Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Fool Message-ID: Date: 21 Nov 90 16:54:25 GMT References: <524@tygra.ddmi.com> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: OSU Lines: 38 cat@tygra.ddmi.com writes: Yes - I could take such a script and make it do the following: -- Look for any cancellation messages of articles belonging to this site but not originating (the cancel message, that is) from the original poster. -- Add the address of the poster of the cancel message to the database. -- Cancel any and all articles coming from that address as punishment for censorship. You misunderstand, Mr Palmer. The death-sentence script generates cancellations that cannot be distinguished as being from anyone other than the genuine originator. The cancellations will never even get to your site for analysis, because the Path: header, providing an audit trail for where an article claims to have been, will prevent your feed site from sending them to you. They could even be injected at your feed site, where they would certainly appear to have come from your site. Assuming you could get around this rather fundamental assumption in all incantations of news software, getting the cancellations in question to your site, you (at your site; no one else) could detect that they did not in fact originate locally, by noticing that you're executing rnews rather than inews on articles with Message-ID: <*@*.ddmi.com> headers. But the addresses contained in the article appear to be from your own site anyway. Because of this, adding "the address of the poster of the cancel message" to your auto-anti-censorship cancel generator would simply inflict a deeper form of death-sentence on yourself. Hari-kari by Usenet. Poetic justice, and all that. But not to worry; the version I wrote has a bug. It cancels its own cancellations, ad infinitum. :-)