[ Yet another thing that I didn't write...and which sucks... ]
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Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 00:01:44 -0600
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From: "S.P."
Subject: TIM SKIRVIN FAQ
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.net-abuse.email
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Organization: Freedom Knight
To: tskirvin@uiuc.edu
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[This is a courtesy copy of an article posted to Usenet via Deja News]
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S K I R V I N
-FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS-
___________________________________
This FAQ is maintained by
S.P.@pgh.org.
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SECTION 1: Tim Skirvin and Censorship.
Alarmingly, as third party canceling has become the accepted norm,
it has been extended into a “general enforcement mechanism”, used by
censors to cancel USENET posts with content a few find objectionable.
"Tiny" Tim Skirvin is the President of the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champiagn College Libertarians. Tiny Tim frequently issues
content based forged cancels. Calling Tiny Tim a censor, makes Tiny Tim
uncomfortable. Why?
Because he is "tiny" man.
Tiny Tim complained about his powerlessness in a post on June 29
1996. A person, concerned about the censorship of his opinions,
proclaimed: “Originally, the cancel system was only intended to
accommodate first-party cancels, and system administrator cancels. The
vast majority of cancels today are third-party, the cancel system at the
server level must be abolished.” Tiny Tim warned this person, (who was
advocating an end to the cancel system at the server level) with a threat
to cancel those advocating such a measure, warning them to be “careful
with those proclamations.”
On February 12, 1997, Alexander Abian abian@iastate.edu complained
that his on-topic post was canceled by hooligans like Chris Lewis and Tim
Skirvin. “The people who post under the subject," Abian wrote,
"‘off-topic-notice smncm1997010201739: by
‘ and under the name ‘bot' are disgusting
hoodlums and obnoxious hooligans. Hooligans, just hooligans and nothing
but hooligans. Anytime these hooligans refer to me I will reply as in the
above. Tiny Tim’s reply to Abian was terse and to the point: “Don’t, or
you *will* get canceled.”
Tiny Tim also wrote that "Using the software for indirect
moderation has even begun, in a limited sense, and more people (read: me)
are considering sending out more NoCeM messages every day... I’m beginning
to realize that, within a year, I’m going to have to redo most of it,
simply because cancels are on their way out of use. Times are changing
*very* quickly.”
On New Year’s Day, 1996, Tiny Tim rung in the new year with a
resolution to ally himself with censors such as Chris Lewis, a Canadian
responsible for the censorship of untold numbers of USENET posts each
week. Posting to the USENET, Tiny Tim began to ally himself with the
forces of censorship under Chris Lewis and Andrew Gierth. Complaints about
the censorship of ideas Lewis considered to be “garbage” and that were
“wasting bandwidth” led one person to argue that “There is no mandate for
canceling just any old garbage.” At once Tiny Tim took issue. “Sure there
is,” he wrote, “If it’s the poster’s own admin.”
On May 29, 1997, many were concerned about censorship, their fears
being the result of Tiny Tim’s advocacy to moderate a certain newsgroup.
One individual wrote about moderators who promised to act responsibly.
“THE WHOLE THING IS SIMPLY BASED ON *NOTHING BUT**: “TRUST US.” Some will.
That is stupid and unprincipled and shows low-level moral reaoning, in my
view.” Tiny Tim, however called these concerns “Unfounded complaints of
censorship and unfounded “claims that you’re being victimized.”
As Tiny Tim saw more influence passing to those who were censoring
USENET articles, he began to become more aggressive in his attempts to be
elected a censor by the few over the many. “To repeat my old offer:" he
wrote to one newsgroup, "if you’d like me to take care of the spam to
pnet.*, then talk UIUC into letting me do it...”
Many messages have valuable content, and therefore cannot even be
considered spam. But “Content,” Tiny Tim wrote, “has nothing to do with
spam.”
And so anyone whose post is judged to be spam, no matter the
content, is subject to cancellation. And therein lies the potential for
abuse, and the nudge over the slippery slope to censorship.
Some people, such as Chris Lewis and Andrew Gierth, want to manage
all information, and not let it flow freely on the USENET as it was
envisioned by its creators to do. Many complained about moderation of
newgroups, moderation being a doublespeak for censorship. “Yeah, wrote
Tiny Tim, facetiously. “All those damned moderators and spamcancellers and
admins, they oughta be shot...”
This last statement is evidence of Tiny Tim's disdain for those
who would deny him the influence that goes with the job of
moderator/censor.
Particularly offensive are those posts where Tiny Tim both baits
and threatens people with cancellation. “Your posts are getting
dangerously close to spam thresholds, Rich," he wrote to one such victim.
“Would you mind posting them a little less frequently, like say once a
week at most?”
Regarding the recent Usenet Death Penalty against UU.net, Mike
Godwin of the Electronic Freedom Foundation likened the UDP to destroying
a city to kill a terrorist. Tiny Tim took issue. The UDP, he wrote, was
“more like beseiging a city that has declared war on you that may harbor a
few dozen innocents, but...”
Again we see the common rationalization that all censors employ.
"Innocents" in this case is used as a metaphor for free speech. And so
free speech is to be besieged, in an effort to kill a terrorist, i.e.
"spammer." This is the common and pedestrian rationalization of the
censor.
“It seems to me that this (forging cancels) is at least as bad a
practice as posting a message to 150 newsgroups, if not worse” wrote one
person, regarding Chris Lewis’ penchant for forging content cancels. In
his reply, Tiny Tim agreed that “forged cancels are bad.” But in his
effort to rationalize Chris Lewis’ censorship, Tiny Tim maintained that
there “isn’t much of an alternative. Virtually all third-party cancels are
issued in response to network abuse that threatens Usenet itself, such as
EMP/spam or binaries in groups where they aren’t allowed. This stuff has
to be dealt with, and, in the absence of a better system, we have to use
cancels.”
In this last statement Tiny Tim admits to forging cancels, yet
consciously refuses to call his actions forgery. And it is far from a
consensus of opinion that the USENET is “threatened” in any way by network
abuse. And his statement that the posting of binaries in groups where it
is not allowed is most revealing. It reveals that Tiny Tim, with his
mentor Chris Lewis, and all censors of the USENET and freedom of speech,
is under the incorrect impression that a newsgroup is owned by someone.
USENET, and the sum of its parts--newsgroups--is not owned by anyone.
THIS FAQ IS MAINTAINED BY:
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