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Proposed Usenet Death Penalty for Australia's Largest ISP
supine writes "David Ritz has issued a request for discussion on applying a Usenet Death Penalty to Australia's largest ISP, Bigpond (and it's parent company Telstra)." This brought back to memory the time when AOL was facing similar charges.
On usenet, there's too many propigation problems anyways. Many of us miss posts done by ISP's within 10-15 class A netblocks. Multiple pulls on multiple servers can help, but there's always that fighting to find the new news server.
I used to pull from alt.control and alt.test and pull news server that looked like a FQDN and then ping tested them. Then it tried to connect and do a test. I then used them as my 'private news server'. Still, you wanna be careful doing this... cause the net.gods live in control groups. Piss them off, and you already have UDP.
BTW, what's with all these slashdot server errors?????
The Geek Union was stupid.
/. discussion.
Why doesn't stuff of this nature happen more often? Why can't this same logic be applied (through different, although possibly similar means) to other Bad Things that happen on the internet? What could stop Adobe suing Russian hackers? What would put an end to bad patents? What could even stop the application of the DMCA? Large scale, cooperative denial of service (in this case denying to serve them, not flooding their lines) of the institutions which do these things.
As an interesting sidenote, Katz specifically talked about applying this to Australian ISPs in the above linked
Narrative
Then you haven't been following the ongoing pains of our aussie geeks; they don't have a lot of options isp-wise :-(
You just need to know which groups to look at. For certain specialist things it can provide decent information and a reasonable community. Also the UDP does work as was shown with blueyonder.co.uk a year ago or so. They were threatened and quickly cleaned up their act when they saw the impact
Cheap UK and US VPS
"...a simultaneous UDP of VSNL and SILNET...was instituted for their failure to even begin to control the usenet terrorist who calls himself "HipCrime" ...Currently, VNSL and SILET have enabled port 119 (news)blocks on all outgoing connections from their services with the exception of their own servers. "
I would hardly call this a satisfactory outcome. Anyone with an inkling of knowledge can get around port blocks in a tick. If they are going to invoke a UDP surely the only thing that should lift it would be the prying of the spammers keyboards from their cold dead hands.
I think it would be sort of like communism.... its great in principle but not in practice.
Other than all the haters posting about 'is usenet still around'...jeez usenet threads are almost as offtopic with haters as the sendmail ones...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You've obviously never tried to grab the newest oscar screener SVCD DVD rip the day after it was sent out..
It comes in quite useful at time like these..
Click here to read too much about my personal life
Huh?
... UCE, ie SPAM!
Offtopic?
Hum... why have UDPs been used or threatend to be used in the past?
Lets see...
Erols.com
Bell Atlantic, July, 1997 SPAM!
UUnet SPAM!
Compuserve October, 1997, SPAM!
TIAC December, 1997 SPAM!
Netcom February, 1998 SPAM!
MCI2000.com August, 1998 SPAM!
PSINet November, 1998 SPAM!
Starnet IncJune of 1999 SPAM!
HKT (Hong Kong) June of 1999 SPAM!
BBNPlane October 1999 SPAM!
Ameritech November of 1999 SPAM!
VSNL and SILNET (India) December of 1999 SPAM!
In the Usenet Death Penalty article it frequently mentions that these example UDP's happened because the ISPs were major/#1 source for usenet spam. So the admins tightened things up and the spam disapeared from their servers, only to appear on someone elses. Spam just keeps getting worse and worse. UDPs may be a great way to enforce antispam policies, but it doesn't seem to stop the rotting public groups.
~Z
It amazes me how much emotion spam brings out. I hate it as much as anybody, but that's not enough to violate fundamental principles, including the one that it's not moral to punish the innocent to get at the guilty, particularly when you deliberately punish the innocent because by association, they can be forced to put pressure on the guilty or those who can punish the guilty.
:-(
It's like starving out a country to depose a dictator. Whoops.
It's just not something you do, and spam, while a royal pain in the ass, doesn't cut it. I wouldn't punish the innocent to get Usama bin Ladin, let alone spammers.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
If only we could also have smtp bans for domains that don't have a valid abuse@ address. This includes many of the larger telcos around the world and annoys me to no end. Spamhouse in a netblock rented to spamhouser by telco. Quite often none of them even have a clear abuse handling system. Clearly the messenger is the problem not the spammer. They know it, they don't care and just try to deter people from complaining.
Talk about netizenship.
. . . Until I figured out that's where a lot of spammers get their addresses, and until my ISP's gateway got flakey. In my opinion, Usenet largely gave way to the prevalence of web boards, which are far more inviting and appealing to users. I used to spend time on comp.sys.mac.system, for example, but MacNN Forums became a superior option. The major problem is, Usenet failed to evolve along with the rest of the Internet. One would think, though, that if it weren't for /. Usenet would be more popular than it is today. Usenet is pretty geeky, after all.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
If they remove the ISP that the spam originates from, the spammer will just find new ISPs.
/dev/null again X(
Sure, but I think you're missing the point. It would serve as a clear warning to other ISPs with simular non existing ignore-abuse-mails policies. I am with an ISP with such a policy and it is sometimes d*mned frustrating (especially when you compare with their competitors). The last thing they pulled was letting a former employee use personal customer data for personal profit and spamming (I assume it's the guy that came to make my pc 'surf-ready' and entered with the words Ah, this is Linux, I can't do anything here, as if his services were needed or requested).
I'm pretty certain that my abuse mail about this got redirected to
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
From the linked RFD: "At that time, I was attempting to de-peer Matt Middleton's rouge spam feed, in October, 1998." Cool. A "rouge" spam feed. The french commies are behind the spam! I knew it!
Death penalty for using usenet? Jeeze MPAA and RIAA are are extreme!
I doubt that this will be resolved by telstra if threatened with action; action will have to be taken.
Telstra have been losing money for a while now due to shoddy work in all of their services. Consumers just wont stand for it any longer, and this is strongly reflected by their dropping share price.
I believe they are losing money at such a rate that they refuse to outlay any on ressurecting this current spam problem - that, or they really are ignorant of the problem (due to incompitance).
If you've read the link, these idiots are being irresponsible top level members of the community. Inexcusable that such negligence is allowed to go on. Why does it take 5 years(!) to get them to clean up their act and comply to respectible operational procedure for such an influential company.
Roast em.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Same thing needs to happen for Usenet that needs to happen for e-mail. They have both grown larger than anyone ever thought they would, and the design was vulnerable to abuse. Ban this, ban that, block this, block that, it doesn't matter, because people whose primary goal in life is to make money by annoying the living shit out of other people will just find ways to circumvent the latest and greatest filter/banning/whatever.
It's time to design newer, more secure infrastructures so we can scrap the old stuff and (hopefully) deal with less of this bullshit in the future.
evil adrian
From the site:
UDP, or Usenet Death Penalty, is a means by which site administrators and others around the world attempt to enforce the cooperative nature of usenet on an uncooperative member of that community...
An Active UDP is one in which every message posted to usenet by the offending site is canceled or failed to be propagated.
If it reduces spam, I'm all for it. I for one have read far too many ads for health plans, penis enlargements, low-interest credit cards and fabulous marketing opportunities!
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
...there's still the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* groups. The best source of free porn.
Telstra don't respond to their own customers complaints so i doubt they will respond to some usernet talking about spam. My plan when from an unlimated 256/64 ADSL for about $65 AUD (maby $75), to a 3gb a month $96 one, with 18c an extra over they did speed it up to 512/128 but I think it was probally so people are more likly to go over. If i go 1gb over thats $180 extra. Problem is they had a monoploy over the entire market for ages although thats starting to break with iinet and internode with 12gb plans for the same price.
cat
Span isn't just a pain in the ass. It costs shitloads of money.
I can't remember the amount of bandwidth it takes to keep a news server updated, but it's a pretty big chunk. That makes it expensive to run a Usenet news server in the first place.
Now consider that an estimated 60% of the crap coming out of Telestra is spam, and the issue doesn't just become one of an annoyance. Telestra is costing lots of people lots of money.
Under this situation, I think it is perfectly acceptable for admins to stop listening to the noise Telestra is putting out over the pipes. Frankly, the UDP is the only real defense Usenet has against ill-behaved entities, and it is used rarely, and only when all other options have been exhausted and the provider being UDPd is still refusing to cooperate. Yeah, it sucks for Telestra users, but if they want their Usenet service to return to normal, they can vote with their money by going to another ISP, or they can pressure Telestra to start behaving.
The Shell Provider your pimping has a real neat mail client.
Email Clients (ping,mutt,mail)
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
not to mention Blueyonder in 2002...
http://www.marysia.com/marysia/personal/usenet.htm
Hope it helps....
If you are using Windows, and have Outlook Express on your computer, open it, then here's your todo list:
1. "Tools" menu => "Accounts"
2. "Add" button => News
3. Yadda yadda
4. For the news server, you must find the address of a news server that you have access to. It is likely that your ISP provides one for you. If your ISP doesn't offer one, or if you're too lazy to find out, you can search newzbot for a server.
5. After putting the newsserver in, click next however many times you need, then click finish. Click "Yes" to download the newsgroups from the news account you added.
6. Double click on a newsgroup in the list to subscribe to it.
The newsgroup you selected is now visible on the left. Click on it to read all the messages.
Thats it. No fiction, just facts, and a modest proposal to stop propagating their input. (After all, why should ISPs feel the need to help outsiders annoy the ISPs own users. And its not overreaching, they're just saying "If you won't play by our rules, you can't play" -- an axiom of nearly all cooperative activity.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I can't imagine how bad Usenet would be without UDPs. It's totally overrun by spam as it is. You can't go into any unmoderated thread without seeing hundreds of Lolita and girl/horse sex adverts. I've never gotten a good answer to a tech question from Usenet either. Is Usenet even relevant anymore, being full of spam and the technical illiterates? I find sites such as Slashdot and the Futuremark boards to be much more informative.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Yet when it comes to spam, most posters here are prepared to swing the heaviest hammer they can find at supposed offenders. But I wonder whether this is hypocritical.
Let's consider the parallels:
Is this a classic case of "do what I say, not what I do". ?
Telstra get good money from spammers, it's big business.
That's why almost every UDP either doesn't get past the threat stage, or is effective within 24 hours of its invokation - the ISPs are fully aware of the problem, and can solve it almost instantly, but while they can keep milking spammers they'll keep milking spammers.
It's easy money until the Usenet Cabal points the finger.
If you look at the UDP FAQ you'll see the snivelling language that they use to thank the ISPs after cleaning up their act, but it's bullshit. That's like thanking the bully for stepping _off_ your foot.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Given that, what are your opinions about Iraq? ^_^
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
when I left dejanews, we were receiving (pre-filter) about 60GB of news a day. (yes, that's a G ). Post-filtering, it was usually less than 1GB, usually around 950MB. Most of that bandwidth was misplaced binaries. So 59GB a day of spam and binaries in non-binary newsgroups (misplaced binaries is one of the charges in this UDP).
Make no mistake about it, spam and misplaced binaries do cost you money. 59GB/day of wasted bandwidth is not free.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Ever heard of Bittorrent?
They put up new [fucking huge] SVCDs all the time, and I've gotten very respectable transfer rates from the BT network (250k/sec or so).
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
From the UDP FAQ:
Isn't this censorship?
No. Firstly, the legal definition of censorship in the USA (where, unfortunately, most of the spammers are, even when they use resources outside the USA) is that it can only be done by the government - private entities can not, by definition, be guilty of censorship. Outside the US, laws are varied. Secondly, even ignoring that definition, and using the uninformed public's opinion of what censorship is [preventing someone from saying something that they don't like], this does not fall under that criteria, either. The articles being canceled or shunned by pathhost aliasing are not picked and chosen by their content - ALL articles from the offending site are canceled or shunned. It has nothing to do with likes and dislikes - it has to do with abuse by one system of all of the other systems on usenet.
Now perhaps you disagree with that, but I thought I'd point it out. Personally I agree with it. Also, if you haven't read the entire FAQ, you should. There are a lote of interesting points made. Please don't bother to reply to this post unless you have. Here's another good one:
So if you cancel everything from the UDP site, don't legitimate people get canceled, too?
Yes. One of the driving forces behind forcing compliance with generally accepted guidelines is that the ISP's own legitimate users (if any) can bring pressure to bear on their rogue ISP. Remember, the UDP is a near-last-resort measure.
Aw crap, ninjas!
Usenet is THE place for Lolita Donkey Fuckers and Cartoon bondage anal fuck. MUCH better than the WWW with no popups.
Eat at Joe's.
From the UDP faq
So if you cancel everything from the UDP site, don't legitimate people get canceled, too?
Yes. One of the driving forces behind forcing compliance with generally accepted guidelines is that the ISP's own legitimate users (if any) can bring pressure to bear on their rogue ISP. Remember, the UDP is a near-last-resort measure.
Does that really work? That sounds awfully a lot like the way black hole lists a suppose work. All I hear from that are customers on those blackholed networks complaining about how bad those blocks are. Never have I heard "I called my ISP and put pressure on them to fix the problem".
well, reading some of the other comments here, some people are more clueful. UDP'ing isn't just about stopping traffic from one source. It's also about getting other ISP's to cooperate is stopping spam. So this "drop in the bucket" (admitidly, the traffic that is part of the case for the UDP is about 1/10 of one percent of that traffic) will also help convince other admins to cooperate with news admins.
On the other hand, having done the math, 0.11% is still a lot of traffic for one ISP to be generating. If there were only 1000 ISP's, then ok, that's about average, but if you look at sources of usenet articles (Freenix Top 1000) there are 2 bigpond, and 3 telstra servers listed in the top 1000. in the (admitidly old) Feb 2001 stats. What this tells me is that they handle quite a bit of usenet traffic. taking them out of the spam equation should be more than a "drop in the bucket".
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Well I'm on the opposite side of the fence. I've seen UDPs fix problems a lot more often than I've seen them CAUSE problems.
I can only assume that you're not a regular usenet user. I've been using usenet since 1992 and without system admins enforcing UDPs, the whole network would've gone to hell years ago.
Face it, the reason the admins are putting the UDP in is to STOP SPAM. It's not like they want to block legitimate posts from their users.
Get a clue.
BTW: I block entire subnets from my mailserver because I get incoming spam from certain addresses in those blocks. Am I "censoring" people, or am I staging a "coup" if I do that?
Remember, it's my system and I can do what I want with it. The same as any other system admin, there's nothing that guarantees you access, or guarantees your post will be seen. This isn't the post office.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
In the end, the whole problem was from less than 20 people at @Home, who were notified by @Home to knock off the shit, and they did. So nothing happened.
The problem is that Telestra isn't doing much to get their users to stop being asses. If more action was done by Telestra in warning/stopping the spammers, there wouldn't be an issue.
I'll answer your questions in order:
Been using Usenet since 1984, thank you. Regular? Yup.
You asked: "BTW: I block entire subnets from my mailserver because I get incoming spam from certain addresses in those blocks. Am I "censoring" people, or am I staging a "coup" if I do that?"
No, because it's your system you're controlling. The key difference here is that they're not just killing posts from propogating to their servers, but to all of the NNTP servers in the world. You're not couping, but they are. That's the difference. They will use 'cancelmoose' or 'cancelbunny' or some other shit to kill all, and I want to repeat that, all, messages from an entire domain! What you're comparing is apples to oranges.
(alligator tears)
Boy, I know some newsgroups are going to get real empty...
I'd love to see these guys get it, along with Orbitz. Kill them and most of my popup woes would go away. I especially hate that fact that, apparently, stuff out of ad.doubleclick.net is not checked against multiple browsers. On my Linux box, Mozilla 1.2.x can hang indefinately trying to pull in some image from those dummies at doubleclick while IE on Windoz works fine.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Sorry, couldn't resist.
:)
Anyway, I like the idea of a UDP. I don't believe it is censorship since an ISP doesn't *have* to honor a UDP cancel. So, for example, a UDP'd user's posts may still appear on deja-news or google groups, for example, if those archives chose to retain them. In many ways, it's no different than blocking calls on your phone. Plus a UDP'd user often can switch to a non UDP'd ISP (not always true, I realize).
Also, while a person may have the right to free speech, that doesn't mean that everyone is obligated to listen to him/her. That's why it's not okay to go around screaming at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night in most neighborhoods -- frat row is a different case, of course
Anyway, I think it'd be worth trying. If it seemed like it wasn't working, it could always be repealed.
Telstra is a government supported monopoly in AU. They really don't have another choice. At least, nothing comparable in price.
Apple free since 1990!
Are we against freedom now... I hate spam as much as the next person but ....first they come for the spammers then they come for the binary groups then they come for the political groups and so it snowballs.....
Free USenet its not just for you and me its supposed to be free
Ok, what then would they do next after killing all posts from the UDPed domain?
They wait for the ISP to fix it's problems and then they stop UDPing it.
"Who put you in charge?" Their answer is always the same "We did."
What's wrong with that answer? Who do you think should be in charge? "In charge" meaning, who should decide on the rules? Who should enforce the rules? Seems to me that "the majority" is the best answer. Which is eactly what a UDP represents: a majority decision to enforce certian codes of conduct within the community. Or perhaps you're trying to suggest that there should be no rules? That anybody can do whatever they want? If "whatever they want" didn't affect other people then maybe; but that's rarely the case. Here we're talking about some major spam, which severely affects other people.
I believe that within any community, the majority has the right to decide on rules and to enforce them. That's the way communities work. The problems show up when the minorities have the power to impose their will on the community, but that's not the case here.
Aw crap, ninjas!
No, We're FOR freedom... The freedom to NOT pay to propigate someone else's spam!!! Get a clue!
The problem is that the UDPers aren't "the majority," they're a handful of over zealous control-freaks.
"Censorship is an action by government to prevent the dissemination of information."
No, actually censoring is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable." The fallacy that "only the government can censor" is bullshit of the highest order.
"UDP is a collective decision to not accept traffic from a particular server or provider."
Ideally, yes, but in reality what they will do is issue cancel messages for all outgoing posts from the domain being targetted. This isn't just "hey, let's ignore Bigpond!" it's "hey, let's kill Bigpond's usenet connections!" It's a DoS.
"A UDP is backbones and the like agreeing that the UDPed provider is behaving obnoxiously and refusing to listen to him..."
Again, that would be ideal, but that's not what happens in reality. They are a handful of people deciding that nobody from Bigpond has the right to be heard via usenet. In addition to being censorship it is also discrimination. And, although I enjoy Heinlein, he's not a founding father and his views posted in a book (albeit a good one) are not law and shouldn't be taken as such.
"It's censorship if the *GOVERNMENT* or other entity causes you to not be able to espouse your ideas at all."
No, actually censoring is "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable." The fallacy that "only the government can censor" is bullshit of the highest order. Why don't you go learn something.
first they come for the spammers then they come for the binary groups then they come for the political groups and so it snowballs.....
Slippery Slopes are illogical, by defintion, and and, alternately, a way of life for some slashdotters. *sigh* There is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they (whoever 'they' are) will proceed from one step to the next down the slope.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Except he was not really a Frenchman for France did not really exist back then. Europe was a patchwork of different states and statelets, with many parts of today's France being independent or being depending on other suverens (sp?).
Your point was, of course, that French were quite battle-worthy some time ago. This point would've better proven by bringing up the Napoleon's name. Much more recent too :-)
Today's Europe reminds me of ancient Greece during the Roman era. Always complaining about Romans, but too weak to do much on their own. The way Americans feel about Europe also seems similar -- respect for arts and education, laughs at the ... well, you know :-)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Give SPAM a chance!
Add up the traffic in his message, it's not costing anyone "lots of money." That's a fiction used to justify these overreaching actions.
(expecting moderators to use their points abusively on this post, because they don't like what it says. Oh well, my karma will survive it)
I see that I was correct, moderators just can't resist modding based on their agreement or disagreement with a viewpoint, and moderate down unpopular viewpoints. What a sad commentary.
It's free to the point in crosses th router port to my network. Once I'm paying for the bandwidth and storage, it's not free anymore. It's mine. And if I don't want to propigate articles that are binary and not in binary groups, that's my business. If I don't want to accept or propigate articles from a certain troublesome ISP, that's my business.
spam costs money to receive. the costs are just hidden as something else.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
More seriously if you read news.admin.net-abuse.usenet you'll soon realise that a lot of debate and agonizing goes on before a UDP. Often this debate is enough of a warning to an ISP that the UDP isn't necessary. UDPs are definitely a last resort, not a knee-jerk reaction.
Getting a consensus of the admins on nanau (news.admin etc) is considerably harder than herding cats, lurk a while and learn what goes on if you don't already know.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
The analogy I find useful is to consider like my reaction to certain politicians speeches - when they come on the babblebox I turn over or off - I refuse to listen. They may be able to speak but they don't have to be able to be heard - especially if I have to pay the bill (or part of it).
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
I think you're just beginning to stumble on the very harsh reality of this world.
War is all about using innocent people to fight/shield for evil people.
Virtually ALL leaders, generals, dictators, tyrants exploit the concept of human shields, and like sheep, we usually go along with it. If people were smart, we would come to an agreement with our "enemies" and mutually kill the leaders who are using us as thier shilds.
Reality shows us that there no simple answers, let alone perfect answers, to this type of problem. However, History shows us that ignoring/playing into tyrants who use human shields is a big mistake.
From what I've seen, usually the best bet is try to kill/harm as few innocents as possible, but make sure you get the tyrant. In this case, I think it's worth pissing off a few Aussies is worth the benefits to force thier ISP to play by the rules.
If we lived in a perfect world, we would killed Bush, and the Middle East would kill the terrorists
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
That's no excuse for their spam-friendly behavior.
They should still be good internet neighbors, regardless of how much or little competition is in the area.
Otherwise, a UDP will be the least of their worries... If they get onto SPEWS or 1000s of privately maintained blocklists, Telstra will quickly find themselves to be nothing but a very large intranet, cut off from the rest of the world. Usenet may not bring in much revenue, but I can assure you when companies start losing the ability to send email overseas, there's going to be hell to pay...
The internet is slowly being partitioned into two parts. One part will be made up of nothing but the spammers, and the other part will be the internet. Things like UDPs or email blacklists are a way of telling the ISP that they need to make a choice of which side they're going to choose.
Let's imagine that your postman started bringing you 300 letters a a day about penis enlargement, herbal viagra, women who want to meet you, etc. Now, let's add a factor of 10 because you subscribe to some news groups - so now you are getting 3000 letters a day.
You have to hire your neighbors kids to help you sort the stuff. You have to buy a cart to haul it in. Let's say for a minute that you live in an aparment complex with a common mail area. Now all your neighbors are seeing all the email you get about penis enlargements (complete with glossy photos). Now you have this whole embarassment factor going.
The difference here is that the people sending the letters have to buy a stamp. The people sending out the "Visit my web cam" emails don't have to pay anything. Therefore there is not a financial incentive to discourage them. I know one person who is a spammer. He works for 4 hours a day and makes twice as much money in a month as I do in year.
If you want to stop spam, DO NOT RESPOND TO THEIR OFFERS. If you don't buy that toner cartridge, visit the web cam, order the viagra, etc., the finanacial incentive to spam just disappeared. If people weren't stupid and gullible, no one would spam. Moral of the story - Quit being gullbile and stupid.
Queen BHDGary secures my bank
Is it censorship if I decide I don't want to read your posts and killfile you?
Is it censorship if I decide I don't want to read the posts from your entire ISP and make a killfile entry for that?
No? Then let's continue.
If I am in charge of a usenet server and decide I don't want posts from a certain ISP, am I "censoring" anyone? No. It is *MY* server. It is private property.
Even the news servers belonging to larger ISP such as AOL, or even usenet providers like Supernews are....PRIVATE PROPERTY.
As such, the owners get to decide the rules.
Don't like? Go somewhere else, or start your own server.
Actually, the library SHOULD have rented the room to the guy.
Libraries are public institutions - not private ones. So long as he wasn't breaking any of the rules or being disruptive to the other people in the place, they have no right to decide what sort of person can or cannot rent a room.
Now, if he came to my house and asked to hold a meeting in my living room, that's different. My living room is private property, and as the owner, I can refuse whomever I want.
Though it is precisely the existance of cancelbots that make it important for companies to NOT accept third party cancels .. signed or not.
.. there are so many commercial providers with peering arrangements out the wazoo that if a message gets to any of them the propagation goes up 100 fold.
.. and that information is possible to get from some servers if they don't rebuild the header of every message like some are configured to do (seems like Twister is one such program .. or at least it can)
What about the sometimes nasty people / groups (riaa??) who poison the binary groups with cancels of 1 part out of 10 or 100 so that the entire file is at best corrupt and at worst unusable.
anymore with Usenet
Now a UDP if you can lock off they're specific peering providers might be a bit more effective
They seem to have fixed it a day later.
/. a subscription because I belive in it.
/. is worth keeping and supporting.
Nice job, I wish Microsoft could do as well as Slashdot.
No, I am not a karma whore. I just can see excellence under my nose.
I am now going to give
I block ads on a regular basis, however a certain user convinced me that