From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 02:24:13 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: eternity-lite & cancel msgs
In-Reply-To: <199705160845.JAA00241@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <u92s7D1w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:

> One issue with the system is that censors will issue cancel messages
> for the articles.  Not too much which can be done about this.  Some
> trends tend to help this problem:

The vast majority of cancels in the "control" newsgroup are the so-called
"third party cancels" (a.k.a. forgeries).

In the U.S. many major ISPs like America Online and Earthlink are ignoring
cancels outright.  It's easy - start the latest version of INN with the
-C flag, or apply Dave Hayes's patches at http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet.

> Cancel message abuse by people running cancel bots reflecting their
> censorous views have resulted in some sites ignoring cancel messages.

Quite a few, I might add.  The only reason why Demon processes cancels is
that Ade Lovett is a homosexual who wants to be able to censor "homophobic"
Usenet articles. :-)

Forging cancels is easy -- see the cancelbot I posted last year.

> Another aspect of the system is that it relies on news archival
> services such as dejanews and altavista; these presumably don't listen
> to cancel messages for already archived data (? guessing here).  The
> archive maintainers presumably don't want to get involved in disputes
> over which old articles should be purged from their archive anyway.

Correct: none of the 3 major archival services (dejanews, altavista,
reference.com) delte articles based on cancel or supersedes once they
receive them.

However an author can explicitly ask dejanews to delete his articles.

All 3 now don't archive articles that say 'X-No-Archive: yes'.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps