From: stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley)
Subject: Re: Mutlu violating Usenet RFC
Organization: Oregon State University, College of Oceanography
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 18:21:36 GMT

In article <18pjjiINNq81@agate.berkeley.edu> gwh@soda.berkeley.edu (George William Herbert) writes:
>In article <BuEIoz.1Cn@news.orst.edu> stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>>You have failed to prove that the site zuma does not exist. You have
>>also not proven that the posts with that as a From: address did not
>>come from there. You certainly have not proven that the RFC (which one?)
>>is being violated, and thus your call for censoring that site fails.
>
>RFC850 

What RFC850 says is immaterial. Quoting RFC850 is no more convincing
than quoting your Great Aunt Mable, and probably a great deal less
entertaining.

>and 1036 both require a valid Internet format electronic mail
>address for the individual sending the message in the From: line.

RFC1036 does not mandate that the electronic mail address be reachable
by every site on the net. Only that:

    The "From" line contains the electronic mailing address of the
    person who sent the message, in the Internet syntax.  

It does NOT say that the site must be registered with the NIC, nor does
it say that the site must be in the UUCP maps. It does not even say
that the DOMAIN used by the site must be legal. It does not say that
the address must be a valid Internet address, only that it must be "in
the Internet syntax."

RFC1036 provides examples of "valid" USENET messages which violate
this requirement. Which are we to believe, what the RFC SAYS or what the
RFC DOES?

>A site that isn't in NIC tables, isn't nameserved by anyone, isn't in
>the world maps, and didn't provide a mail gateway path in the
>message         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

And now we have another criterion. Keep going, some day you will
complete the list. The final criterion, and the only real one, will
be "can send and receive mail". Note that "automatic routing" was not
part of that criterion, for there are Internet sites that would fail.

>fails to have a valid email address for the sender, because
>I and anyone else not right next to him can't send him email.

That statement is patently false. Valid addresses are not defined by
your limitations. I.e, your lack of knowledge of how to manually route
mail to a site is not proof that the site is not valid. The hundreds of
BITNET sites are not invalid just because someone doesn't know how
to route mail to them. Neither are the thousands of UUCP sites.

>Further proof that the faked From: address is intentionally that
>way to discourage reply mail arrived in my lap today when Ahmet Cosar,

This is proof only that the system admin is concerned about being able
to maintain an acceptable level of service to his users -- something
that mailbomb attacks can prevent. If you threatened to mailbomb my
real address at any of my sites, I would warn you not to, too. 

Face it, George, there is NOTHING in the RFC that says that you must be
able to send mail to every poster whom you find offensive. There isn't
even any rule that says that NEWS sites must HAVE mail capability.
There is nothing that says that every UUCP site must register in the
maps. If you find being forced to carry on a discussion via news to be
too limiting, well, that's too bad for you. I am sorry for you. But this
campaign against zuma.uucp is baseless and you should turn your
attention to something useful.

Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal.computing