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RoadRunner Co-Opting "Organization" Headers
Dusty Rhodes writes: "AOL-Time Warner cable Internet Provider RoadRunner has begun co-opting the 'Organization' line of Usenet headers, replacing whatever information a user enters with 'Organization: Road Runner - (location).' All RoadRunner customers nationwide, including business customers, have had their organization identity hijacked with no disclosure whatsoever, much less an opt-in or even an opt-out. Nothing in their TOS or AUP. Nada."
Doesn't this make it harder for RR "customers" to send out Usenet spam with totally forged headers and remain undetected?
Isn't this a Good Thing for everyone?
In particular it's a Good Thing for all RR customers who don't spam, as it means that other ISPs won't be denying connectivity to RR because of spam.
What have I misunderstood here?
The guys who run RoadRunner mail hosts seem to be a bit out of it when it comes to how "the Internet" works. Sure, they can figure out some of the stuff, but they get clueless really fast.
For example: They used to have the "From:" header screwed up. When you sent some mail, it said that the sender was "username at the machine that handled all of the mail for the area," not "username at the real address." So for six months or so, when some folks tried to reply to my RR address, their replies bounced. I had to add a "Reply-to" line just to get mail back.
Does this apply only to the RR usenet servers? Or does this apply to ANY usenet server that a RR customer is using?
Big difference. IF RR owns the server and provides it as part of a package, yes it might suck, but its their server and if they want to alter information, I suppose its their right to do so. You don't HAVE to use it. In fact, most ISP based newsservers suck anyways. It wouldn't be a great loss.
A lot of companies do things behind the scenes without putting into their terms of service. A great many isps will run httpd traffic through a cacheing proxy to either save on upstream bandwidth or to record information. One of these schemes makes perfect sense, the other is slimy.
Ok, so they're changing your organization field. Whether this matters or not, you know about it now. If its a problem, use a different news server. However, if they're hijacking nttp packets and "fixing" that information, then you have a BIG problem. At NO point should ANY information I send out be modified. If they want to play games to save bandwidth, fine. But I better get the exact data I request, and the other end better get the same data I send, with no
modifications. THAT would be entering into the realm of arbitrary censorship without permission.
They might STILL be within their rights to do that, but if I were a customer of theirs, I would start shopping around.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Read the RFC snippet I quoted. The Organization header is meant to identify the organization the user belogs to or the machine, the news server itself. If you're posting through your ISP's news server, you're probably a low-end business or a single-user individual.
Still, I used the term organization in the context of a network (or news server) hierarchy, not in the logical business context. I may have been too subtle in my original post regarding this.
From an NNTP point of view, the "organization" is really the provider hosting the news service, but the description of this header in the RFC doesn't really mandate it one way or the other.
The point I was trying to make is that RoadRunner is not in violation of any civil laws, any rights you think you have, nor are they really breaking anything at all in the RFC or the intent of this header in the NNTP specification. They're doing exactly what a lot of other providers have been doing for years.
If you don't like this change in policy, by all means let them know. They could easily reverse it, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them to. If all else fails, use a different news service that lets you specify your own vanity organization header (or even better, set up your own news service).
"The Organization header is meant to identify the organization the user belogs to or the machine, the news server itself."
The machine referred to is the one the article originates from, not the first server it propagates to. Why do you think that news clients insert the "Organization" header to begin with?
"From an NNTP point of view, the "organization" is really the provider hosting the news service,"
The organization is clearly intended to be that of the author of the article.
"They're doing exactly what a lot of other providers have been doing for years."
A lot of providers have been screwing up news in all sorts of ways for years.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.