From: Jeff A Licquia <jalicqui@prairienet.org>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 95 07:46:34 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Scientologys Attempts
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950117025818.2086B-100000@eskimo.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9501170901.E14013-0100000@firefly.prairienet.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Tue, 17 Jan 1995, Charles Bell wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jan 1995, Hadmut Danisch wrote:

> > I just had a view into the alt.religion.scientology and
> > alt.clearing.technology newsgroups. There are some messages
> > about a Scientology decision to shut down every internet traffic
> > about Scientology. If the messages are true, Scientology sent 
> > rmgroup Control messages to remove the groups. 
> > 
> > The request to stop the remailers seems to come from the
> > same people...

> After reading the lawyer's threatening letter I tried to check out the 
> two newsgroups mentioned, and was told they do not exist.  (This is not a 
> local filter here; Eskimo does not censor newsgroups.)  So have they been 
> deleted?  If so, by whom and how? What is 'rmgroup' and who has the 
> authority to remove alt. groups?

An 'rmgroup' is a control message used by Usenet when a group needs to be 
removed globally.  Etiquette suggests that only big, important people 
should send these out, but technically anyone can send one.

I followed the Scientology debate with little interest until yesterday, 
when I fired up my newsreader and was asked "Subscribe to new group 
alt.religion.scientology?"  At that point, I knew that the real war had 
begun. :-)

From what I was able to ascertain here, an rmgroup was sent out, followed 
soon after by a newgroup (or two or three or...).  My news server doesn't 
honor newgroups in the alt hierarchy automatically as a rule, but did so 
in this case for some reason.

News server: news.cso.uiuc.edu, on the University of Illinois 
Urbana-Champaign campus.

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