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From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: soc.women,news.admin
Subject: Re: I ain't afraid of no Batwoman
Message-ID: <15387@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 22:57:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: onfcanim.15387
Posted: Thu Sep 10 22:57:28 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 03:27:03 EDT
References: <2073@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <0@novax.nowhere.nodom>
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal
Lines: 43
Keywords: censorship silencing
Xref: mnetor soc.women:7189 news.admin:1014

In article <6138@sri-unix.ARPA> maslak@sri-unix.UUCP (Valerie Maslak) writes:
>
>By posting that command line, Mr. Nobody made it possible for a
>lot of people to be a lot closer to silencing anyone on the net they
>don't agree with. I call that terrorism, and I say it has to be 
>CONDEMNED and punished.


I doubt that Mr. Nobody had much effect other than making a fool of
himself.

In the first place, the command line that was suggested, if run regularly,
*does* have the effect of deleting all articles from a particular address
from the news spool directories - this would have the effect of preventing
people on that one machine from seeing them unless they read news very
shortly after it arrived.  However, it would (on most machines at least)
*not* interfere with the copy being transmitted to the next machine
downstream.  Thus it would not in fact cut off distribution of Cheryl's
(or anyone else's) articles to the outside world.  Many news administrators
must already know this - perhaps this is why they're not particularly
concerned?

Also, the information he published is not exactly a previously well-guarded
secret - it's documented in the expire man page, and has been for a long
time.

Even if someone posted explicit directions *that worked* about how to
censor a particular person (and I suspect most news administrators
could figure out at least one working method without help), I still
wouldn't worry too much.  It would generally require the cooperation
of several system administrators to totally silence someone, and I have
a better opinion of the honesty of most SA's than that.

Now, I believe that Mr. Nobody was really trying to do something
malicious, and if it turned out that the article originated from a
machine I supervised, I might feel I should do something about him.
(Mainly because the posting was malicious and thus abused anonymity,
not because of the command line it contained.)

But I think the overall effect of his suggestion on the net as a whole,
and Cheryl in particular, is just about nil (other than to generate
a lot of traffic!), so I think that most SA's treating this whole affair
with a shrug is quite appropriate.