From: kjpodsia@cyberramp.net (Kevin Podsiadlik) Subject: FAQ-Rebuttal: 'Rogue Sites' on the Internet(2/2) Date: 1997/09/10 Message-ID: References: Organization: Cyberramp, Dallas, TX Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.admin.misc,news.admin.net-abuse.usen et,alt.spam,alt.stop.spamming,news.admin.net-abuse.email,news.groups (Sorry, posted part two under the wrong subject. I have got to get this process automated...) A rebuttal to "FAQ: "Rogue Sites" on the Internet?" by Kevin J. Podsiadlik Last updated August 10, 1997 Original FAQ by Ricardo H. Gonzales Note: Mr. Gonzales' FAQ is reproduced here in its entirety, as posted to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, and is marked by the lines beginning with ">". Direct responses to the questions posed, as answered by Peter Da Silva , are on lines beginning with "*". Additional commentary by this author is on unmarked lines. E-mail with corrections, additions, and updates, is more than welcome. Indeed, it is the very fact that Mr. Gonzales does not accept such corrections (or alternate views) himself, that led to the creation of this "counterpoint" document. Also available at http://www.cyberramp.net/~kjpodsia/rebuttal.html (Second of two parts) 6. How can I stop the cabal so that my users and I may speak freely? 7. As a user, how should I deal with users' behaviours at a "rogue site"? 8. How do we fix USENET? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >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. *The disorganized groups of people Ricardo refers to as the Cabal do not *prevent free speech. As proof, nobody's keeping him from posting his FAQs, *even though by his own definition of how this imaginary Cabal behaves they *would not be allowed. Once again, as stated above, their employers are quite aware of their activities. If they thought anything was wrong with them, they would have long since been "removed from power" by now. >David C Lawrence (tale@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. Mr. Lawrence is hardly a one man band. There is a very involved and complicated process which is the currently accepted method for USENET group creation and deletion. The are known as the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers[8]. >Chris Lewis (clewis@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. Actually largely true, except for "gets very angry" bit. It is rather doubtful that he gets mail complaining articles about what people "wanted to see". If they didn't see it, how do they know the article existed? Most often, such complaints stem from the occasional routing inconsistencies that have been part of Usenet since its inception. Also not mentioned is the fact that most agree with his assertion that he provides a service. If they did not, they would not make use of it, and he would not have the authority he does. Again, see the Anti-Spam site[6]. >John E. Milborn aka JEM (jem@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. A quite out-of-date entry indeed. Mr. Milborn is no longer on the spam cancelling scene. >Robert Braver (rbraver@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. Obvious conjecture. Indeed, if it hasn't been obvious by now, this entire FAQ is simply the personal opinion of the author and reflects his own prejudices. His home page[11] reflects some of his other prejudices. >Jan Isley (jan@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. As one charged with such an important task, one is naturally confronted with considerable animosity from those on the losing side of a given vote. Regardless of when Mr. Isley had chosen to retire from vote tallying, there would have been some coincidental controversy occuring to which some, rightly or wrongly, would decide there was a connection. The incident most popularly referred to, however, was actually an incident where Isley *caught* someone trying to stuff a ballot box (with votes from deceased Communists). As for the atl.* hierarchy, many regional and local hierarchies are small enough that one single server is considered the canonical source for its feed. When this is the case, the person who owns and runs that server is quite within his right to decide what messages are stored on it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >7. As a user, how should I deal with users' behaviours at a "rogue site"? *Encourage people to act responsibly. >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. Again a red herring. No one involved in this discussion disputes this solution. *This doesn't get one tagged a rogue site, therefore there's no action that *need be taken. Note that Ricardo has elsewhere in this document recommended *attacking the jobs of people he disagrees with. >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". *A user who occasionally posts a message that's likely to draw bait isn't a *problem. There have been cases in the past where a large number of users *working in concert engaged in an extended attack on a group, rendering it *useless. In addition to the Anti-Spam site[6], refer also to the incident of the posting of the "Secret Scriptures" of the Church of Scientology[13]. >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". In the case of "Make Money Fast", it's actually fairily simple to control, since its variations are relatively limited. Furthermore "Make Money Fast" is not merely "useless to some people", but quite illegal in many countries, including the United States. *See http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm . >Symptom: User posted an unpopular message to several groups. >Solution: Use a filtering service for USENET content (see "How do we fix >USENET" below) Oddly, a "filtering service" is precisely what people like Chris Lewis and Robert Braver provide. Yet Mr. Gonzales seems to have a problem with their style. Perhaps it is because they provide the service at the ISP level rather than at the user level. But this only stands to reason, since it is the ISP's disks that have to store all these extra messages. >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. In fact, the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email was created specifically for this purpose. >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. Automated bombardment is often a tempting option, but it really is just as abusive of the 'net as the original mailing. There may well be other, innocent users of the machine you bombard, and their net-access will be unfairly interrupted by your attack. On that principle, "mail bombs", as they are called, are discouraged. On the other hand, reasonably-sized complaints by a sufficient number of individuals can have the same effect. >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. Categorically untrue, apart from the "prevent future annoyances" part. It will also prevent all social contact as well, but it would seem that this prospect does not bother Mr. Gonzales. There are many perfectly good reasons why one might send e-mail in response to a Usenet post: When a question is asked, it is considered courteous to respond in private. Otherwise, as all too often happens, one gets multiple articles which effectively say the same thing, and are of no interest to the vast majority of readers, who already know the answer to the question. Other times, you may wish to make a response that is off-topic to the newsgroup posted to. Again, the private e-mail option is often badly overlooked, as can be seen by the ubiquitous phenomenon of "topic drift" seen in just about every unmoderated newsgroup in Usenet. Another problem lies in the unreliability of Usenet as a communication protocol in general. One might wish to send e-mail as a "backup" in order to make certain that person being contacted reads your message. Some people have "read-only" access to Usenet. How else are they to participate in the discussion? Finally, sometimes one might only be interested in the person rather than the message, say an old friend or relative shows up on the net one day. Surely you would want the ensuing personal correspondence to be in private. Indeed, the whole idea of hiding behind fake e-mail addresses smacks of giving in to terrorism. I personally did so for about a month, and concluded its effectiveness was not high enough to be worth the trouble. At any rate, it is the least one can do to at least provide a human-deducible way of finding out your address, so that normal e-mail conversation is not disrupted. >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. In theory, this would seem workable, if a bit antisocial. However, there are many things to consider. What is the message is urgent? What if the responder goes on vacation right after sending the message? What if the responder has a similar set-up on his end, thereby possibly resulting in an infinite remailing loop? More practically, what if someone has many potentially legitimate e-mail addresses. When I was at Michigan State, you might have seen messages from me at "podsiad1@salt.cps.msu.edu", "podsiad1@pepper.cps.msu.edu", or potentially dozens of other machines on that network. Quite a logistical nightmare! And likely one that will just as soon be defeated by the mailers before it is perfected. For some other solutions to the problem, try the Email Abuse FAQ[14]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >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. Whatever approach someone comes up with, someone will have to be in charge of implementing it. Totally irrespective of who this turns out to be, there will be people who do not trust the implementers, and will campaign for their removal "from power". What needs to be made is a logical case against the current powers that be. This has not been done. >Long time net-guru David Hayes (dave@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 majordomo@jetcafe.org There exist perceptions of the Freedom Knights at considerable odds with that above[9]. If you want to get a really good idea of how Mr. Hayes and his compatriots think, go ahead and subscribe to the list. Be forewarned of mature content (and immature attitudes :-). >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. "Dr." Grubor is a long time and well-known eccentric. Just by way of example, in March 1997, he publicly and repeatedly announced, and I swear I am not making this up, his intention to gather an army of U. S. military veterans to invade Canada, with the expressed purpose of assaulting Chris Lewis (see above). This threat, like many, many before, inevitably came to nothing. See the Grubor FAQ[10] for more examples of his behavior. Of note for his penchant for threatening to file lawsuits against major ISPs like UUNET, which is somewhat ironic in view of his status as a disbarred attorney and ex-convict. Furthermore, despite the implicit portrayal above, Mr. Lewis' methods are largely automatic, and therefore quite "free of human bias". Mr. Lewis only steps in to correct cancels which are made in error, and to deal with repeat cases. Gonzales, Grubor, Hayes, et al. vigourously dispute this assertion, but fail miserably when it comes to providing supporting evidence. Finally, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping Grubor from implementing his own version of Usenet control in parallel with anyone else's. It would simply be up to the individual sites as to whose method is more prevalent. >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 >(tale@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. Amusing. "I have a better way, it's really great, it'll solve everybody's problems, but it's a secret." You have heard of this concept before; it's called "vaporware". Also, is it really such a great idea to allow anyone to create a USENET group for any reason? That is, in fact, allowed in the "alt" hierarchy, which, in Mr. Gonzales' own words, is "obscure" and "rarely propogated well". These two facts are not a coincidence. The whole scheme sounds an awful lot like what we now know as Internet Relay Chat, a potentially useful method of real-time discussion on the Internet, which has unfortunately fallen into total and complete anarchy and disarray, due largely to its "openness". As an aside, NoCeM's have come into a fair amount of popular use since Mr. Gonzales' FAQ came into existence. >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. Much high talk, but little supporting evidence. Indeed, the best answer to this final question is the shortest: *Usenet isn't broken. >---END OF FAQ--- Footnotes: [1] http://www.dejanews.com [2] http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#3.19 [3] http://psg.com/emily.html [4] http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=web&fmt=.&q=%22Emily+P ostnews%22 [5] http://rsm6000.adm.fau.edu/rinaldi/netiquette.html [6] http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ [7] http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#3.12 [8] http://www.uvv.org/ [9] http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/dave-hayes-faq.html [10] http://kendaco.telebyte.com/dharland/Grubor.FAQ.html [11] http://www.paranoia.com/~ricardo/ [12] http://spam.ohww.norman.ok.us/winter.htm [13] http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/spam/info.html [14] http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html [101] By "distinct" newsgroups, I mean newsgroups that can be distinguished to the extent that there exist posts that would be on topic on one and not the another, and vice versa. An example of a pair of non-distinct groups would be "alt.rush-limbaugh" and "alt.fan.rush-limbaugh". Thanks for material and/or inspiration to: fluffy@meow.org Keith Lynch (kfl@clark.net) Peter Da Silva (peter@nmti.com) -- Kevin Podsiadlik (or just "KJP") "There are no stupid questions. There are just stupid people that *ask* questions." -- Dean Chris Berman