Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Forgeries: a suggestion for bringing them under control
Message-ID: <21986@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 2 Feb 88 18:19:58 GMT
References: <1861@epimass.EPI.COM> <317@dsinc.UUCP> <1988Feb1.130753.20144@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 19
Summary: Cost-benefit analysis?

I've been paying attention to some of the proposals for "prevention" of
forgeries, ranging from instituting an authentication scheme to
punishing forgers and/or their systems, but even granted the
workability of any of these schemes (a doubtful question) I wonder
whether the forgery "problem" even warrants the significant
administrative and software development costs of attempting to prevent it.

With the exception of the annual April Fool's articles, forgery seems
to be limited to a few groups like alt.flame and some of the talk or
soc groups.  Is there any reason to believe that more widespread
forgery will occur?  If so, is there any reason to believe that this
represents a significant threat to the existence or functioning of Usenet?
Personally, I don't believe that either of these last two propositions
are proven, and therefore can't justify additional administrative or
software costs.

Michael C. Berch 
News/mail admin - lll-tis and its clients
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb