At 10:33 AM 11/15/98 -0600, Karl Denninger wrote:
On Sun, Nov 15, 1998 at 08:14:57AM -0800, Derek Balling wrote:
This is a NEW service, operating on hardware which will be purchased specifically for this purpose by a non-profit organization set up explicitly to do this and other public-interest Internet-related things.
How is making you the Lord High Executioner of Errant Binary Posts in the public interest?
It is in the public interest to get both the copyright violations and the kiddie porn off Usenet.
Hello Karl, I'll say up front that this is off-topic for NANOG, in so far as UseNet content is concerned. However it is seriously on-topic as far as UseNet connectivity is concerned, IMHO. Most of this is our opinion only. We do not preach it, nor do we expect converts. Please direct flames to /dev/null. At MHSC, the suits instituted a UseNet ban, as policy, about four years ago. This is because some InterNet terrorists nearly caused us some serious business loss (cjames@cec-service.com and others) at a critical time for MHSC. In addition, CoS cancel wars were beating our servers to death. I submit that the major problems wrt UseNet are NOT kiddie porn and copyright violations. In fact, I submit that the major problems are the cancel messages themselves and spammers (it is valuable to note that within 1 year of dropping out of UseNet our spammed rate also dropped to very low levels). The other problem can not be remedied with any sort of cancellation system (abstinance makes the heart grow fonder <grin>). Over the years UseNet has devolved from anarchy into chaos. IMHO, it can not evolve back. Your service, although laudable in intent, is doomed because of this. But, YMMV. In fact, it is our belief that you may only help to accelerate the demise of UseNet as a usable medium. To us, it doesn't matter because we feel UseNet is already heading there on its own. It's a train-wreck in-process. Those currently on the UseNet train do not yet know that the locomotive has already jumped the tracks, IMHO. Our feeling is to let the lusers have UseNet, as a sacrificial ploy, and carry on real business using mailer-lists, like this one. At least, they can be managed independently of each other. For many reasons, and they are all off-topic here, we believe that UseNet architecture has proven it self to be non-scaleable due to lack of management capability. Yes, we realize that this is also its chief attraction, for many. MHSC does not have a solution, other than abstinance. UseNet needs re-architecting and that will not happen due to the resounding lack of interest in doing so. FYI, a back-burner project, here at MHSC, is to build something along the lines of the FidoNet EchoMail back-bone systems. This was a news/conference system based on mailer-lists. The intent is to fill the need for UseNet with something a bit more managable. We may, or maynot, ever complete that project. ___________________________________________________ Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com>rmeyer@mhsc.com Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/ ___________________________________________ Who is John Galt? "Atlas Shrugged" - Ayn Rand