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...
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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