From: peterd@cc.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch)
Newsgroups: alt.gopher,comp.archives.admin,comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Information Services Etiquette (was Re: Gopher directories)
Date: 12 Apr 92 18:52:29 GMT
Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk, comp.archives.admin
Organization: McGill University Computing Centre, UNIX Group


Hi,

The following is a reply to a letter from Joel Cooper
responding to a note of mine posted to alt.gopher and
comp.archives.admin. I was giving some details about a
proposed "Resource Information Service" for registering
and locating Internet services that we plan to deploy as
part of the follow-on to our archie service (BTW, target
date for this service is some time in July, if all goes
well).

Joel raises some concerns about such a service that I
thought should be seen and perhaps debated by the folks in
comp.org.eff.talk, so I'm adding that group to the
cross-posting list.


> From cooper@utopia.cc.nd.edu Fri Apr 10 17:00:52 1992

[* Peter Deutsch writes *]
> > I am responding to Mark Strom's question about finding a 
> > way to locate Gopher servers on the net. We are working on a
> > generalized solution to this problem as part of our follow-on
> > work to archie. I'm cross-posting this to comp.archives.admin, since
> > this is a solution to a general resource discovery problem of interest
> > to that audience, as well.
> > 
> 
> Fellows,
> 
> If I understand this issue I would like to urge some caution about in a  
> wholesale way of just finding any and all Gopher servers that are out on the
> nets. Some folks set up "invisible" servers to test things and may not want  
> them seen generally.  

Actually, we are _not_ proposing offering wholesale
listings of services that want to remain private. What we
are planning to offer is a general directory of services
(an "Internet Yellow Pages" for services) but we will not
perform "universal resource discovery" or list sites
without letting them know that they are being watched. In
this pilot project don't plan to serve up sites that
haven't specifically asked to join.

> .  .  .  Also I have heard some concern expressed by individuals at  
> several academic institutions about "just anyone" being able to set up their own 
> Gopher server and start serving up whatever. .  .  

This I have far less concern about. Why would _you_ care
whether someone else has decided to get into serving
up their own information? To realize the full potential of
the Internet it seems to me we _do_ want "just anyone" to be
able to start offering new net services and information.

Yes, there are potential problems with people misusing
facilities, chewing up bandwidth, etc, but the way _I_ see
this, if someone is misusing facilities, overloading
bandwidth, serving things like copyrighted material they
don't own or erotica, whatever the problem is, then that
is a matter between the individual and the parent
organization. It is not the responsibility of rest of
the net to act as policeman to ensure that people are
behaving before problems develop.

It would appear to me to open up all kinds of questions of
censorship and the rights to free speech to limit
someone's ability to offer information on the net by
controlling the ability to publicize the existence of
services. Of course, the entity controlling the equipment
doing the serving is responsible for ensuring that what is
served is not slanderous or otherwise illegal, and if a
parent institution requests deletion of an entry of course
we'd comply (modulo enough evidence to assure us that the
institution really does control the responsible
facilities) but should we be limiting people's ability to
offer information a priori? I hope not...

> .  .  .  My own thinking on this matter at  
> this point is that we should approach this in somewhat the same way as DNS--not  
> everyone gets to set up their own domain nameserver, these things tend to be  
> done cooperatively both within and between institutions, and there are  
> individuals who are ultimately responsible for their function.

Sorry, I couldn't disagree more. This would put
information services under the direct control of a small
hierarchy of power brokers. Certainly, McGill has the
right to limit my ability to use their facilities, but
that does not mean that the entire net should participate
in the censorship or control of information flow. I can
see people offering a variety of Gopher servers (and
archie servers, and WAIS servers, and even, perhaps one
day, X.500 servers! ;-) A site may not want to include
pointers to all of them, but that doesn't mean other
people wont want to find and use them...

And what if my new company decided to set up a Gopher
server? Would you refuse my ability to offer such a 
server because I did not represent an academic
institution, or because I didn't conform to the "Gopher
Code of Ethics" on information content? Dangerous...

I can't imagine refusing to carry notice of a service
because someone else doesn't like what it serves. That
surely is a matter between the institutions providing the
facilities and the individual concerned? I just don't see
it as an issue for the directory service, any more than
what I say on the telephone should be the business of the
phone company or whoever puts out your copy of the paper
Yellow Pages.

> There needs to be a mechanism of "registration" (as there now informally is with  
> "Gopher Central").  This will make people like librarians, maintainers of  
> existing CWISes, university administrators, maybe even network administrators, a  
> lot more comfortable.

And it would make some of us a lot more _uncomfortable_.

Now, I am _not_ suggesting that we will handle resource
discovery for this service as we administer the current
archie service (in the past, if we found you, "in you'd go").

We ourselves now feel somewhat uncomfortable with this
practice, and will only add a site after a notification
from the site itself. In our defense, it was our
understanding of anonymous FTP that it was a public
resource, open to all (given that no password is needed to
access an anonymous FTP site, by design) and this drove
our early thinking.

I've now met several old-timers who clearly have a
different view of anon FTP and we are a little more
circumspect now. We have also had several documented cases
where confidential information being transferred via anon
FTP was "leaked". In some (but not all) of these cases
archie was a catalyst, so we are aware that we do share
some responsibility for educating users about the fact
that they are being watched and what can happen if they
are not aware of this. And yes, we have a responsibility to
not track sites that don't want to be tracked.

We foresee the Resource Information Service that we are
setting up working through a registration mechanism, where
a site wishing to offer a service sends us an announcement
(preferably suitably formatted for machine parsing). Once
we have such notice, we will notify the site of reception
to verify the message and then verify that the service is
really there. Only then would it go into the directory,
where it remains until it no longer answers when we poll
it or until we receive notice that it has been
discontinued.


> If you wish to cite my response please do.  Any feedback would also be  
> appreciated.  I'd be glad for the dialog on this one.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Joel P. Cooper                     Internet: cooper@utopia.cc.nd.edu
> Networking Services                Bitnet:   cpctaj@irishmvs.bitnet
> University of Notre Dame           Fax:      219-283-8201
> Notre Dame, Indiana 46556          Voice:    219-283-5600
> 
> Want to send a mandate?  Vote NOTA.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

I definitely wanted to respond to this, and as I mentioned
above I will be adding one more newsgroup to the list that
this will go out to, since I think you have raised
interesting questions about the Internet and how it should
work that merit discussion in a wider forum.

And I hope I have not offended you. I am somewhat
disturbed by what I see as the implications of your
suggestion for controlling access to the directory but I
may be reading more into this than I should. I toss this
out to the net for discussion...


			- peterd
Newsgroups: alt.gopher