FAQ: Rogue Sites on the Internet
ISP Ratings
ric...@paranoia.com (Ricardo Hector Gonzales) wrote:
-
-
- FAQ: "Rogue Sites" on the Internet?
-
-
----FAQ BEGINS---
-Last updated: January 12, 1997
-Author: ric...@paranoia.com (Ricardo H. Gonzales)
-
-
-NOTICE: This text may not be reproduced in any form for profit without
- the permission of the author. It may be reproduced in any
- form provided that no money is being charged.
-
-
-The question of so-called "rogue sites" on the Internet has recently
-become a popular topic of discussion. This FAQ was created in order to
-cover frequently asked questions about the "rogue site" label and to
-discuss related issues of interest.
-
-
-1. What is a "rogue site"?
-
- A "rogue site" is the title that in the past was assigned to Internet
- sites that were operated by individuals who were intent on harming
- the net. The sort of net-abuse they practiced included
- packet-sniffing, network floods, and account cracking. Recently,
- the title "rogue site" has come to mean any site in which an
- individual has an email account with which they can express
- opinions anonymously or state an unpopular opinion without the
- approval of certain people who would like to restrict these forms
- of expression.
-
- Each of these behaviours and methods of dealing with them will be
- discussed below.
-
-2. I am a system administrator. Why is my site being called a "rogue
- site"?
-
- What likely occured is that one of your users posted a message that
- someone else didn't agree with. What could have happened is that
- the reader may have been in such strong disagreement that he posted
- a message in one of the news.admin.* groups claiming that your site
- is a rogue site.
-
- It is also possible that a user on your system posted to several
- newsgroups with a message that was unpopular. Or maybe a user on
- your system sent unwanted email to people. If one person doesn't
- like the opinions or behaviour of your users, then you may
- be labeled a "rogue site" by this person and their friends.
-
-
-3. What is the UDP?
-
- UDP stands for the USENET Death Penalty which is handed out by
- an offended person and their friends when they don't like the
- user opinions or behaviours that come from your site. It is
- a tactic of revenge by use of censorship to try to cut you off
- from the Internet. It is an attempt to assert the values of
- a person and his friends over free expression.
Exactly--thank you for your thoughtful and informative FAQ Mr. Gonzales.
For those who wish to view these attempts at censorship first hand
you might spend a few days wallowing through the mire over
at the censors headquarters (news.admin.net-abuse.misc).
Steve
news.admin.censorship
-
-
-4. Who are these people who control "Netiquette" and the Internet?
-
- Netiquette is a term that some people use when they mean to
- say that there is a type of manners that you must adhere
- to when using the net. However, this concept has lots of
- problems in practice. There are a myriad of different ideas
- about how manners on the net should exist. Some people would
- like to keep things like a church where nothing confrontational
- or strong may be expressed. Others would like to speak freely
- and let others know about what they are thinking, even if it is
- unpleasant or not socially conforming. There are of course all
- ranges of personality types between this. Because there is not
- and single definition for the type of manners that all people
- should follow, there is no way to define netiquette, and it
- effectively does not exist. Those who claim it exists will
- cite a document that someone wrote, but that document only expresses
- the netiquette of the author and there will be millions of people
- on the Internet that disagree with that opinion.
-
- When it comes to people trying to control the Internet, this is
- an easier problem to solve. Because of its distributive and
- democratically cooperative nature, no one really owns the Internet.
- But there are people who would like to think that they did and try
- to control people in various ways. Some controllers try to stop
- people who post messages containing certain ideologies, political
- thoughts, or that are even critical of the controllers. In some
- cases the controllers send forged messages to cancel that articles
- that offend them. Often they try to have other people's accounts
- removed. But there is a way to stop many of these offenses.
-
- Because many of these people usually have this power through their
- jobs, it is proper to have them fired for their abuse of their
- position. Going through email to an administrator at their machine
- is not likely to be seen by anyone but them. You will need to contact
- a person who is in power at that organization and that may take
- more work. A possible approach to finding this information is
- to post your grievance and a request for information on one of
- the news.admin.* groups where there are watchdogs who document
- the net-abuse of cabal members. For long time offenders there is
- a good deal of public information available about their employers
- and private life.
-
-
-5. Why are certain harmless behaviours deemed illegal by "Netiquette"
- standards?
-
- If you understand the fictional "Netiquette" as nothing more than a
- system of morality that represents a small number of clamorous
- people, you can understand how they tried to make it seem real.
- They were effective in coming up with rules and propagating them, but
- their netiquette system has no further basis than this. Adding to
- the comedy and tragedy of this system is the fact that additional
- arbitrary rules have been invented to rule alongside it. An example
- of this is the "Breidbart Index (BI)" which is a made-up formula to
- determine whether or not a person has posted "too many" messages in
- a 45-day span. If a person has exceeded the BI level, people who
- want to control the Internet will step in and begin to forge messages
- as the sender to cancel the posts that their baseless formula
- indicates are in excess. The disastrous thing about this system is
- that the formula means nothing because it was simply made up by a
- person so that they could claim a reason to control USENET. Anyone
- could come up with any other formula and push it was a standard,
- thought it would be equally as meaningless. Recently, a newer version
- of the BI, called BI2, is being pushed as a stricter limit that will
- allow for even more cancels of posts that this group dislikes.
-
- Peter da Silva has recently been pushing for even stricter USENET
- article cancellation rules. He wants to cancel anything posted to
- more than 3 groups, though in some cases posting up to 2 dozen groups
- may be an appropriate distribution method. This doesn't seem to concern
- him, nor does the extreme unpopularity of his opinions and actions,
- which are seen as a threat to USENET by many.
-
- The actions of the people who send forged cancel messages have
- severely harmed the net. In reaction, several organizations are
- looking for ways to bypass their actions to keep free expression
- possible, while adding features such as ad hoc moderating/advising
- to increase the value and openness of USENET.
-
- What must always be remembered is that the responses to net abuse
- that are being used now (forged cancels, following the Breidbart
- index or other arbitrary scemes, etc.) only address symptoms
- and never the cause of the actual problem. Any reliance on them
- only serves to make the actual problem worse while no methods
- of stopping abuse are being developed. Those who attempt to
- enforce their methods on the net remain fixated on an old and
- useless paradigm and do not see the larger picture. They end
- up causing more problems than they solve and should be avoided.
-
-
-6. How can I stop the cabal so that my users and I may speak freely?
-
- The first thing you will want to do is to remove the power that
- certain individuals have claimed for themselves. They have no
- right to this power and should be removed from their positions
- because of their abuse and harm to the Internet.
-
-
- David C Lawrence (ta...@uunet.uu.net)
-
- He attempts to control all aspects of USENET group creation
- and deletion. This means that he decides whether or not to
- send approval for a group creation or cancelation of a group
- that he does not approve of. This stifles attempts by interested
- people to have a "Big 8" group created to discuss timely matters.
- His control limits or completely destroys all attempts to gain
- decent message propagation across USENET, confining group
- discussions to obscure "alt" groups that are rarely propagated
- well, or at all, on most systems.
-
-
- Chris Lewis (cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca)
-
- He sends thousands of forged cancels a month to destroy posts that he
- and his friends dislike. He claims to be doing a service and gets
- very angry when people point out that he is cancelling articles that
- they wanted to see or that he had no right to cancel.
-
-
- John E. Milborn aka JEM (j...@xpat.com)
-
- He's another person who is proud of his forged cancel messages and
- thinks he is a crusader for content control. In a strange sort of
- way it is true that censorship and cancelling other people's articles
- is content control, but that's nothing to be proud of. He has
- recently claimed to have ceased his forged cancels, though forged
- cancel messages continue to flow from someone using his address.
-
-
- Robert Braver (rbr...@ohww.norman.ok.us)
-
- This guy joined the bandwagon and loves to send forged cancel
- messages too. But I bet he'd be upset if someone sent forged
- cancel messages in his name if they disliked his posts.
-
-
- Jan Isley (j...@bagend.atl.ga.us)
-
- As a major USENET vote keeper, he was exposed for vote fraud and
- shamefully stepped down from that position. Since then he has been
- less of a public threat to USENET though he still operates behind the
- scenes. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of resistance to the idea
- of having new elections for all of the newsgroups that were created or
- denied because of the massive vote fraud he perpetuated. He also
- has proclaimed himself the only authority on what posts are not
- permitted in the local atl hierarchy which resulted in another count
- of Isley being called a censor and control freak.
-
-
-
-7. As a user, how should I deal with users' behaviours at a "rogue site"?
-
- It is possible to act appropriately to each of the behaviours that
- label a site to be a "rogue" one. Sometime it is most appropriate
- to not act at all. Here are common recommendations:
-
- Symptom: User expressed an unpopular opinion in a USENET group.
- Solution: Discuss the opinion instead of trying to label that site
- as a "rogue site" or having that user's account removed.
-
- Symptom: User posted a "disruptive" message in a USENET group.
- Solution: The definition of a "disruptive" message seems nearly
- impossible to achieve in practice. There has never been a
- message posted that could not be skipped or ignored, therefore
- there hasn't ever really been a "disruptive" message.
- Disregard the message or email the user if you feel
- compelled to communicate. This is not an indication of
- a "rogue site".
-
- Symptom: User posted a useless message, such as "MAKE MONEY FAST".
- Solution: Sadly, most of USENET consists of useless messages. This is
- just one example of the sort of message that is useless to
- some people. It is not permissible to cancel a message
- simply because it serves no pragmatic value to you. Others
- might find it useful. Disregard the message or email the
- user if you feel compelled to communicate. This is not an
- indication of a "rogue site".
-
- Symptom: User posted an unpopular message to several groups.
- Solution: Use a filtering service for USENET content (see "How
- do we fix USENET" below)
-
- Symptom: User mailed unwanted messages to several people.
- Solution: This is not a USENET problem, so should not be discussed
- in any news.admin.* newsgroups. However, to keep this
- sort of question from being asked in an improper group,
- it will be answered.
-
- There are several approaches to dealing with this problem.
- The first thing you will want to do is demand that you
- be removed from this person's mailing list. If this does
- not happen, you will want to complain the administrator so
- that you will be removed. If this still does not work, you
- might be able to arouse more interest in your request by
- bombarding the offending system with megs of garbage email.
- Several programs exist to automate this task.
-
- To prevent the annoyance of unwanted email, you might want
- to try either or both of these popular approaches:
-
- 1) Never post USENET messages that show a legitimate email
- address. While this approach is enough for some to label
- your site a "rogue" one, it will ensure that no companies
- who collect email addresses from USENET postings will be
- able to fill your email box with unwanted and unrequested
- mail messages.
-
- Since there is usually no legitimate need for anyone to ever
- email you from a USENET post you made, this should cause no
- problems for you and will prevent future annoyances.
-
-
- 2) Use a mail filtering device that only allows certain
- pre-approved addresses to pass through your mail system.
- Posts that are not approved can be approved by the sender
- if they reply appropriately to an auto-reply that this
- software generates. This will filter out all mass emails
- from automated software and auto-responders. Software
- to do this currently exists or can be created in a few
- minutes using procmail, filter, or other mail stream
- parsing software.
-
-
-8. How do we fix USENET?
-
- A major step towards fixing USENET would include removing the people
- who control it and have led it into its current condition. But this
- is only part of the solution. More toleration, freedom, and
- intelligent and thoughtful approaches are also necessary.
-
- Long time net-guru David Hayes (da...@jetcafe.org) has organized a group
- called the Freedom Knights which is dedicated to the task of stopping
- true net-abuse and supporting free speech. You can learn more about
- this group by reading his FAQ for USENET Sites of Virtue
- at http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/virtue.html or you can join his
- valuable mailing list by sending a message with
- "subscribe freedom-knights" in the body to majo...@jetcafe.org
-
- Dr. John Grubor is heading a team of experts who have proposed the
- idea of bypassing human biases by letting a set of intelligent
- programs perform all important USENET functions. This will include
- all vote taking (to stop the fraud from the controllers), all
- new newsgroup creation, and other functions which have run poorly
- because of the lack of ethics from the people in charge. Naturally
- since programs would run the net (Gruborbots), the people who try
- to put themselves in charge now feel very threatened by the
- possibility of being powerless and are reacting negatively, even
- slandering Dr. Grubor in hopes of smearing his name. However,
- people have realized that his proposals remove human bias entirely,
- support free speech no matter the topic, and are technologically
- superior to current methods. Best of all, they need no individual
- to monitor and run them. They serve the will of the people, whatever
- that might happen to be, through an automated application of public
- votes.
-
- There is also a method of USENET filtering that is far superior
- to both the forged cancel messages that certain people send and
- the proposed NoCeM method. There is at least one company that
- is developing it commercially and I do not wish to discuss
- their efforts. It will revolve around something that is completely
- different from the current USENET operations in that it allows for
- any number of ad hoc moderators. It will allow a diverse set of
- opinions instead of permitting the noisy and hostile crowd on
- news.admin.* to effectively run USENET with their arbitrary and
- self-serving policies. It will allow anyone to create any USENET
- group they like instead of requiring approval from David C
- Lawrence (ta...@uunet.uu.net). It will prevent forged cancels from
- being sent (a popular approach used by several people to stop
- messages they don't like). It is the natural evolution away
- from the behaviors that are clearly abusive and disruptive
- in their intent.
-
- The future of USENET is in our hands and we must stop the people
- who are trying to control it my holding all of votes and often
- committing fraud, directing its path so as to keep them in power, and
- acting openly hostile towards watchdogs who point out their ethical
- oversights. A more open system without the same small group of
- people fighting for control would be better for everyone involved.
-
----END OF FAQ---
-
Ricardo Hector Gonzales
FAQ: "Rogue Sites" on the Internet?
---FAQ BEGINS---
Last updated: January 12, 1997
Author: ric...@paranoia.com (Ricardo H. Gonzales)
NOTICE: This text may not be reproduced in any form for profit without
the permission of the author. It may be reproduced in any
form provided that no money is being charged.
The question of so-called "rogue sites" on the Internet has recently
become a popular topic of discussion. This FAQ was created in order to
cover frequently asked questions about the "rogue site" label and to
discuss related issues of interest.
1. What is a "rogue site"?
A "rogue site" is the title that in the past was assigned to Internet
sites that were operated by individuals who were intent on harming
the net. The sort of net-abuse they practiced included
packet-sniffing, network floods, and account cracking. Recently,
the title "rogue site" has come to mean any site in which an
individual has an email account with which they can express
opinions anonymously or state an unpopular opinion without the
approval of certain people who would like to restrict these forms
of expression.
Each of these behaviours and methods of dealing with them will be
discussed below.
2. I am a system administrator. Why is my site being called a "rogue
site"?
What likely occured is that one of your users posted a message that
someone else didn't agree with. What could have happened is that
the reader may have been in such strong disagreement that he posted
a message in one of the news.admin.* groups claiming that your site
is a rogue site.
It is also possible that a user on your system posted to several
newsgroups with a message that was unpopular. Or maybe a user on
your system sent unwanted email to people. If one person doesn't
like the opinions or behaviour of your users, then you may
be labeled a "rogue site" by this person and their friends.
3. What is the UDP?
UDP stands for the USENET Death Penalty which is handed out by
an offended person and their friends when they don't like the
user opinions or behaviours that come from your site. It is
a tactic of revenge by use of censorship to try to cut you off
from the Internet. It is an attempt to assert the values of
a person and his friends over free expression.
4. Who are these people who control "Netiquette" and the Internet?
Netiquette is a term that some people use when they mean to
say that there is a type of manners that you must adhere
to when using the net. However, this concept has lots of
problems in practice. There are a myriad of different ideas
about how manners on the net should exist. Some people would
like to keep things like a church where nothing confrontational
or strong may be expressed. Others would like to speak freely
and let others know about what they are thinking, even if it is
unpleasant or not socially conforming. There are of course all
ranges of personality types between this. Because there is not
and single definition for the type of manners that all people
should follow, there is no way to define netiquette, and it
effectively does not exist. Those who claim it exists will
cite a document that someone wrote, but that document only expresses
the netiquette of the author and there will be millions of people
on the Internet that disagree with that opinion.
When it comes to people trying to control the Internet, this is
an easier problem to solve. Because of its distributive and
democratically cooperative nature, no one really owns the Internet.
But there are people who would like to think that they did and try
to control people in various ways. Some controllers try to stop
people who post messages containing certain ideologies, political
thoughts, or that are even critical of the controllers. In some
cases the controllers send forged messages to cancel that articles
that offend them. Often they try to have other people's accounts
removed. But there is a way to stop many of these offenses.
Because many of these people usually have this power through their
jobs, it is proper to have them fired for their abuse of their
position. Going through email to an administrator at their machine
is not likely to be seen by anyone but them. You will need to contact
a person who is in power at that organization and that may take
more work. A possible approach to finding this information is
to post your grievance and a request for information on one of
the news.admin.* groups where there are watchdogs who document
the net-abuse of cabal members. For long time offenders there is
a good deal of public information available about their employers
and private life.
5. Why are certain harmless behaviours deemed illegal by "Netiquette"
standards?
If you understand the fictional "Netiquette" as nothing more than a
system of morality that represents a small number of clamorous
people, you can understand how they tried to make it seem real.
They were effective in coming up with rules and propagating them, but
their netiquette system has no further basis than this. Adding to
the comedy and tragedy of this system is the fact that additional
arbitrary rules have been invented to rule alongside it. An example
of this is the "Breidbart Index (BI)" which is a made-up formula to
determine whether or not a person has posted "too many" messages in
a 45-day span. If a person has exceeded the BI level, people who
want to control the Internet will step in and begin to forge messages
as the sender to cancel the posts that their baseless formula
indicates are in excess. The disastrous thing about this system is
that the formula means nothing because it was simply made up by a
person so that they could claim a reason to control USENET. Anyone
could come up with any other formula and push it was a standard,
thought it would be equally as meaningless. Recently, a newer version
of the BI, called BI2, is being pushed as a stricter limit that will
allow for even more cancels of posts that this group dislikes.
Peter da Silva has recently been pushing for even stricter USENET
article cancellation rules. He wants to cancel anything posted to
more than 3 groups, though in some cases posting up to 2 dozen groups
may be an appropriate distribution method. This doesn't seem to concern
him, nor does the extreme unpopularity of his opinions and actions,
which are seen as a threat to USENET by many.
The actions of the people who send forged cancel messages have
severely harmed the net. In reaction, several organizations are
looking for ways to bypass their actions to keep free expression
possible, while adding features such as ad hoc moderating/advising
to increase the value and openness of USENET.
What must always be remembered is that the responses to net abuse
that are being used now (forged cancels, following the Breidbart
index or other arbitrary scemes, etc.) only address symptoms
and never the cause of the actual problem. Any reliance on them
only serves to make the actual problem worse while no methods
of stopping abuse are being developed. Those who attempt to
enforce their methods on the net remain fixated on an old and
useless paradigm and do not see the larger picture. They end
up causing more problems than they solve and should be avoided.
6. How can I stop the cabal so that my users and I may speak freely?
The first thing you will want to do is to remove the power that
certain individuals have claimed for themselves. They have no
right to this power and should be removed from their positions
because of their abuse and harm to the Internet.
David C Lawrence (ta...@uunet.uu.net)
He attempts to control all aspects of USENET group creation
and deletion. This means that he decides whether or not to
send approval for a group creation or cancelation of a group
that he does not approve of. This stifles attempts by interested
people to have a "Big 8" group created to discuss timely matters.
His control limits or completely destroys all attempts to gain
decent message propagation across USENET, confining group
discussions to obscure "alt" groups that are rarely propagated
well, or at all, on most systems.
Chris Lewis (cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca)
He sends thousands of forged cancels a month to destroy posts that he
and his friends dislike. He claims to be doing a service and gets
very angry when people point out that he is cancelling articles that
they wanted to see or that he had no right to cancel.
John E. Milborn aka JEM (j...@xpat.com)
He's another person who is proud of his forged cancel messages and
thinks he is a crusader for content control. In a strange sort of
way it is true that censorship and cancelling other people's articles
is content control, but that's nothing to be proud of. He has
recently claimed to have ceased his forged cancels, though forged
cancel messages continue to flow from someone using his address.
Robert Braver (rbr...@ohww.norman.ok.us)
This guy joined the bandwagon and loves to send forged cancel
messages too. But I bet he'd be upset if someone sent forged
cancel messages in his name if they disliked his posts.
Jan Isley (j...@bagend.atl.ga.us)
As a major USENET vote keeper, he was exposed for vote fraud and
shamefully stepped down from that position. Since then he has been
less of a public threat to USENET though he still operates behind the
scenes. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of resistance to the idea
of having new elections for all of the newsgroups that were created or
denied because of the massive vote fraud he perpetuated. He also
has proclaimed himself the only authority on what posts are not
permitted in the local atl hierarchy which resulted in another count
of Isley being called a censor and control freak.
7. As a user, how should I deal with users' behaviours at a "rogue site"?
It is possible to act appropriately to each of the behaviours that
label a site to be a "rogue" one. Sometime it is most appropriate
to not act at all. Here are common recommendations:
Symptom: User expressed an unpopular opinion in a USENET group.
Solution: Discuss the opinion instead of trying to label that site
as a "rogue site" or having that user's account removed.
Symptom: User posted a "disruptive" message in a USENET group.
Solution: The definition of a "disruptive" message seems nearly
impossible to achieve in practice. There has never been a
message posted that could not be skipped or ignored, therefore
there hasn't ever really been a "disruptive" message.
Disregard the message or email the user if you feel
compelled to communicate. This is not an indication of
a "rogue site".
Symptom: User posted a useless message, such as "MAKE MONEY FAST".
Solution: Sadly, most of USENET consists of useless messages. This is
just one example of the sort of message that is useless to
some people. It is not permissible to cancel a message
simply because it serves no pragmatic value to you. Others
might find it useful. Disregard the message or email the
user if you feel compelled to communicate. This is not an
indication of a "rogue site".
Symptom: User posted an unpopular message to several groups.
Solution: Use a filtering service for USENET content (see "How
do we fix USENET" below)
Symptom: User mailed unwanted messages to several people.
Solution: This is not a USENET problem, so should not be discussed
in any news.admin.* newsgroups. However, to keep this
sort of question from being asked in an improper group,
it will be answered.
There are several approaches to dealing with this problem.
The first thing you will want to do is demand that you
be removed from this person's mailing list. If this does
not happen, you will want to complain the administrator so
that you will be removed. If this still does not work, you
might be able to arouse more interest in your request by
bombarding the offending system with megs of garbage email.
Several programs exist to automate this task.
To prevent the annoyance of unwanted email, you might want
to try either or both of these popular approaches:
1) Never post USENET messages that show a legitimate email
address. While this approach is enough for some to label
your site a "rogue" one, it will ensure that no companies
who collect email addresses from USENET postings will be
able to fill your email box with unwanted and unrequested
mail messages.
Since there is usually no legitimate need for anyone to ever
email you from a USENET post you made, this should cause no
problems for you and will prevent future annoyances.
2) Use a mail filtering device that only allows certain
pre-approved addresses to pass through your mail system.
Posts that are not approved can be approved by the sender
if they reply appropriately to an auto-reply that this
software generates. This will filter out all mass emails
from automated software and auto-responders. Software
to do this currently exists or can be created in a few
minutes using procmail, filter, or other mail stream
parsing software.
8. How do we fix USENET?
A major step towards fixing USENET would include removing the people
who control it and have led it into its current condition. But this
is only part of the solution. More toleration, freedom, and
intelligent and thoughtful approaches are also necessary.
Long time net-guru David Hayes (da...@jetcafe.org) has organized a group
called the Freedom Knights which is dedicated to the task of stopping
true net-abuse and supporting free speech. You can learn more about
this group by reading his FAQ for USENET Sites of Virtue
at http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/virtue.html or you can join his
valuable mailing list by sending a message with
"subscribe freedom-knights" in the body to majo...@jetcafe.org
Dr. John Grubor is heading a team of experts who have proposed the
idea of bypassing human biases by letting a set of intelligent
programs perform all important USENET functions. This will include
all vote taking (to stop the fraud from the controllers), all
new newsgroup creation, and other functions which have run poorly
because of the lack of ethics from the people in charge. Naturally
since programs would run the net (Gruborbots), the people who try
to put themselves in charge now feel very threatened by the
possibility of being powerless and are reacting negatively, even
slandering Dr. Grubor in hopes of smearing his name. However,
people have realized that his proposals remove human bias entirely,
support free speech no matter the topic, and are technologically
superior to current methods. Best of all, they need no individual
to monitor and run them. They serve the will of the people, whatever
that might happen to be, through an automated application of public
votes.
There is also a method of USENET filtering that is far superior
to both the forged cancel messages that certain people send and
the proposed NoCeM method. There is at least one company that
is developing it commercially and I do not wish to discuss
their efforts. It will revolve around something that is completely
different from the current USENET operations in that it allows for
any number of ad hoc moderators. It will allow a diverse set of
opinions instead of permitting the noisy and hostile crowd on
news.admin.* to effectively run USENET with their arbitrary and
self-serving policies. It will allow anyone to create any USENET
group they like instead of requiring approval from David C
Lawrence (ta...@uunet.uu.net). It will prevent forged cancels from
being sent (a popular approach used by several people to stop
messages they don't like). It is the natural evolution away
from the behaviors that are clearly abusive and disruptive
in their intent.
The future of USENET is in our hands and we must stop the people
who are trying to control it my holding all of votes and often
committing fraud, directing its path so as to keep them in power, and
acting openly hostile towards watchdogs who point out their ethical
oversights. A more open system without the same small group of
people fighting for control would be better for everyone involved.
---END OF FAQ---
Neil
Hi,
I also find the FAQ very informative and useful in exposing the scumlike
cabal for what they are.
--
Neil McAliece