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From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: patch to prevent userid censorship via expire(8)
Message-ID: <1680@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: Wed, 26-Aug-87 09:04:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ho95e.1680
Posted: Wed Aug 26 09:04:14 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Aug-87 03:46:01 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs Center 4613, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 16
Keywords: censorship silencing
Xref: mnetor news.admin:912 news.software.b:783

In <12916@amdahl.amdahl.com>, Gordon Moffett writes:
: In response to the objections of the use of the -f flag of expire(8),
: here is a trivial patch that will disable the -f flag and report such
: to the user.
: 
: I've always looked upon this flag with horror, and now I see realized
: my objections to having it in the first place: censorship.

The purpose of the -f flag is not to censor real people such as Mr. Nobody
or Rich Rosen; it's mainly to censor berserk notesfile gateways and similar
programs, which occasionally break and dump 85 Megabytes worth of old
articles, all of which appear to be from notesfiles@somewherevax.
It's worth keeping for that reason, on spite of the risk of abuse.
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs