🚀 go-pugleaf

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Last bit of the email logs (save for final letter, which will be reposted
later).

- -- 
- -Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
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<logs follow>


- From ccaputo@alt.net Sat Nov 15 22:18:55 1997
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 14:00:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Caputo <ccaputo@alt.net>
To: Follower of the Clawed Albino <afn23950@afn.org>
Subject: Re: Question for you

On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Follower of the Clawed Albino wrote:
> Te person who asked insinuated it was my "tone".  I stated that--among other
> things--it was that you didn't seem to think that newsgroup flooding and
> path forgeries were abuse (which I *did* mention in the post).  

Let's be clear about something here.  I did not say that newsgroup
flooding was not abuse.  I said that your definition of flooding differs
from ours.  If flooding, based on our definition is happening, it will be
stopped as soon as we determine it is happening. 

What you call "path forgeries" we call "path pre-loading". 

> Right now I'm trying to work this out...I'll make a note of it, but I still
> reserve the right to repost and/or post summaries, myself.   I haven't, yet,
> partly because I'm still hoping we can work this out WITHOUT your site being
> UDP'd.  (And, well, some of the stuff in our correspondence COULD lead to a
> UDP if unchanged.)

Why are you trying to keep us from being UDPed after proposing discussion
of it?

> If you want it reposted, let me know and I'll repost it.  Verbatim.

I am taking this as agreement from you that I can repost our messages to
date. 

> (FWIW--most of the group already *knows* I'm taking legal action.)

That's wonderful, but irrelevant, unless you are planning to sue us.

Chris Caputo
President, Altopia Corporation

- From ccaputo@alt.net Sat Nov 15 22:19:09 1997
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 14:56:41 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Caputo <ccaputo@alt.net>
To: Follower of the Clawed Albino <afn23950@afn.org>
Subject: Re: Question for you

On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Follower of the Clawed Albino wrote:
> News.admin.net-abuse.usenet had a fellow on there statign he was using
> alt.net as an anonymous service.  I will be glad to forwad the post to you
> on request.

The fellow may be using it for that purpose and that is his right, but
that does not mean we have put forth the service as an anonymous service. 

> I've heard at least one Altopia customer state on news.admin.net-abuse.
> policy that adding NNTP-Posting-Host would be "acceptable".  I will forward
> the post to you upon request.

I have been reading the threads too.  It is the customer's right to say
they would find something acceptable, but that does not mean we will do
it. 

> People got concerned when it was added on airnews, too, but it was added as
> a security measure.  People got concerned when it was added to Zippo, but it
> was added as a security measure.

We have explicitly chosen not to include NNTP-Posting-Host: and see no
security reason to add this back in. 

> If all of Airnews' users are going to get *that* huffy over it, it may be
> best to split to an anon and a non-anon posting service, as I suggested
> earlier.

I assume you mean Altopia's users. 

> I've no problems--as long as you a) *do* deal with net.abuse (by that I mean
> acts which are generally considered to be net.abuse according to most Usenet
> sites) and b) you let folks know that you are, or not, going to deal with
> it.

Both of these are optional aspects of participating on Usenet.

a) does not work for us because there is no consensus, not would a
consensus mean we should abide by it.  If sites feel that we are causing
harm to them, they will stop accepting posts from us.

b) remains up to us. 

> Chris (I'll drop the "sir" this time),
> 
> Determining whether something is net.abuse by whether or not it was posted
> by a script is not only at variance with *every single other Usenet site*
> (including a *lot* of sites that deeply respect freedom of speech) but could
> cause you to miss clear cases of net.abuse.

Do you really feel you can speak for "*every single other Usenet site*"? 
I seriously doubt this. 

> I myself have seen spams that were not posted by a script.  Spams that would
> fall under the Breidbart Index levels of cancellable spam.  The spammer
> posted them individually.
> 
> I've also seen "customised spam" where the first paragraph is customised to
> the group, but the rest is substantially similar.  These are hand-posted
> too, but are and *have* been concidered cancellable spam almost since spam
> cancellation began.

Spam, of the commercial sort, is forbidden at our site whether or not it
is part of a flood. The point is that what you define as a flood is not
what we define as a flood.

> *Just because something is hand-posted or posted individually does *not*
> mean it is not net.abuse.*  As I've stated, *individually posted or no*,
> the intent and the effect *were* that of a newsgroup flood and an attempt to
> destroy alt.horror.werewolves.  I am not the only one who noticed this,
> fwiw.

And I am not the only what that disagrees with you on this.  There is no
right or wrong to this, only opinions. 

> The main discussion I've seen on news.admin.net-abuse.* was whether your
> lack of response to complaints was worthy of UDP, *not* to whether or not
> this was a newsgroup flood.  Only two people disagreed on this, one a German
> admin and the other someone who has not been on the net.abuse groups in some
> months.

Your counting sounds inaccurate. 

> > Zippo has made the decision to act this way.  We do not share in this
> > decision, based on our own legal analysis with our attorneys. 
> 
> Why exactly do your lawyers feel this is a major problem?  (I'm very curious
> on this...the only way there would be a problem, legally, should be if
> you're running an anonymous site.  And the mere fact that you're logging
> pretty much proves this isn't the case.)

Our attorneys feel this is a major problem because of the liability
aspects of sharing customer confidential information without a court
order.

> Chris, with all due respect, this isn't conjecture; I do have verifiable
> *proof* where they have *admitted* this was the intent.  So do several
> others.

With all due respect, this is still conjecture.  What you believe is proof
is something that needs to be confirmed in a court of law and not
something that is confirmed because you feel strongly about it or because
others agree.

> Thing is, will the good or bad customers predominate?  (AGIS took *exactly*
> this kind of tack with spammers.  They eventually lost a good deal of their
> connections with sites, and to this day are seen as spam-mongers.  Most of
> AGIS' legitimate customers have left as a result.)

Who is to judge whether a customer is good or bad?  Certainly not you or
I. 

> > This still remains conjecture.
> 
> I've asked the admin of meow.org to back me up (no, I did *not* forward the
> mails, but I did note to him you don't seem to think the flooding of AHWW
> was, indeed, a flood).  As for my proof, I figured you didn't want to be
> mailbombed with 25 megs of zipped files containing my proof of ongoing
> flooding with malicious intent.

Regardless of who backs you up, this is still conjecture because I can
always find people to back up our side of the dispute. 

> > It is understood that many sites have different policies than our own. 
> 
> It is also understood that users have to generally follow their sites'
> AUPs.  Including those of their home site.

We leave the decision to follow AUPs up to the users.  How on earth can we
be expected to interpret and rule on all of the AUPs that our customers
may be bound by?

> > Our policies were made knowing that we will eventually be UDPed by various
> > sites around the net.  This has already happened and will continue to
> > happen.  Each site can choose whether the positive contributions of
> > Altopia users outweigh the negative contributions.  That's really a
> > wonderful concept if you think about it. 
> 
> Nice concept in theory, but won't your users be disappointed if they find
> that they can only talk to alt.net (and maybe AGIS) customers?  Won't a lot
> of them who went to alt.net so they COULD post to Usenet go to other
> providers?  Won't that hurt you ultimately?

No, this will not hurt us.  We may lose some customers, but we may also
gain some.  What you don't seem to realize is that there will likely
always be sites that want to talk to other sites, no matter what their
policies.  Believe it our not, we have a waiting list of sites that want
to peer with us.  I don't foresee this waiting list diminishing anytime
soon.  It has only grown in the last year. 

> A number of folks go with an alt.net feed so they can get a better feed of
> Usenet.  If they find they will ultimately get no better propogation than at
> their home ISP, a number *will* leave.  And you will be ultimately left with
> those whom nobody else wants, and eventually Altopia will become an
> intranet.

Time will tell. 

> I do *not* want this to happen.  *This* is why I'm trying to encourage you
> to consider options that are friendly to the net as a whole and will protect
> the anonymity of your legitimate customers who need it.

Why do you care?  Why not stop wasting your time and give up.  You are
trying to help something that doesn't want to be helped. 

> Some of your users are doing things that hurt Usenet for *everyone*.  You
> are tolerant of some of these things.
>
> Most sites are *not* tolerant of these things--not because they want to
> restrict freedom of speech--but *because they hurt Usenet for everyone*.

I don't see how you can really speak for "*everyone*".  Do you really find
that everyone agrees with you everywhere you go?  I obviously do not, so I
don't think you can use the word "*everyone*" without being deceptive. 

> Sites that persistently do nothing about users who keep hurting the net
> *will* end up talking to the ether bunnies.  They're already talking *very*
> seriously about UDPing UUnet--which is the largst backbone on the planet--
> for being lax on dealing with users that hurt the net.

Not all sites would participate in a UDP against UUNET.  We certainly
wouldn't.

> In an awful lot of killfiling mechanisms, you can only killfile globally.
> That is, if you can killfile at all, or if the killfiling allows you to
> killfile by Path: at all.
> 
> Newsreaders that even allow killfiling by Path: are uncommon at best.  (I
> know for a fact this is the case--for some time, until Airnews started
> accepting cancels again, I tried killfiling the Dave the Ressurector posts
> without success in tin, slrn and nn, and had considerable difficulty with
> it in strn.  (tIt is not exactly trivial to finetune killfiles at times.)

Then push for improvements in the software. 

> Saying that "if you ask for it they will build it" is optimistic at best.

This is how the world works.  I'm optimistic and glad. 

> > Most sites are just concerned with
> > being functional and as long as we are not making their site
> > dysfunctional, we are not bothering them.  When I say dysfunctional, I
> > mean in the technical newsflow sense. 
> 
> And what I have explained and have been explaining is that *your users who
> were forging paths and flooding Usenet newsgroups *were* making not only
> sites but entire newsgroups dysfunctional*.
>
> *Users at your site who forge moderator approval make Usenet dysfunctional*.

You don't seem to understand the difference between "technically
dysfunction" and "inconvenient for certain humans with certain opinions". 

> Different sites may have diffrent standards, but there is a generally
> accepted standard among most sites as to what is and is not net.abuse.
> If sites condone or do not do anything about behaviour generally considered
> abusive, they put themselves at risk of UDP.  

You keep waiving UDP as if it is an almighty sword.  It is not. 
Censorship is routed around by those who choose to fight it.

> But you said if everything is "posted individually" you considered it
> separate incidents.  You said it above in this letter.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.  Regardless, if a single
commercial post is reported to us, we take action.  This is actually more
strict than many sites.  We don't like that we have this policy, but we
have decided that it is the best way to deal with the commercial
advertising problem at this time. 

> What I have attempted to explain to you is that the repeated incidents of
> header forging by the "meowbot" and "mahmoud" are a net.abuse problem.  The
> "meowbot", along with three or four other individuals--at least one other
> being on alt.net--contributing in multiple incidents to a deliberate attempt
> at newsgroup flooding.
> 
> According to the standards of what you defined a flood as, you likely would
> not consider "customised spam" abusive, either.

"Customised spam" of a commercial nature would be handled by our rules
against commercial postings.  You are confusing the words flood and spam
as a means to justify your argument.  That doesn't fly. 

> As I explained as well, the posts were uniformly crossposted, were forged to
> implicate folks these people have tried to harass in past (usually in the
> Path:), were often REPOSTS of old articles, and had no intent at all other
> than that of deliberately flooding alt.horror.werewolves to the point of
> unusability.
> 
> This is not conjecture--this is fact.  This was in fact stated as the
> intent.  The persons responsible have stated this before that the intent
> of the floods is *flooding*, and ultimately destroying alt.horror.werewolves
> as a functional Usenet newsgroup.  Even were it not posted that was the
> intent, anyone who saw the flood in action could tell you that was the
> intent.
> 
> What part of "three users of alt.net are cooperating with two or three
> others who are not on alt.net in a deliberate attempt to make a Usenet
> newsgroup unusable for its regular users" are you failing to understand?

You have said this over and over.  We still disagree.  We should agree to
disagree and stop wasting each other's time.  Your definitions are not
correct and your facts are not factual, in our opinion.

> The "Mahmoud" poster forged over 100 articles in 2 days, heavily
> crossposted, forged to appear to come from Libya, and claiming that the
> poster was a representative of Coalition Against Unsolicied Commercial Email
> and further suggesting that CAUCE was virulently anti-semitic.  Among the
> croups crossposted to were soc.culture.israel and soc.culture.jewish,
> ostenably in an attempt to get the heads of CAUCE mailbombed-by-proxy and
> the net.abuse groups flooded by proxy.  The post also used heavily forged
> Paths.
> 
> This was severe enough that CAUCE has had to issue press statements on the
> matter, and is still considering legal action.

If CAUCE needs us to retain logs as evidence, they should contact us
immediately. 

> I would dare say it *is* our business whether "Mahmoud" lost his Altopia
> account or not--there is the chance he might do it again.

Oh please.  You sound as if you have some kind of divine right to this
information.  You don't. 

> > > > If an abusive post is made using Altopia, then the abuse is coming from an
> > > > Altopia user.  The IP address or home ISP they used is not relevant.. 
> > > 
> > > Even if it's known that the person has a history of repeatedly abusing
> > > Usenet, and will very likely abuse Usenet again from another site after he
> > > gets the Golden Boot from Altopia?
> > 
> > Correct.
> 
> Even if the person may actually have morph accounts at Altopia (multiple
> accounts to jump to if they are removed from one)?

Correct. 

> > > Even if the user's AUP has a stricter policy, prohibiting stuff like forging
> > > moderator approval or Paths?
> > 
> > Correct.  A user makes their own decision whether to violate or abide by
> > their provider's AUP.  It is not up to us to police that aspect of a
> > user's communication with us.
> 
> Even if people are deliberately using your service to *violate* the AUP of
> their own provider, because they fully intend to commit net.abuse and they
> know Altopia will not stop certain types of behaviour generally considered
> abuse of Usenet?

Correct, with the caveat that there is no accepted definition of
"net.abuse". 

I have grown tired of running in circles with you.  Our customers need me
to be working on other problems that face the service.  Let us please take
this thread back to the news.admin groups so that my effort is not
duplicated needlessly in the conversations I am having with others.  If
you would like to continue this thread, please post your response in
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet and altnet.general (the latter if you don't
mind).  I will probably not respond to future direct email messages
because it has become futile, as I originally suspected it would when you
first started complaining.

Chris Caputo
President, Altopia Corporation



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