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1996-06-09
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Computer underground Digest Sun Jun 9, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 43
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #8.43 (Sun, Jun 9, 1996)
File 1--Re: CoS Jamming a.r.s. and A.R. v. Reno (CuD 8.42)
File 2--Update on CDA, copyright, crypto (5/29/96)
File 3--Discuss crypto with Sen. Burns online the night before hearings!
File 4--Re: Virtual Magistrate Decision
File 5--Re: Gore "against censorship"???
File 6--FW: NSA Monitoring Internet?
File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Jun 1996 04:48:30 -0600
From: darryl.davidson@UVM.EDU(Darryl Davidson)
Subject: File 1--Re: CoS Jamming a.r.s. and A.R. v. Reno (CuD 8.42)
>From June 5th's CuD, Mark Mangan's article:
>Cherry
>wanted to set the record straight and said he was going way back,
>back to an early message posted by another that was titled, "What
>Size Is Christ". He then lauched into a story about Christ,
...
>... with the Lord and Orel Roberts. Some
>were shaking with laughter; one lawyer at the plantiff's table
>turned his chair and removed his glasses, wiping tears from his
>eyes. Fred Cherry, the "connoi-ssewer of porn", summed up his
>evidence and thanked the judges for the time to speak.
>
>It was not clear whether Cherry intended to shock or offend. All at
>once, it seemed all too apparent that it didn't matter--such speech
>would be found indecent under the CDA, even though it does have
>serious literary, artistic, or comedic value.
Uh, CDA notwithstanding, can someone point toward this story online?
That was a stock teaser, describing the effect it had on those in
attendance and then not including the content or a reference for
getting to it. In an offshore data haven or not, the story needs
to be available online, considering the legal context it now holds.
I am concerned also by the long article from J. Noring:
Jamming, which is the most apt term I've heard for this 'vertical spam'
tactic, is a familiar enough thing... it has been done to e-mail
boxes, newsgroups during various raider wars, to mailing lists,
although not on this impressive/nefarious level. Heck, I
was nearly booted out of UofIdaho my freshman year for _two lines_ of
REXX code that did this very sort of thing. Any time the words are
free, there's gonna be a lot of noise.
As far as Usenet's usability being hampered by this, long after my
decade mark online, Usenet Signal-to-Noise ratios are for me like
my grandma's arthritis is to her: something unpleasant, unavoidable,
and another reason to miss the good-old-days. I bitch, I teach
a newbie when the mood hits me, and I find ways around it. Sadly,
it's what weaned me off of Usenet after too long as a serious junkie.
I hate to say it, but Usenet-at-large has become so cluttered that it
is literally one of my last-resort internet tools any more. WinDoze
interfaces, as Mr. Noring pointed out, bite the waxed tadpole, and
out-of-place spam has become ubiquitous/inescapable. The one hope
I have for Usenet is in the development of intranets or some other
gonzo recapturing of the old spirit of Usenet the way it used to
run (via 2-am phone calls between Linux boxes, hope hope hope!?)
I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see an intranet mechanism
spring up that allows a subset of the full newsgroup feed with
an intensely strangled intake mechanism, with 'elitist' members of the
intranet setting the S/N ratio back up where they want it.
I do hope Mr. Noring's collection of signatures helps get CoS to
stop this tactic, but it can't possibly be any faster a solution
than generating a workaround within currently-available means. Ideally,
both publicizing CoS's involvement AND working around this via
other means should be pursued:
- automoderation: a.r.s.moderated with a remailer address that limits
all postings to one per day per author. Admittedly, it'll only slow down
the flow, if CoS is dedicated enough.
- live moderation... even if anonymously moderated.
- splitting a.r.s into three subgroups: a.r.s.thetan, a.r.s.reformed
and a.r.s.enthetan (if the gods will forgive me this horrid pun of
an acronym)-- this permits CoS creation of a warm comfey space for
their thetan vibes, another space that is safe haven for those eager
to question their thetan teachings in a like-minded forum, and one
for the rest of us evil types that sincerely *hope* the CoS is an
alien race just so we can distance ourselves that much further from
them.
- and so on. Heck, several online providers will manage a mailing
list for an unlimited audience for $50 a year, web-pages can't be
jammed this way (although the web-server can be sucked dry via replicated
requests for the page), and software melding IRC or newsgroup features
into web-page mechanisms is springing up in beta form. All are valid
weapons in the war for rational discourse.
As for the growing lack of kill-file wisdom, this is the sort of crap that
might finally get non-nix programmers to add the feature back in, user-
friendly and spit-polished, to boot.(another unintentional pun, b.t.w.)
Most importantly, my libertarian urges make me just as unwilling to see
anyone regulate right and wrong when it is against the CoS as I am
when they do it against Mr. Cherry and his CDA-questionable
literature. As I see it, jamming a newsgroup is just more of the
nice patina of CoS's polished public front being rubbed off to
reveal the base metal underneath.
We pride ourselves on ably exposing less organized gutter-snipes
like NeoNazi revisionists and the Spammer-and-Seagull law firm, so it
seems we should be just as insistent that we can solve this problem
with software and existing laws.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 20:31:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: File 2--Update on CDA, copyright, crypto (5/29/96)
ON THE CDA:
Folks involved in the case expect a decision within the next week from the
Philadelphia three-judge panel hearing our challenge to the CDA. The DoJ
has a few weeks to appeal to the Supreme Court if they lose.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON COPYRIGHT:
Regarding the online copyright legislation, there's plenty of action on
the Hill -- and contrary to what I thought a week ago, there's even a
fighting chance that this bill will happen this year.
So far, full Senate judiciary and the House judiciary intellectual
property subcommittee have held hearings.
The House has taken the lead here, and the tentative date for the
subcommittee markup of HR2441 is June 5. (It was to have been last week,
but was cancelled at the last minute when no agreement was reached.)
The Senate seems to be waiting to see what the House does before making
any sudden moves. General feeling is that the legislation was on a fast
schedule but has been slowed down considerably because of ongoing
controvery over OSP liability and (especially) section 1201.
The big snarl is over 1201, and some alliances of convenience are breaking
down. More to the point, libraries are finally mobilizing grassroots
opposition.
Brock has a piece about this in last week's Muckraker on HotWired.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON CRYPTO:
The National Research Council's report on crypto policy will be unveiled
tomorrow at the National Press Club at 1 pm in Washington, DC. I'm goi