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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."
I've noticed this for a long time now. A lot of ISP's are doing that. I don't mind too much since my organization is "Crime" but it is a bit annoying yes. However if you want much better news service at not too much a year, try Newsguy. I used them back when I did a lot of usenet posting and for like $25/year (its gone up a bit since then) I was able to get non-binary access to all my favorite newsgroups. If you want access to binaries you have to pay a bit more, but the service is very customizable to fit your needs. They filtered out 95% of the spam and kept articles for a month, while roadrunner is lucky to keep them a week and seems to have cut corners on spam filtering. So I'd suggest if you are serious about usenet, buy your access (its less then $5/month for basic access) and get higher quality news feed with less spam and full control over those important headers.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
They are your ISP and you are using THEIR machines, hence they may do as they wish...an ISP has every right (though perhaps not ehtical) to ... do whatever they want to incoming/outgoing data
Are you serious? Given your logic, you seem to think it's alright to replace every other header as well (including the X-Priority, or even the TO and FROM). Why stop there? Why not change the message body as well?
"They are your ISP and you are using THEIR machines, hence they may do as they wish."
They gave up the right to do whatever they wish with their hardware as soon as they started charging you money to use it. An ISP is bound as much to an agreement as a user (if not more so) because of the exchange of money involved, and they should not be able to unilaterally change the terms of the contract without at least informing the customers.
Not to pour water on a good conspiracy theory, but are people sure this isn't just a misconfigured nnrpd.conf (or equivalent)? It's pretty easy to do; many nntp sites already add an Organization line if there isn't one present -- all it would take is for some admin to foul up a config line.
Not to downplay the significance of companies doing stuff like this, but this may be unintentional. The article doesn't look like it's double-checked the motive.
Ah, computer dating -- it's like pimping, but you rarely have to use the phrase "upside your head" -- Bender
Unfortunately for you, AOL/TW's brilliant scheme to pad your retirement account by manipulating usenet headers has failed miserably. Last quarter, they posted the largest net loss in U.S. history ($54 billion).
Last week they announced that the SMTP and NNTP Header Development Division will be axed to save costs; this is expected to result in massive layoffs.
The bottom line is that from the Internet's point of view, your ISP and network provider is RoadRunner, so it makes perfect sense to label you as being part of that "organization" in this context. It is both within the letter and spirit of NNTP. To allow you to use your own vanity Organization header would only add confusion and defeats the spirit of the header.
If this were happening to me, I'd change my netnews .sigfile to read
--
If the Organization line on this post says 'RoadRunner', then the opinions expressed here are the official opinions of 'RoadRunner'. They put their name on them, they must approve.
All concerned RoadRunner customers should change their organization name to "is a sh*tty ISP."