Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!garnet!weemba
From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Decrypting the P&W Digest Etc.
Keywords: rot13
Message-ID: <14174@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 12 Sep 88 12:30:57 GMT
References: <13971@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2015@looking.UUCP> <14105@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2021@looking.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 134
In-reply-to: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)

In article <2021@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking (Brad Templeton) writes:
>Keep the history of the rot13 concept in mind.  (And it is encryption,
>or enciphering if you prefer.)

I dislike calling it encryption since it has only the most formal of
features in common with classical encryption.  A 0-bit key does not
impress me.  It strikes me as being closer teleological-category-wise
to plastic wrapping for porno rags.

>Rot13 is only partially there to protect the reader.  It is largely there
>to protect the poster, and the net.

If so, auto-rot13-ing can really make no difference.

>				      It originated when a secretary, so
>the story goes, started reading net.jokes.q (questionable) and got offended,
>and things hit the fan.  Newsfeeds were pulled.

Yes.  Back when Usenet was young and people didn't know any better.  Now
that Usenet is aging, people still don't seem to know any better: I fail
to see how the existence of auto-rot13-ing is going to change matters.

I also find this concern inconsistent with your recently posted support for
(factual only) commericial advertizing.  What's to equally prevent manager
at site X from freaking out when his first experience with the net is an
ad from his main competitor site Y?  "We're paying $$$ for Y to advertize?
Hell no!"  Will the ICC take an interest in Usenet soon?  (You're up in
the Great White North.  The ICC regulates interstate commerce.)

Much much much more serious than either of these two issues is the question
of copyright violation.  People post song lyrics and newspaper columns and
more with absolutely zero respect for copyright.  There have been problems
in the past with proprietary code.  What would have happened if the ARC or
the SAFELOCK lawsuits had involved code distributed over Usenet?

Thinking of the above means that worry about people who set themselves up
to get offended thanks to an auto-rot13-er is way way too hypothetical.
I would be worried about real questions that questionable material can
lead to: Portal's permitting >14-year olds< to read alt.sex, encryption
or no encryption.  I'm of course in favor of such read permission, but
I can see the potential stink: spartan's mother and father see what their
"innocent little boy" has been reading, and start suing left and right.

>I want rot13 to be explicit, because if you took an explicit extra step
>to read the article, I feel you have no right (certainly less right) to
>complain about the nature of the joke.

Agreed.  Why does an auto-decrypter have such "rights"?

>				         Of course, I still get
>complaints, and they all get my form reply, but I hope they are
>reduced.

The P&W Digest begins with 32 lines of cleartext material, the first
two lines of which are:

	WARNING: This digest may contain sexually explicit material.
	Do not decrypt it if you find this type of material offensive.

My auto-decrypt auto-dedigestifier will show the first 32 lines, and
nothing after that.  ` ' takes the reader on to the next digest article,
decrypted.  `N' goes to the next Usenet article.

Perhaps Dave Mack's warning should be in all caps, and include the
comment that the reader is urged to otherwise go on to the next article.

>But what if the user has to deliberately configure auto-decrypt?

>This is still not acceptable.  Consider rec.humor where rot13 means nothing,
>because the rot13 decision is taken by hundreds of different posters, with
>no standards.

Agreed.

>I believe for rot13 to be useful that it has to be consistent.  Because
>I'm the only one who makes the rotation decision in my group, it's more
>consistent than rec.humor, but not consistent enough.

Then if rot13 isn't useful, perhaps it should be eliminated?

>						        It depends of
>the submissions I am getting.  Say I get several weeks of relatively
>tame submissions.  This will lead a newcomer to try auto-decrypt, if
>it's easy to do.  And again the purpose is defeated.

And just how does this differ if a newcomer learns that rot13ed jokes
are harmless, and gets offended after reading his first truly gross
rot13ed joke, which he instinctively rot13ed?  I see no difference
between the `x' subinstinct misleading the reader and the more basic
` ' instinct misleading the reader.

I am going full steam forward with the Gnews philosophy of letting the
reader customize and configure as much as possible philosophy.  Gnews
is, from what I've heard and seen, the best newsreader available for
handling large volumes of news.  I've had users thank me for the ease
and speed with which they can now get to the relevant articles within
some massive group like comp.sys.amiga.  You and I agree that reader
time is the most critical expense on Usenet: I extend that to letting
people decide for themselves that they do not want to take an extra
second to think about rot13ing whenever it comes by if possible.  All
Gnews features have one thing in common: to make somebody's newsreading
go by faster and easier.

You've convinced me, however, to give a warning in the manual about the
possible dangers of automatic rot13ing.  Beyond that, I don't see the
difference between user-configured automatic and default non-automatic
rot13ing.

>And sure, perhaps at first it's 30 lines of emacs-lisp.  But soon it's an
>example in the manual, and later it's just source including a file.

I got off my butt and whittled it down to four lines:

     (pre nil gnews-set 'article-header-hook
          '(lambda nil (article-digest-maybe "pwdigest@alembic" t t)))
     (pre nil gnews-set 'group-last-hook 'article-digest-maybe)
     (post nil article-digest-maybe)

Thinking about it just now, I may even get it down to one line, with a
different command here:

     (pre nil article-digest-if "pwdigest@alembic" t t)

I don't know if it's worth the extra work at this point, nor whether this
is one of those things that should be left a bit awkward.

Either way, this will never be an example in my manual: I want to keep it
as G-rated as possible.  I do not mention the P&W Digest by name, nor even
the newsgroup alt.sex.  I think this will be true of all manuals.

By a curious coincidence, someone recently posted an offensive-word filter
to comp.emacs.  I shall modify it for full Gnews generality.  I'm now
wondering: should this be the *default*???

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720