From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Newsgroups: news.groups,soc.culture.usa,alt.censorship,alt.individualism,alt.society.civil-liberty,misc.headlines
Subject: Re: public appeal to John DiNardo to stop posting to soc.culture.usa
Date: 28 Jan 93 15:38:53 GMT
Organization: University of Kentucky Engineering Computing Center

pecampbe@mtu.edu (Paul Campbell) wrote:
>Wrong approach. I have mailed root@virginia.edu. Try doing the same. I
>already tried acs.virginia.edu, but that doesn't seem to exist, so the
>next higher site is virginia.edu. And if that doesn't work, perhaps when
>people who are having disk storage problems and bandwidth problems because
>of this guy petition NSF, the fur would really fly, but for now, just a
>nice letter to root@virginia.edu is appropriate.

[ Ducking into a nearby communications closet, our hero emerges as his  ]
[ alter ego, "root@engr.uky.edu"!  With his "I don't speak for the Uni- ]
[ sity of Kentucky" disclaimer firmly in place across his rear, System  ]
[ Administrator Man leaps into the fray............                     ]

Many of us believe that sites which provide Usenet and similar facilities 
(such as email, BBSs, etc.) deserve acknowledgement as "common carriers"; 
as such, they should not be held liable for actions taken by their users.
A recent court decision (Cubby v. CompuServe, I believe) asserted that
CompuServe could not be held liable for postings/uploads made by one of 
its users; this is an important step in the right direction (IMHO).  If
you want this sort of protection for your site, it would be rather hypo-
critical to hold virginia.edu liable for DiNardo's postings.

While we may not particuarly appreciate DiNardo's postings or his posting
technique (I freely admit that I do not), attempts to prevent him from pos-
ting are inappropriate.  After all, would you like me to drop some email
to root@mtu.edu complaining about your recommendation to flood systems
administrators with email?  I can guarantee that such a message would generate
a frosty response toward you; most admins dislike mail floods *severely*.

There are several possible approaches to this situation:

	- If your newsreader supports killfiles, use them.  My kill file
	  takes care of serveral posters whose postings hold no interest
	  for me.  (rn(1) supports a global killfile, in addition to
	  killfiles for individual newsgroups.)

	- If you are managing a feed, wipe the articles individually.  A
	  simple shell script can be used to wipe any messages with 
          "From: whoever@whereever" in the header.  [NOTE: I wouldn't
	  do this if I was feeding other sites; after all, we don't want
	  to make decisions for *them*, right?

	- You could get *really* inventive and implement kill file func-
	  tionality for your newsreader.  I once (years ago) wrote a shell 
	  script that found postings I didn't want and entered their message 
	  ids in my "articles read" file (the newsreader I was using didn't 
	  support killfiles).  I ran the shell script at 7:00 am each morning, 
	  and presto!  Killfile!  No one else's reading was affected, and I 
	  didn't have to see the hoohah.

Sending email to "root@whatever" is *rarely* the proper answer.

--Wes

-- 
MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
morgan@ms.uky.edu   | University of Kentucky |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
morgan@engr.uky.edu | Lexington,Kentucky USA | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
  Mailing list for AT&T StarServer S/E  - starserver-request@engr.uky.edu
Newsgroups: news.groups