The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998

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Computer underground Digest Wed Nov 6, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 78 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, #8.78 (Wed, Nov 6, 1996) File 1--1996-10-10 Background on Next Generation Internet File 2--Justice Dept completes second phase of CDA appeal (HotWired) File 3--AOL Blocking hits Ron Newman File 4--U.S. crypto-czar appointment -- "Crypto Imperalism" in HotWired File 5--(Fwd) News.groups reform File 6--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, 11 Oct 1996 14:04:44 -0500 From: Jerrold Zar <T80JHZ1@WPO.CSO.NIU.EDU> Subject: File 1--1996-10-10 Background on Next Generation Internet <snip> THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 10, 1996 BACKGROUND ON CLINTON-GORE ADMINISTRATION'S NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET INITIATIVE The Internet is the biggest change in human communications since the printing press. Every day, this rapidly growing global network touches the lives of millions of Americans. Students log in to the Library of Congress or take virtual field trips to the Mayan ruins. Entrepreneurs get the information they need to start a new business and sell their products in overseas markets. Caregivers for people with Alzheimer's Disease participate in an "extended family" on the Cleveland FreeNet. Citizens keep tabs on the voting records and accomplishments of their elected representatives. We must invest today to create the foundation for the networks of the 21st Century. Today's Internet is an outgrowth of decades of federal investment in research networks such as the ARPANET and the NSFNET. A small amount of federal seed money stimulated much greater investment by industry and academia, and helped create a large and rapidly growing market. Similarly, creative investments today will set the stage for the networks of tomorrow that are even more powerful and versatile than the current Internet. This initiative will foster partnerships among academia, industry and government that will keep the U.S. at the cutting-edge of information and communications technologies. It will also accelerate the introduction of new multimedia services available in our homes, schools, and businesses. Economic benefits: The potential economic benefits of this initiative are enormous. Because the Internet developed in the United States first, American companies have a substantial lead in a variety of information and communications markets. The explosion of the Internet has generated economic growth, high-wage jobs, and a dramatic increase in the number of high-tech start-ups. The Next Generation Internet initiative will strengthen America's technological leadership, and create new jobs and new market opportunities. The Administration's "Next Generation Internet" initiative has three goals: 1. Connect universities and national labs with high-speed networks that are 100 - 1000 times faster than today's Internet: These networks will connect at least 100 universities and national labs at speeds that are 100 times faster than today's Internet, and a smaller number of institutions at speeds that are 1,000 times faster. These networks will eventually be able to transmit the contents of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in under a second. 2. Promote experimentation with the next generation of networking technologies: For example, technologies are emerging that could dramatically increase the capabilities of the Internet to handle real-time services such as high quality video-conferencing. There are a variety of research challenges associated with increasing the number of Internet users by a factor of 100 that this initiative will help address. By serving as "testbeds", research networks can help accelerate the introduction of new commercial services. 3. Demonstrate new applications that meet important national goals and missions: Higher-speed, more advanced networks will enable a new generation of applications that support scientific research, national security, distance education, environmental monitoring, and health care. Below are just a few of the potential applications: Health care: Doctors at university medical centers will use large archives of radiology images to identify the patterns and features associated with particular diseases. With remote access to supercomputers, they will also be able to improve the accuracy of mammographies by detecting subtle changes in three-dimensional images. National Security: A top priority for the Defense Department is "dominant battlefield awareness," which will give the United States military a significant advantage in any armed conflict. This requires an ability to collect information from large numbers of high-resolution sensors, automatic processing of the data to support terrain and target recognition, and real-time distribution of that data to the warfighter. This will require orders of magnitude more bandwidth than is currently commercially available. Distance Education: Universities are now experimenting with technologies such as two-way video to remote sites, VCR-like replay of past classes, modeling and simulation, collaborative environments, and online access to instructional software. Distance education will improve the ability of universities to serve working Americans who want new skills, but who cannot attend a class at a fixed time during the week. Energy Research: Scientists and engineers across the country will be able to work with each other and access remote scientific facilities, as if they were in the same building. "Collaboratories" that combine video-conferencing, shared virtual work spaces, networked scientific facilities, and databases will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our national research enterprise. Biomedical Research: Researchers will be able to solve problems in large-scale DNA sequencing and gene identification that were previously impossible, opening the door to breakthroughs in curing human genetic diseases. Environmental Monitoring: Researchers are constructing a "virtual world" to model the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, which serves as a nursery area for many commercially important species. Manufacturing engineering: Virtual reality and modeling and simulation can dramatically reduce the time required to develop new products. Funding: The Administration will fund this initiative by allocating $100 million for R&D and research networks to develop the Next Generation Internet. This increase in FY98 funding will be offset by a reallocation of defense and domestic technology funds. As with previous networking initiatives, the Administration will work to ensure that this federal investment will serve as a catalyst for additional investment by universities and the private sector. Implementation: The principal agencies involved in this initiative are the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Energy, NASA, and the National Institutes of Health. Other agencies may be involved in promoting specific applications related to their missions. INTERNET TIMELINE 1969 Defense Department commissions ARPANET to promote networking research. 1974 Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf publish paper which specifies protocol for data networks. 1981 NSF provides seed money for CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) to connect U.S. computer science departments. 1982 Defense Department establishes TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) as standard. 1984 Number of hosts (computers) connected to the Internet breaks 1,000. 1986 NSFNET and 5 NSF-funded supercomputer centers created. NSFNET backbone is 56 kilobits/second. 1989 Number of hosts breaks 100,000. 1991 NSF lifts restrictions on commercial use of the Internet. High Performance Computing Act, authored by then-Senator Gore, is signed into law. World Wide Web software released by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. 1993 President Clinton and Vice President Gore get e-mail addresses. Mosaic, a graphical "Web browser" developed at the NSF-funded National Center for Supercomputing Applications, is released. Traffic on the World Wide Web explodes. 1994 White House goes on-line with "Welcome to the White House." 1995 U.S. Internet traffic now carried by commercial Internet service providers. 1996 Number of Internet hosts reaches 12.8 million. President Clinton and Vice President Gore announce "Next Generation Internet" initiative. [Source: Hobbes' Internet Timeline, v. 2.5] Business and University Leaders Endorse the Administration's Next-Generation Internet Proposal "Silicon Graphics applauds the current Administration for recognizing the power and limitless value of the Internet. Their forward-thinking Next Generation Internet initiative sets an example by leadership that will encourage organizations, in both public and private sectors, to fully leverage the Internet, and to become a part of the Information Age." Edward R. McCracken, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Graphics "I include myself among the many who have encouraged judicious Government sponsorship of research beyond the horizon of normal product development. The Next Generation Internet initiative builds on the foundation of earlier research sponsored by far-sighted funding agencies seeking to solve real problems but willing to take risks for the sake of high payoff. As in the recent past, the results of this program will almost surely trigger serendipitous discoveries and unlock billions of dollars in corporate product/service development. With any reasonable success, America will enter the 21st Century surfing a tidal wave of new networking technology unleashed by the Next Generation Internet." Vinton G. Cerf, Senior Vice President of Data Architecture, MCI "There is no question that the Internet would never have happened without the leadership of the government and universities working together. The Next Generation Internet will have an even bigger impact on the world." Eric Schmidt, Chief Technology Officer, Sun The continued advance of computer networking technology is fundamental to our nation's continued leadership in scientific research. Just as higher education, in partnership with industry and government, led in the development and realization of the Internet, this effort will once again focus our best minds on another significant advance in the use of network technology. The result will not only strengthen our research capability, but will also lead to innovations that provide broader access to education. Homer Neal, President, University of Michigan "The promise of a new generation of networks that will enable collaborative, multi-disciplinary research efforts is essential to meeting national challenges in many disciplines, and to ensure a continuing leadership role for the United States' academic community. Higher Education welcomes the opportunity for a renewed partnership with the federal government and industry to develop the advanced network infrastructure upon which these networking capabilities depend." Graham Spanier, President, Pennsylvania State University Qs and As on Next-Generation Internet Initiative October 10, 1996 Q 1. Why does the government need to do this, given that the commercial Internet industry is growing so explosively? The U.S. research community and government agencies have requirements that can not be met on today's public Internet or with today's technology. For example, the Department of Defense needs the ability to transmit large amounts of real-time imagery data to military decision-makers to maintain "information dominance." Scientists and engineers at universities and national labs need reliable and secure access to remote supercomputers, scientific facilities, and other researchers interacting in virtual environments. The productivity of the U.S. research community will be increased if they have access to high-speed networks with advanced capabilities. These new technologies will also help meet important national missions in defense, energy, health and space. An initiative of this nature would not be undertaken by the private sector alone because the benefits can not be captured by any one firm. The Administration believes that this initiative will generate enormous benefits for the Nation as a whole. It will accelerate the wide-spread availability of networked multimedia services to our homes, schools and businesses, with applications in areas such as community networking, life-long learning, telecommuting, electronic commerce, and health care. Q 2. What are some of the capabilities that the "Next Generation Internet" will have that today's Internet does not? Below are just of the few of the possibilities. Many new applications will be developed by those using the Next Generation Internet. o An increased ability to handle real-time, multimedia applications such as video-conferencing and "streams" of audio and video -- very important for telemedicine and distance education. Currently, the Internet can't make any guarantees about the rate at which it will deliver data to a given destination, making many real-time applications difficult or impossible. o Sufficient bandwidth to transfer and manipulate huge volumes of data. Satellites and scientific instruments will soon generate a terabyte (a trillion bytes) of information in a single day. [The printed collection of the Library of Congress is equivalent to 10 terabytes.] o The ability to access remote supercomputers, construct a "virtual" supercomputer from multiple networked workstations, and interact in real-time with simulations of tornadoes, ecosystems, new drugs, etc. o The ability to collaborate with other scientists and engineers in shared, virtual environments, including reliable and secure remote use of scientific facilities. Q 3. Is it still Administration policy that the "information superhighway" will be built, owned, and operated by the private sector? Absolutely. The Administration does believe that it is appropriate for the government to help fund R&D and research networks, however. Partnerships with industry and academia will ensure that the results of government-funded research are widely available. Q 4. Will this benefit all Americans, or just the research community? By being a smart and demanding customer, the federal government and leading research universities will accelerate the commercial availability of new products, services, and technologies. New technologies have transitioned very rapidly from the research community to private sector companies. For example, Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, was released by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications 1993. By 1994, Netscape and other companies had formed to develop commercial Web browsers. Today, millions of Americans use the Web. The public will also benefit from the economic growth and job creation that will be generated from these new technologies, the new opportunities for life-long learning, and research breakthroughs in areas such as health. Q 5. What will it do about "traffic jams" on the Internet, or the ability of the Internet to continue its phenomenal rate of growth? The lion's share of the responsibility for dealing with this problem lies with the private sector. Internet Service Providers will have to invest in higher capacity, more reliable networks to keep up with demand from their customers. However, this initiative will help by investing in R&D, creating testbeds, and serving as a first customer for many of the technologies that will help the Internet grow and flourish. One of the goals of the initiative is to identify and deploy technologies that will help the Internet continue its exponential rate of growth. Examples include: o Ultra-fast, all-optical networks; o Faster switches and routers; o The ability to "reserve" bandwidth for real-time applications; o A new version of the Internet Protocol that will prevent a shortage of Internet addresses; o "Multicast" technology that conserves bandwidth by disseminating data to multiple recipients at the same time; o Software for replicating information throughout the Internet, thereby reducing bottlenecks; o Software for measuring network performance; and o Software to assure reliability and security of information transmitted over the Internet. Q 6. How does this initiative relate to existing government programs, such as the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative? Will this be a totally new network? The initiative represents an increase in the HPCC budget. The initiative will include both: (1) an expansion and augmentation of existing research networks supported by NSF, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and NASA; (2) new networks;and (3) development of applications by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Q 7. Are more technical details on the initiative available? The Administration intends to consult broadly with the research community, the private sector, and other stakeholders before developing the final technical details for this initiative. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 04:47:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: File 2--Justice Dept completes second phase of CDA appeal (HotWired) http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/40/special3a.html HotWired, The Netizen 3 October 1996 CDA and the Supremes by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Washington, DC, 2 October Racing against a midnight deadline, the Justice Department late Monday evening completed the second phase of its appeal to the Supreme Court after its initial loss in the Communications Decency Act lawsuit. The solicitor general only has to argue in the 28-page jurisdictional statement that there's a substantial constitutional issue at stake in this lawsuit - something transparently obvious to anyone who's been following the CDA court battle. The next move is up to the attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association. They plan to file a motion asking the High Court to uphold the Philadelphia court's decision without scheduling a full hearing. Chris Hansen, who heads the ACLU legal team handling the CDA case, says that if the Supreme Court grants their motion, it would effectively be saying "the lower court was so deeply correct" that the justices don't need to learn more about the case. As a legal tactic, it means the more censor-happy justices couldn't water down the Philadelphia judges' unanimous decision upholding free speech online. "Anytime the Supreme Court decides the case with a full briefing, there's no guarantee that we'll win - or win in the same terms," Hansen says. But because this is a precedent-setting and controversial lawsuit, the Supremes almost certainly will want to hear the appeal themselves. When the justices place this case on the court's calendar, they'll likely give both parties a few months to file the next stage of the lawsuit, which will be a strained and torturous collection of arguments from the government trying to explain why the lower court was wrong. Then oral arguments will be held next spring. The solicitor general's jurisdictional statement itself largely summarizes the arguments the government has already made. It does additionally argue, however, that a cable television indecency case the High Court decided after the June CDA decision buttresses the government's defense of the law: "Because the CDA's definition of indecency is almost identical to the decision [the Supreme Court] upheld against a vagueness challenge ... that decision reinforces the conclusion that the CDA's restrictions are not unconstitutionally vague." Not so, says the ACLU's Hansen: "Even if that were true, it wouldn't change the result in our case. All three judges in our case thought the CDA was flawed in other ways besides vagueness." The government also cites the Shea v. Reno lawsuit - a weaker case that challenges half of the CDA - that Joe Shea filed in Manhattan earlier this year on behalf of his online publication, the American Reporter. Shea won only a partial victory on 29 July, which the DOJ is now exploiting: "The three-judge court in Shea v. Reno ... held that the CDA's definition of indecency is not unconstitutionally vague. The district court in this case erred in reaching a contrary conclusion." [...] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 22:33:03 -0800 (PST) From: David Cassel <destiny@wco.com> Subject: File 3--AOL Blocking hits Ron Newman From -- fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu It's been a bad week for Ron Newman. First he received five copies of the mass-mailed child pornography spam over three of his accounts. Then, AOL mistakenly put his ISP on the list of automatically-blocked sites. "Several AOL users have already lost e-mail that I sent them yesterday," Newman said in a Usenet post Friday. Protests from his domain would fall on deaf ears, since they'd also presumably be filtered. "And if I get spammed *by* an AOL user," he added, "I no longer have any way to complain to AOL, because the 'abuse' address at AOL is probably filtering out my mail as well." Even more ironic, Newman is a well-respected MIT graduate who established a set of technical standards for evaluating newsreaders--and he was an early figure in the internet's clash with the church of Scientology. "I've never heard of a single net-abuse complaint against my ISP," Newman observed. This looks like a mistake. In their war on Cyber Promotions, America Online blocked delivery for mail from cyber-promo.com, cyberpromo.com, and cyberpromotions.com. But there's also a Massachusetts internet service called cybercom.net--Newman's ISP. And AOL put them on the blocked list. But unlike the spam-only domains, this one has over 1500 users--including the Art Institute of Boston! This highlights the pitfalls of the way AOL implemented their mail controls. All 6 million of the service's members found the blocking had already taken place. It went into effect immediately, and e-mail delivery for blocked domains only returned if users pro-actively disabled it. And AOL appears to have deleted all e-mail from the banished domains--including Ron's--the day they put the filters onto the 6 million accounts! "They should have given every AOL user several days' advance notice that the blocking would begin," Newman said in an interview, "or required an affirmative decision by each user to begin having their mail filtered." Instead, the corporate giant imposed their enemies list from above. For 6 million users, Ron Newman and his fellow users were "vanished" overnight. More importantly, no one knew why. "The list of sites to be blocked should include the specific reason that each site is on the list," Newman continued. "Every AOL user should have ready access to this information." He points out that AOL users can't even add or remove sites. (Though one Usenet post suggested this is an unpublicized feature of AOL's mailreader.) And the incident suggests another important feature. "Mail should *never* be silently "eaten"..." ("I no longer get a bounce message even when I send to a non-existent user name at AOL!" Newman's Usenet post observed Friday.) So what does he think of AOL's new filtering system? "I think it sucks!" "Nothing like having a 800-lb gorilla sit on you," one observer commented privately. The irony is, it's trivial for junk mailers to elude AOL's blocks simply by creating new domain names. (A point AOL conceded to Interactive Week [9/5/96]) And of course, the blocking controls won't affect spam originating from AOL--a British newspaper reported that up to 9,000 people received last week's AOL-domain child pornography solicitation. AOL's moves appear mostly for show--a test mailbox tonight still contains 5 pieces of junk mail. While cybercom.net wondered if they'd be the first casualty of AOL's once-a-week update policy for the blocked-domains list, AOL quietly scratched them off the list Monday afternoon--"pending a further review" AOL's spokesman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While AOL's postmaster publicly announced the new mail controls Friday, he was noticeably silent about the correction. Possibly because it calls attention to flaws in AOL's procedure. "The AOL tool 'silently' blocks incoming mail, without notifying the sender, as is customary on the Internet," Art Kramer wrote in the Journal-Constitution. "So senders at the 53 domains are not aware that any e-mail to AOL users has been intercepted and destroyed." "I'd like AOL to tell me and my ISP what is going on," Newman told me Monday night. "So far I've heard *nothing* from AOL other than 'we're looking into it.' I had to read Usenet to learn that AOL had removed us from the block list -- just as I had to read Usenet a few days ago to learn that AOL had put us on the list in the first place." In Newman's opinion, AOL's policy is "fundamentally flawed". "It is *wrong* for AOL to produce a blacklist without an accompanying document explaining why each particular site is on the blacklist. It is *wrong* for AOL to silently discard mail instead of rejecting or bouncing it." For Newman, AOL's actions raise the specter of arbitrary mail disruptions. "If AOL doesn't review its policies, what happened to Cybercom this week could happen to *your* domain next week." Footnote: the court date for AOL's suit against the junk-mail king begins two weeks from Tuesday. THE LAST LAUGH One reader reports that an ad for AOL's "PrimeHost" web-hosting service appeared in an unusual Yahoo category. "Anti-AOL sites". ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 03:50:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: File 4--U.S. crypto-czar appointment -- "Crypto Imperalism" in HotWired http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/ HotWired, The Netizen Global Network Crypto Imperialism by Declan McCullagh, Kenneth Neil Cukier, and Brock N. Meeks Washington, DC, 23 October The US offensive for international controls on strong encryption will soon become a fusillade. In the next week, the Clinton administration is set to create the position of a roving ambassador whose job will be to marshal international support for a controlling new US crypto policy, the Netizen has learned. The crypto-czar will lobby foreign governments to change their laws to comply with the US regulations announced on 1 October, which temporarily allow businesses to export slightly stronger data-scrambling applications if they pledge to develop a "key recovery" system. In such a system, a still-undefined "trusted third party" would hold the unscrambling key to any encryption, and could be forced to give it over to law enforcement officials with a warrant. The catch, of course, is that such a system permits continued government access to encrypted communications. But for that plan to work, an international "key recovery" framework must be established. "What we need to do very clearly is to spend a lot of time with other countries," William Reinsch, the US Department of Commerce's undersecretary for export administration, told The Netizen. Reinsch said the newly annointed crypto ambassador would be responsible for helping these countries move "in the same direction" as the US by "helping facilitate that process and helping to reach any agreements that need to be reached between us and them." Reinsch said the position would defy the label "crypto-czar," because the position isn't "a czar in the policy sense.... We don't envision this person as one who would be giving a lot of speeches on the subject and operating as a kind of public defender of the process." Rather, the person would work within "a context which is largely private, not public," Reinsch said. The president can confer the rank of ambassador on a political appointee for up to six months without Senate confirmation, the State Department said. And with ambassadorial rank, the czar will be able to speak for the president. The administration is currently considering a "short list" of candidates "in the low single digits," drawn from current government employees and private citizens, Reinsch said. If a current government employee is chosen, he or she would be at the ambassadorial level, he said, and the crypto duties would simply become an additional responsibility. If chosen from the private sector, it will be someone with "significant stature," Reinsch said. That person would have "a close association with the administration and the president and would be viewed by the other countries as a senior representative who could speak for the president with some confidence," Reinsch said. If a private citizen is chosen, they would "do it for free and we'd pick up the travel I guess." The announcement should come "fairly quickly," he said. "I would hope next week we could ice this one." This bypasses the ongoing public debate in Congress over lifting crypto export controls through legislation - Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Montana) has pledged to keep fighting next year - and in the OECD, says Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "This is backdooring the backdoor." While others - notably Clint Brooks and Mike Nelson - have played the role of crypto spokesperson before, this move represents a redoubling of the administration's plans to impose its will internationally. Yet international observers say the United States may find its plans thwarted in the global arena, where many governments - already uneasy about America imposing its hegemony on regional politics - will likely resist another cryptocrat, even if the person comes with an ambassador's honorific before his or her name. "Europe would consider that unacceptable and arrogant, no question," says Simon Davies, director of Privacy International and a fellow at the London School of Economics. "There would certainly be a backlash, and it would cause immense suspicion. This whole business has become extremely sleazy, and the Americans appear to have taken it all very personally. I would be very surprised if it was taken seriously here." Viktor Mayer-Schvnberger at the University of Vienna Law School, an expert on international crypto policy, said that "if the US ups the ante and brings in a sort of a quasi-diplomatic person to push European countries further, I think we'll see tremendous arm-twisting." "It may backfire," says Mayer-Schvnberger. "The US put tremendous pressure on Europe and that is going to increase if the US government makes such a bold move as to appoint someone to do nothing but lobby for key escrow." Many countries, he said, "have been very apprehensive of the US coming in as the 'big guy' and telling the world what is good and what is bad" regarding encryption. ### ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:35:23 GMT From: tallpaul <tallpaul@nyc.pipeline.com> Subject: File 5--(Fwd) News.groups reform [BEGIN INSERT] On Oct 13, 1996 22:56:24 in <news.groups>, 'Christopher Stone <cbstone@yuma.princeton.edu>' wrote: In light of soc.culture.indian.muslims, I am presenting my ideas on how best to reform news.groups. Please feel free to make comments. PROPOSAL FOR NEWS.GROUPS REFORM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I. INSTITUTIONAL SETUP 1) Group Advice, Group Mentors, and the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) are henceforth abolished. Their present memberships are consolidated into a new body called the Usenet Coordinating Committee (UCC). 2) New members may periodically join the Usenet Coordinating Committee. New members must be nominated by a current member, and their nomination must be ratified by a 2/3 supermajority of the current UCC membership. Likewise, members may be expelled from the UCC by a 2/3 supermajority. Of course, UCC members may resign of their own volition at any time. 3) Tale shall retain his current position as moderator of news.announce.newgroups and as the issuer of newgroup commands. Should Dave Lawrence ever resign as Tale, a new Tale shall be chosen by a 5/6 majority vote of the UCC. Likewise, Tale may be forcibly removed from his post and a new Tale appointed only with the consent of 5/6 of the UCC. II. MECHANICS OF NEWSGROUP CREATION 1) Anyone who wishes to form a new newsgroup shall contact the Usenet Coordinating Committee, who will assist in writing a formal proposal for a newsgroup. 2) Tale shall continue to post all formal proposals to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and other relevant newsgroups. The subject lines of such proposals shall bear the tag "PROPOSAL: group.foo.bar" in lieu of the current tag "RFD: group.foo.bar." 3) Members of the Usenet Coordinating may brainstorm names for the newsgroup in question, should the proposal itself contain an inadequate name. UCC members also may voice other objections to the creation of the proposed newsgroup, such as a lack of demonstrated traffic on the topic in question. 4) UCC members may communicate amongst themselves via private e-mail; however, they are urged to post their comments publicly to news.groups to add transparency to the newsgroup creation process. Usenet readers at large may also contribute input on proposals by crossposting to news.groups and up to two other relevant groups. The UCC shall extend all due consideration to such public comments. 5) The UCC shall vote on all proposals within two weeks of their posting to news.announce.newgroups. Tale may order an extension of this deadline if he deems fit, or if a majority of UCC members request it. Tale shall post notice of the vote in news.announce.newgroups and news.groups. Such notice shall carry the tag "VOTE: group.foo.bar" in its subject line, in lieu of the current tag "CFV: group.foo.bar." 6) Votes may consist of YES, NO, or ABSTAIN. Tale shall be repsonsible for tallying votes, or, if he chooses, he may delegate this responsibility to volunteers from the UCC, who shall report back to Tale. Votes shall last one week. The voting record of UCC members shall not publicized outside of the UCC. 7) Any proposal that earns the support of a simple majority of the UCC shall be created within five days of passing its vote. Tale remains responsible for issuing newgroup commands. 8) Newsgroups that fail their votes may not be reconsidered for six months. III. NEWS.GROUPS REFORM 1) News.groups shall be robomoderated to filter out the following posts: A) Articles that contain more than 75 characters per line; B) Articles of more than 10 lines consisting of more than 3/4 quoted text; C) Articles crossposted to three or more newsgroups other than news.groups (excluding articles crossposted to news.announce.newgroups or news.answers); D) Articles that do not contain the tag words "PROPOSAL" or "VOTE" or "FAQ" in their subject lines. E) Article from certain individuals, as discussed below. 2) From time to time, certain individuals unfortunately post harrassing and/or off-topic messages to news.groups. With the consent of a 2/3 supermajority of the UCC, the robomoderator shall be configured to reject articles from such posters for a period of six months. 3) Tale shall periodically post various FAQ's on newsgroup creation to news.announce.newgroups, news.announce.newusers, news.answers, and news.groups. These FAQ's shall be proceeded with the tag "FAQ" in the subject line. These FAQ's shall also be automatically sent to every first-time poster to news.groups. 4) Discussion of proposals shall bear the tag "PROPOSAL" in their subject lines. Discussions relating to votes in progress shall bear the tag VOTE. FAQ's shall bear the tag FAQ. The robomoderator shall reject articles lacking such tags. 5) The UCC shall maintain a database of sites willing to host robomoderation programs. This information may be posted to news.groups periodically as a FAQ. ADVANTAGES ^^^^^^^^^^ 1) This proposal eliminates much needless haggling on news.groups. For instance, we will not go through several weeks worth of wrangling over whether moderation constitutes censorship, or why obscure names such as rec.pets.cats.clowder are ill-conceived. 2) This plan offers the advantage of consistency in namespace. Since the same people will be voting on new groups, their preferences are unlikely to vary from one proposal to another without good reason. 3) The proposal eliminates the problem of vote fraud altogether. No longer will throngs of angry nationalist voters be able to nix newsgroups for ethnic groups they dislike. Nor will a determined proponent be able to ram proposals through news.groups -- thereby increasing the quality of proposals. As things currently stand, news.groups is a paper tiger. We cannot hope to defeat proposals such as soc.culture.indian.jammu-kashmir. My proposal puts an end to such nonsense. Additionally, this proposal will vastly cut down on harrassment of UVV members and people whose e-mail addresses appear in RESULT postings. 4) The proposal makes it extremely easy for anyone who sincerely desires to participate in the creation of newsgroups to do so. Basically, any new poster who hangs out on news.groups for a while will be able to join the UCC if he or she wants to. At the same time, the proposal prevents net.kooks from disrupting the newsgroups creation process. Furthermore, in some ways, my proposal makes the newsgroup creation process less intimidating to outsiders. By allowing discussion to be crossposted to two other groups besides news.groups, the proposal ensures that readers of all relevant groups are aware of a given RFD. News.groups will become more hospitable once robomoderation cuts down on all the racist spam we have seen recently. And by eliminating acronyms such as "RFD" and "CFV" in favor of clear English-language terminology, the newsgroup creation process seems less mysterious. I hope that Russ Allbery will consider integrating his proposal for news.groups moderation with mine. 5) The proposal saves a lot of labor and time in the newsgroup creation process. Increasingly, creating newsgroups takes far too much time and effort. Bottlenecks in the newsgroup creation process are becoming all too frequent. The UVV does not have enough votetakers to cope with the mass of CFV's they must run, and more and more votetakers are quitting after proposals such as rec.music.white-power. The same is true of Group Mentors, and even Group Advice is overworked. By streamlining the newsgroup creation process, the proposal eliminates many of these steps; it will also cut down on many time-consuming flamewars, such as the "clowder" debate that consumed news.groups in July. 6) The proposal recognizes that a CFV is *not* an interest poll, but rather a measure of a proponent's skill at campaigning. These days, most every CFV that fails does draw significant votes does not fail because of a genuine lack of interest in the topic, but because the proponent did not widely publicize the CFV. Usenet has become so popular that virtually any topic will command some traffic. The trick these days is to name groups correctly, so that interested readers can readily find the groups they want. The conventional RFD/CFV process, which relies on the goodwill of proponents to name groups properly, is producing gems such as soc.culture.scientists, misc.activism.mobilehome, sci.aquaria, rec.aviation.air-traffic, and so forth. Some of these absurdities pass their CFV in spite of the poor name. Even those groups that news.groupies manage to defeat would have made interesting groups had the proponent been more reasonable about selecting a good name. The new proposal eliminates this problem. In short, a reformed newsgroup creation process allows us to get on with our business -- the creation of interesting, well-named newsgroups -- with a minimum of disruption. Therefore I urge support of this proposal for news.groups reform. [END INSERT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu> Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-0303), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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