From: Johan Helsingius <julf@penet.FI>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 93 12:59:08 PST
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Many Important Items in the News
In-Reply-To: <9303242312.AA07079@netcom.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9303261839.aa28234@penet.penet.FI>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> And given that our systems are "even more anonymous" that Julf's was, the
> abuses seen with his system will have to be faced on our systems. The
> alleged abuses of Julf's system: supposedly a picture of a burn victim was
> posted to one of the erotica groups (tacky in the extreme, but hardly
> illegal or a threat), instructions on how to poison cats (also tacky but
> not ipso facto criminal), etc. (I don't know what the culminating case was,
> nor will I speculate.)

Uh... I really am a bit hesitant to talk about this, so I would appreciate
it if you kept this private. A very visible and highly-regarded net
personality took offense at some rather abusive exchanges in
talk.politics.mideast, and contacted just the right people in a very
politically loaded Finnish networking scene, but I know he acted out of
a regard for (his wiew of) the best for the networking community.
I have been expecting him to come forward and state his reasons.

The problem is that I live in a country where somebody got thrown in
jail for high treason for selling a couple of old, second-hand VAX
machines to the former Eastern Block. And as people managed to
turn the mail "from an international networking authority" into proof of
the fact that I was destroying the image of networking in Finland in the
eyes of the international community....

> There was also a major flamewar over the weekend when one Richard DePew
> decided to initiate his "ARMM" ("Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation")
> program, which sent out "CANCEL" notices for anonymous messages posted to
> certain groups. Very controversial, and a sign of things to come. (The
> connection, if any, with Julf's shutdown remains unclear. Certainly the
> whole issue of anonymous postings reached a head this past weekend.
> Sternlight's threats about PGP may have been involved as well. Julf?)

The ARMM thing actually backfired in a spectacular fashion, causing a
lot of people to speak up in defence of the service.

> These are certainly interesting times.

Uh, yes, in many ways (says Julf, fresh back from Slovakia...)