From: ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 21:48:47 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: kickouts done the Cypherpunks way...
In-Reply-To: <199611250540.AAA03123@anon.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <199611250543.XAA00779@algebra>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


killfiles work fine with me too. that was not the point.

i was not really interested in the practical problem that this list just
had, but rather was wondering whether it was theoretically possible
to identify and exclude one untrusted person from a trusted list.

igor

lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:
> 
> ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Suppose Mr. X, owner of foobarpunks mailing list, wants to kick out Mr. Y,
> > for his obnoxious letters to the mailing list.
> > 
> > Mr. X, however, is concerned that Mr. Y would subscribe through some
> > proxy address and would continue replying to messages to foobarpunks.
> > 
> > It is assumed that the only person out of the whole universe, Mr. Y, 
> > cannot be trusted. The problem is that X does not know which of the 
> > subscribers is Mr. Y.
> > 
> > The question is, is there a technical way to disable Mr. Y from
> > reading the list, or detect which subscription address is a proxy for Y?
> 
> The answer is no.  Plenty of sites gate mailing lists to local
> newsgroups, and allow open or relatively open NNTP access.  It's also
> silly to assume every other person in the universe is trustworthy.
> 
> If Mr. Y sends lots of obnoxious mail to a mailing list or news group,
> the proper thing to do is to put Mr. Y in your killfile and encourage
> others to do so.  That way you don't get bothered by his annoying
> messages, and if enough people follow suit, people stop responding to
> Mr. Y's messages.  This can be even be extended to cover anonymous
> posts using NoCeM-like systems.
> 
> If you try to boot Mr. Y off the mailing list using technical means,
> several bad things will happen:  First of all you will fail, which
> will give Mr. Y a great deal of satisfaction.  Second of all, you will
> drive Mr. Y to start posting under different names, making him
> considerably harder to killfile.  Third of all, you will double the
> traffic on the mailing list by starting flamewars about whether this
> failed booting attempt was ethical, legal, intelligent, homosexual,
> scatological, or just plain useless.  Since at this point tons of
> people will be replying to threads, a killfile becomes even harder to
> manage.
> 
> So don't look for convoluted technical solutions to Mr. Y's
> personality problems.  Just use a little basic common sense.  If you
> don't like the way someone behaves on a mailing list, just ignore the
> damn person.  Anything else is just going to make matters worse, as
> recent history clearly demonstrates.
> 



	- Igor.