From: ses@cmns-moon.think.com (Simon Edward Spero)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Mut'lu violating Usenet RFC
Followup-To: news.admin,news.admin.policy
Date: 11 Sep 92 08:59:57
Organization: What's your clearance, citizen?
	<BuEIoz.1Cn@news.orst.edu> <18pjjiINNq81@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cmns.think.com
In-reply-to: gwh@soda.berkeley.edu's message of 11 Sep 1992 07:58:42 GMT


If Mut'lu's posts really are forgeries, then it does open up a couple of 
net.loopholes for dealing with them. At the moment I'm not 100% sure that
they are forged; there is very strng suggestive evidence that this is the 
case (the path line in the latest batch is a little dubious, but credible
if a mail to news gatway is being used. 

[ note: the first two suggestions are straw men; the third is supposed
to be the reasonable one- save your flames for that]

Postulates:


According to accepted usenet practice, a post may only be cancelled in the
following circumstances:

(1) If you originally posted the article
(2) If the article has been forged in your name
(3) If the article contains copyrighted or other illegal material
(4) If the article is in a moderated group and you are the moderater
(5) If you have been asked to cancel the message by someone who is authorised 
    to cancel the message under sections (1),(2),(3),(4), or (5)

If the articles are forgeries, then two  hacks are avaialable via
(1) and (2).

Straw man suggestion 1

using (1): If you claim that you are the orginal forger, you can cancel 
your own posts in a fit of remorse. 

using (2): If you issue posts in the name of Mutlu, but with your own 
address in the Reply-To: field, you can then claim that the forgeries are in
your name, and that you have prior claim to that identity by virtue of your
being the first person to have identifiably issued posts under that identity.
The precedents here can be drawn from issues of uucp naming and postings made
from accounts having identies other than your own (e.g. root)

These options are possibly defensible, but are not particularly satisfactory;
a better solution may be derived from (4). 

If a newsgroup is being severly disrupted by rogue elements, then a vote 
could be held to change the status of the group from unmoderated to moderated,
with a modified charter being set up to exclude precisely those rogue posts
and no others. However, if the vote passes, no newgroup message should be sent
out, and no alteration made to the checkgroups list. We now have a situation
where a group is DE JURE moderated, but DE FACTO unmoderated - the group 
continues as before, except that the designated moderater(s) have the right
to remove postings in violation of the existing charter. In effect we have 
created a class of post-moderated (or retroactively censored) newsgroups.

This proposal has several good points and bad points - 

Anti:
1: This set up may be too censorial- there are two possible
   changes that can be made to fix this
	1: Create a '.reject' group into which reject articles must be 
	   reposted. OR
	2: Send a supercedes message which redirects followups to an 
	   appropriate group, adding a line in the body of the message
	   clearly indicating that this has been done

2: Messages may end up being sent twice

3: It may be hard to restrict the modifications so that sites can easily 
   ignore the control messages. The only half possible solution would be to
   send the control messages to the .reject group only, but I've got a feeling
   that this won't work because junk gets propogated.

Pro:
1: The time period needed for the CFD and CFV provide a long cooling off
   period.
2: No changes to existing newsgroup guidelines need be made
3: The actions of the the moderater(s) can be severely
4: Because these changes only affect individual newsgroups, we are not creating
   a net.police (with the ensuing drain on the net.donuts). Instead, the users
   of the newsgroup create their own net.private.security.force
5: The existence of a legitimate means of redress may discourage net.vigilantes

Does this make any sense? 


Simon
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