line must
: match the From: or Sender: line of the message to be canceled. On
This is not true for all news servers. INN at least allows accepting of
cancels without verification, if I understand the config files.
--
* Noel Hunter, Academic Systems Administrator, Wake Forest University *
* email: no...@wfu.edu http://www.wfu.edu/~noel *
Noel Hunter
: I don't think so either, but we all know that the parties
: responsible for verifying cancel messages are not reasonable
: people. They are (unreasonable) programs. As far as a news
: server is concerned, there is exactly one way for you to
: identify yourself as the author of a particular message: the
: method that Trif described. Everything else should be
Again, I do NOT believe that this is the case. Will someone confirm or
deny for me that INN, a very widely-used news server, can be configured
to accept or deny unverified cancels?
Snowhare
: Yes, I'd like to receive a copy of any of his attempted rmgroups. Since
: I don't have any evidence. I'll refrain from calling him
: a hypocrite for now.
: Thanks, from one who has neither cancelled nor removed...
One of a half dozen on the 11th.
******************************************************************************
Path: u.cc.utah.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!dog.ee.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.ne
t!newsserver.jvnc.net!netnews.upenn.edu!news.amherst.edu!not-for-mail
From: twpi...@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Newsgroups: alt.config
Subject: cmsg rmgroup alt.rec.therapeutic
Control: rmgroup alt.rec.therapeutic
Date: 11 Jun 1994 18:43:52 -0400
Organization: Moderator, alt.history.what-if
Lines: 6
Approved: twpierce
Message-ID: <2tden8$q...@amhux3.amherst.edu>
References: <1994Jun10.2...@sq.sq.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: amhux3.amherst.edu
Not discussed in alt.config.
--
____ Tim Pierce / Don't pay any attention to those namespace
\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / brownshirts.
\/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / -- Bruce Becker
Dan Astoorian
>True, but what gives you the right to do it to everyone else's machines
>too? Do what you will with your own news server, but leave everyone
>else's alone.
Everybody who actually wanted 6000 copies of an advertisement for
immigration attorneys on their hard drives (for reasons other than "on
principle") please stand up.
Thank you.
-- People shouldn't think that it's better to have
Dan Astoorian loved and lost than never loved at all. It's
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada not, it's better to have loved and won. All
dj...@utopia.druid.com the other options really suck. --Dan Redican
Tim Pierce
Noel Hunter <no...@ac.wfu.edu> wrote:
>Tim Pierce (twpi...@unix.amherst.edu) wrote:
>
>: I don't think so either, but we all know that the parties
>: responsible for verifying cancel messages are not reasonable
>: people. They are (unreasonable) programs. As far as a news
>: server is concerned, there is exactly one way for you to
>: identify yourself as the author of a particular message: the
>: method that Trif described. Everything else should be
>
>Again, I do NOT believe that this is the case. Will someone confirm or
>deny for me that INN, a very widely-used news server, can be configured
>to accept or deny unverified cancels?
Uh, it can, but so what?
mathew
Trif <d...@hardy.u.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <2tju9g$9...@sunforest.mantis.co.uk>,
>mathew <mat...@mantis.co.uk> wrote:
>>The clear inference from this is that control messages are requests
>>which the news system processes according to the wishes of its
>>maintainer, *not* commands which it will obey. Furthermore, people
>>setting up news sites are implicitly agreeing to accept such requests
>>from absolutely anybody on the net.
>
>No they are not. Why do you think people have to forge the from line
>in order to get cancels to take? Because the software has a safeguard
>that is intended to explicitly refuse any "request" from "absolutely
>anybody".
An *optional* safeguard. I've used software which simply didn't check.
And the software is *accepting* requests from everybody. I don't get
back messages saying "Your control message was refused". It simply
isn't *acting* on them all.
>rm checks permissions on files before it deletes them, so obviously it
>doesn't fulfill all requests from anybody.
If the person who sets up the system chooses to make all files on the
system world-writable -- that is, chooses to make rm obey all requests to
delete files -- (analogous to making the news system obey all cancel
messages) then he shouldn't be surprised if his files start getting
damaged or deleted.
Does the phrase "contributory negligence" mean anything to you?
mathew
--
http://www.mantis.co.uk/~mathew/
Looking for: Bug-tracking systems for UNIX, DOS and Windows
Tim Pierce
Dan Astoorian <dj...@utopia.druid.com> wrote:
>In article <2tj9dj$g...@news.u.washington.edu> d...@hardy.u.washington.edu writes:
>>True, but what gives you the right to do it to everyone else's machines
>>too? Do what you will with your own news server, but leave everyone
>>else's alone.
>
>Everybody who actually wanted 6000 copies of an advertisement for
>immigration attorneys on their hard drives (for reasons other than "on
>principle") please stand up.
Why should the reason have anything to do with it? What is
wrong with wanting to receive the spam on principle?
Besides, I still doubt that a lack of objections makes a
difference as to whether a crime was committed or not, which
was the original issue.
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos
>I care not what you do with your own machine, but if you
>send cancels for other people's messages to other systems
>with the intent of having the messages deleted, then you've
>committed a crime.
You must have been eating Boston Harbor seafood when you wrote the above,
Tim. By joining Da Net you agree to the fact that cancels are a fact
of life, just like sendsys, tmp@netcom, the occasional ARMM, etc.
If you don't like cancel messages patches are available that
make them harmless.
Spiros
--
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos Kokomo, IN 46904 (317) 451-0815
Software Development Tools, AD/SI c2...@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com
Delco Electronics/GM Hughes Electronics [A Different Kind of Disclaimer]
Rich Salz
>Bull. INN has a specific file, control.ctl, which specifies which
>control messages you want your news system to obey, and what you want
>it to do with them.
control.ctl is not consulted for cancel messages. As doc/innd.8
explains, cancels are handled internally for efficiency.
/r$
Bill Seurer
|> Sridhar Venkataraman <sri...@asuvax.eas.asu.edu> writes:
|>
|> >Suing the Norway person is open acknowledgement that they advertised
|> >not just in Arizona where they are free to, not just in the whole of
|> >the USA where they are not supposed to but all over the world which is
|> >plainly illegal, isn't it?
|>
|> Illegal under whose laws? I can't see the U.S. extraditing its own citizens to
|> other countries for trial when the alleged offense occurred while the accused
|> was on U.S. territory.
Go to the US/Canadian border. Shoot a Canadian customs official while
standing in the US. See what happens.
--
- Bill Seurer Language and Compiler Development IBM Rochester, MN
Business: BillS...@vnet.ibm.com Home: BillS...@aol.com
Rich Salz
>I have read the RFC, and while the word will isn't in there, there is
>no way you can claim that the RFC makes provision for cancels to be
>optional.
Did you read the real copy of RFC 1036? The one I have on hand says this
as the third paragraph of Section 3:
Implementors and administrators may choose to allow control messages
to be carried out automatically, or to queue them for annual
processing. However, manually processed messages should be dealt
with promptly.
Rich Salz
>There is no legal precedent to demonstrate [that cancels are illegal] one
>way or another, but it is possible to put together a quite plausible
>case in order to establish one.
It is equally possible to posit the opposite case.
How do you know what newsgroups to accept? You listen to your users,
modulated by the messages sent out by Dave Laurence, Bruce Bucker, and/or
other well-known net people.
How do you know what articles to cancel? Same rules.
/r$
Tim Pierce
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos <c2...@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com> wrote:
>By joining Da Net you agree to the fact that cancels are a fact
>of life, just like sendsys, tmp@netcom, the occasional ARMM, etc.
Golly. I seem to remember that ARMM wasn't exactly embraced
with open arms by the net community at large. Is it time to
rescind the public pillorying of Dick Depew yet?
Rich Salz
> Will someone confirm or
>deny for me that INN, a very widely-used news server, can be configured
>to accept or deny unverified cancels?
The CANCEL_VERIFY config param in INN says whether or not innd should
check that the "sender" of the cancel message is the same as the "sender"
of the message being cancelled. The "sender" is determined by the
contents of the Sender header; if that header does not exist then the From
header is used.
/r$, author thereof