======== Subject: FAQ: "Rogue Sites" on the Internet (Recently Updated) From: ricardo@paranoia.com (Ricardo Hector Gonzales) Date: 11 Jan 1997 14:27:22 CST FAQ: "Rogue Sites" on the Internet? ---FAQ BEGINS--- Last updated: December 30, 1996 Author: ricardo@paranoia.com (Ricardo H. Gonzales) NOTICE: This text may not be reproduced in any form for profit without the permission of the author. It may be reproduced in any form provided that no money is being charged. The question of so-called "rogue sites" on the Internet has recently become a popular topic of discussion. This FAQ was created in order to cover frequently asked questions about the "rogue site" label and to discuss related issues of interest. 1. What is a "rogue site"? A "rogue site" is the title that in the past was assigned to Internet sites that were operated by individuals who were intent on harming the net. The sort of net-abuse they practiced included packet-sniffing, network floods, and account cracking. Recently, the title "rogue site" has come to mean any site in which an individual has an email account with which they can express opinions anonymously or state an unpopular opinion without the approval of certain people who would like to restrict these forms of expression. Each of these behaviours and methods of dealing with them will be discussed below. 2. I am a system administrator. Why is my site being called a "rogue site"? What likely occured is that one of your users posted a message that someone else didn't agree with. What could have happened is that the reader may have been in such strong disagreement that he posted a message in one of the news.admin.* groups claiming that your site is a rogue site. It is also possible that a user on your system posted to several newsgroups with a message that was unpopular. Or maybe a user on your system sent unwanted email to people. If one person doesn't like the opinions or behaviour of your users, then you may be labeled a "rogue site" by this person and their friends. 3. What is the UDP? UDP stands for the USENET Death Penalty which is handed out by an offended person and their friends when they don't like the user opinions or behaviours that come from your site. It is a tactic of revenge by use of censorship to try to cut you off from the Internet. It is an attempt to assert the values of a person and his friends over free expression. 4. Who are these people who control "Netiquette" and the Internet? Netiquette is a term that some people use when they mean to say that there is a type of manners that you must adhere to when using the net. However, this concept has lots of problems in practice. There are a myriad of different ideas about how manners on the net should exist. Some people would like to keep things like a church where nothing confrontational or strong may be expressed. Others would like to speak freely and let others know about what they are thinking, even if it is unpleasant or not socially conforming. There are of course all ranges of personality types between this. Because there is not and single definition for the type of manners that all people should follow, there is no way to define netiquette, and it effectively does not exist. Those who claim it exists will cite a document that someone wrote, but that document only expresses the netiquette of the author and there will be millions of people on the Internet that disagree with that opinion. When it comes to people trying to control the Internet, this is an easier problem to solve. Because of its distributive and democratically cooperative nature, no one really owns the Internet. But there are people who would like to think that they did and try to control people in various ways. Some controllers try to stop people who post messages containing certain ideologies, political thoughts, or that are even critical of the controllers. In some cases the controllers send forged messages to cancel that articles that offend them. Often they try to have other people's accounts removed. But there is a way to stop many of these offenses. Because many of these people usually have this power through their jobs, it is proper to have them fired for their abuse of their position. Going through email to an administrator at their machine is not likely to be seen by anyone but them. You will need to contact a person who is in power at that organization and that may take more work. A possible approach to finding this information is to post your grievance and a request for information on one of the news.admin.* groups where there are watchdogs who document the net-abuse of cabal members. For long time offenders there is a good deal of public information available about their employers and private life. 5. Why are certain harmless behaviours deemed illegal by "Netiquette" standards? If you understand the fictional "Netiquette" as nothing more than a system of morality that represents a small number of clamorous people, you can understand how they tried to make it seem real. They were effective in coming up with rules and propagating them, but their netiquette system has no further basis than this. Adding to the comedy and tragedy of this system is the fact that additional arbitrary rules have been invented to rule alongside it. An example of this is the "Breidbart Index (BI)" which is a made-up formula to determine whether or not a person has posted "too many" messages in a 45-day spam. If a person has exceeded the BI level, people who want to control the Internet will step in and begin to forge messages as the sender to cancel the posts that their baseless formula indicates are in excess. The disastrous thing about this system is that the formula means nothing because it was simply made up by a person so that they could claim a reason to control USENET. Anyone could come up with any other formula and push it was a standard, thought it would be equally as meaningless. Recently, a newer version of the BI, called BI2, is being pushed as a stricter limit that will allow for even more cancels of posts that this group dislikes. Peter da Silva has recently been pushing for even stricter USENET article cancellation rules. He wants to cancel anything posted to more than 3 groups, though in some cases posting up to 2 dozen groups may be an appropriate distribution method. This doesn't seem to concern him, nor does the extreme unpopularity of his opinions and actions, which are seen as a threat to USENET by many. The actions of the people who send forged cancel messages have severely harmed the net. In reaction, several organizations are looking for ways to bypass their actions to keep free expression possible, while adding features such as ad hoc moderating/advising to increase the value and openness of USENET. What must always be remembered is that the responses to net abuse that are being used now (forged cancels, following the Breidbart index or other arbitrary scemes, etc.) only address symptoms and never the cause of the actual problem. Any reliance on them only serves to make the actual problem worse while no methods of stopping abuse are being developed. Those who attempt to enforce their methods on the net remain fixated on an old and useless paradigm and do not see the larger picture. They end up causing more problems than they solve and should be avoided. 6. How can I stop the cabal so that my users and I may speak freely? The first thing you will want to do is to remove the power that certain individuals have claimed for themselves. They have no right to this power and should be removed from their positions because of their abuse and harm to the Internet. David C Lawrence (tale@uunet.uu.net) He attempts to control all aspects of USENET group creation and deletion. This means that he decides whether or not to send approval for a group creation or cancelation of a group that he does not approve of. This stifles attempts by interested people to have a "Big 8" group created to discuss timely matters. His control limits or completely destroys all attempts to gain decent message propagation across USENET, confining group discussions to obscure "alt" groups that are rarely propagated well, or at all, on most systems. Chris Lewis (clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca) He sends thousands of forged cancels a month to destroy posts that he and his friends dislike. He claims to be doing a service and gets very angry when people point out that he is cancelling articles that they wanted to see or that he had no right to cancel. John E. Milborn aka JEM (jem@xpat.com) He's another person who is proud of his forged cancel messages and thinks he is a crusader for content control. In a strange sort of way it is true that censorship and cancelling other people's articles is content control, but that's nothing to be proud of. He has recently claimed to have ceased his forged cancels, though forged cancel messages continue to flow from someone using his address. Robert Braver (rbraver@ohww.norman.ok.us) This guy joined the bandwagon and loves to send forged cancel messages too. But I bet he'd be upset if someone sent forged cancel messages in his name if they disliked his posts. Jan Isley (jan@bagend.atl.ga.us) As a major USENET vote keeper, he was exposed for vote fraud and shamefully stepped down from that position. Since then he has been less of a public threat to USENET though he still operates behind the scenes. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of resistance to the idea of having new elections for all of the newsgroups that were created or denied because of the massive vote fraud he perpetuated. He also has proclaimed himself the only authority on what posts are not permitted in the local atl hierarchy which resulted in another count of Isley being called a censor and control freak. 7. As a user, how should I deal with users' behaviours at a "rogue site"? It is possible to act appropriately to each of the behaviours that label a site to be a "rogue" one. Sometime it is most appropriate to not act at all. Here are common recommendations: Symptom: User expressed an unpopular opinion in a USENET group. Solution: Discuss the opinion instead of trying to label that site as a "rogue site" or having that user's account removed. Symptom: User posted a "disruptive" message in a USENET group. Solution: The definition of a "disruptive" message seems nearly impossible to achieve in practice. There has never been a message posted that could not be skipped or ignored, therefore there hasn't ever really been a "disruptive" message. Disregard the message or email the user if you feel compelled to communicate. This is not an indication of a "rogue site". Symptom: User posted a useless message, such as "MAKE MONEY FAST". Solution: Sadly, most of USENET consists of useless messages. This is just one example of the sort of message that is useless to some people. It is not permissible to cancel a message simply because it serves no pragmatic value to you. Others might find it useful. Disregard the message or email the user if you feel compelled to communicate. This is not an indication of a "rogue site". Symptom: User posted an unpopular message to several groups. Solution: Use a filtering service for USENET content (see "How do we fix USENET" below) Symptom: User mailed unwanted messages to several people. Solution: This is not a USENET problem, so should not be discussed in any news.admin.* newsgroups. However, to keep this sort of question from being asked in an improper group, it will be answered. There are several approaches to dealing with this problem. The first thing you will want to do is demand that you be removed from this person's mailing list. If this does not happen, you will want to complain the administrator so that you will be removed. If this still does not work, you might be able to arouse more interest in your request by bombarding the offending system with megs of garbage email. Several programs exist to automate this task. To prevent the annoyance of unwanted email, you might want to try either or both of these popular approaches: 1) Never post USENET messages that show a legitimate email address. While this approach is enough for some to label your site a "rogue" one, it will ensure that no companies who collect email addresses from USENET postings will be able to fill your email box with unwanted and unrequested mail messages. Since there is usually no legitimate need for anyone to ever email you from a USENET post you made, this should cause no problems for you and will prevent future annoyances. 2) Use a mail filtering device that only allows certain pre-approved addresses to pass through your mail system. Posts that are not approved can be approved by the sender if they reply appropriately to an auto-reply that this software generates. This will filter out all mass emails from automated software and auto-responders. Software to do this currently exists or can be created in a few minutes using procmail, filter, or other mail stream parsing software. 8. How do we fix USENET? A major step towards fixing USENET would include removing the people who control it and have led it into its current condition. But this is only part of the solution. More toleration, freedom, and intelligent and thoughtful approaches are also necessary. Long time net-guru David Hayes (dave@jetcafe.org) has organized a group called the Freedom Knights which is dedicated to the task of stopping true net-abuse and supporting free speech. You can learn more about this group by reading his FAQ for USENET Sites of Virtue at http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/virtue.html or you can join his valuable mailing list by sending a message with "subscribe freedom-knights" in the body to majordomo@jetcafe.org Dr. John Grubor is heading a team of experts who have proposed the idea of bypassing human biases by letting a set of intelligent programs perform all important USENET functions. This will include all vote taking (to stop the fraud from the controllers), all new newsgroup creation, and other functions which have run poorly because of the lack of ethics from the people in charge. Naturally since programs would run the net (Gruborbots), the people who try to put themselves in charge now feel very threatened by the possibility of being powerless and are reacting negatively, even slandering Dr. Grubor in hopes of smearing his name. However, people have realized that his proposals remove human bias entirely, support free speech no matter the topic, and are technologically superior to current methods. Best of all, they need no individual to monitor and run them. They serve the will of the people, whatever that might happen to be, through an automated application of public votes. There is also a method of USENET filtering that is far superior to both the forged cancel messages that certain people send and the proposed NoCeM method. There is at least one company that is developing it commercially and I do not wish to discuss their efforts. It will revolve around something that is completely different from the current USENET operations in that it allows for any number of ad hoc moderators. It will allow a diverse set of opinions instead of permitting the noisy and hostile crowd on news.admin.* to effectively run USENET with their arbitrary and self-serving policies. It will allow anyone to create any USENET group they like instead of requiring approval from David C Lawrence (tale@uunet.uu.net). It will prevent forged cancels from being sent (a popular approach used by several people to stop messages they don't like). It is the natural evolution away from the behaviors that are clearly abusive and disruptive in their intent. The future of USENET is in our hands and we must stop the people who are trying to control it my holding all of votes and often committing fraud, directing its path so as to keep them in power, and acting openly hostile towards watchdogs who point out their ethical oversights. A more open system without the same small group of people fighting for control would be better for everyone involved. ---END OF FAQ---