🚀 go-pugleaf

A few months ago, Greece got its national network up and running.  The
network is called Ariadne and links Greece with Internet and Bitnet.
Ariadne is a program of the General Secretariat of Research and
Technology, administered by NRCPS Demokritos (National Research Centre
for Physical Sciences).

From January 1, 1993, a dialup service opened to the public on one of
Ariadne's machines, leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr where for a small fee,
anyone can get an account. The machine has 10 modems attached to it and
the dialup service offers a maximum of one hour's login time per day.
From leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr people have access to the Internet.  A
person was hired in (I think) November 1992 to tidy up things and set
up the modems and in general prepare things for the opening of the
dialup service to the public. This person was Dr. Vassilios J.
Georgiou.

When the dialup service opened to the public, some members of the
Hellas list subscribed to the service. I was one of them.  Vassilios
Georgiou, the dialup support person created an account with a publicly
readable mail spool file which was being used to host discussions. To
post, you just sent mail to `netcafe' and the mailbox was read by
others using elm. A bit like a primitive local newsgroup.

The problems started when some of the subscribers complained about the
service. The person who started the whole thing was one of the first
ever owners of the Hellas list, Alex Kouloumbis, who complained in
Hellas and in `netcafe' about the non-availability of news on the
machine when a neighbouring machine in the National Technical
University of Athens was getting news from Crete via leased lines but
was refusing nntp connections.

The response from the dialup support person, Vassilios Georgiou, was
something to the effect "We don't have to give you anything, if you
don't like it here you can dialup to uu.net in Virginia, USA". This
response was given in public, in a posting.

On May 22, 1993 I posted a reply to Georgiou's ridiculous message
saying that it was unacceptable.  I also made a few more points, asking
what was happening to the money we were paying as subscribers and so on.

Next morning, I found that Georgiou had deleted all postings relating
to the discussion and had posted one that said that the forum was
henceforth being moderated by himself. In effect, he forcefully stopped
the discussion.

I wrote to Georgiou asking him to put the articles back but he ignored
me.  I wrote to him twice more and waited for a reply till June 16,
1993.  I received none.

Then, on June 16, I brought the discussion to the Hellas list.

This started a heated discussion among the members of the list. Some
more people who happened to be subscribers to the dialup service
complained, saying that the responses from Georgiou ranged from no
response at all to plain unsatisfactory to threats that he will remove
people's accounts.  A few suggested that we write a letter Georgiou's
boss, Dr. A. Arvillias.

Suddenly, on the 21st of June, with no warning at all, Georgiou
disabled the accounts of every single person who had an account on
leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr and had complained publicly on the Hellas list,
possibly hoping that the discussion would stop. My account was one of
the first to go.

Not only did the discussion not stop, but it became more heated as the
people whose accounts were disabled started shouting that this person
is acting like a dictator.

Georgiou saw that the discussion was not stopping (it was his stupid
action of disabling the accounts that heated up the discussion further)
so the next day, June 22, he got his boss to write a letter to my
postmaster demanding that they find me and "remove" my account, with
the excuse that I was using obscene language in a public discussion
list.  (I later found out that I was not the only one whose postmasters
had been mailed). The postmaster did not terminate my account but
brought the matter to the attention of my supervisor. In the meantime I
didn't know anything and continued posting.

On July 6, seeing that the discussion was still going on, that my
account had not been removed and that people were considering writing
not only to Georgiou's boss but also to the General Secretariat of
Research and Technology to complain about his actions, Georgiou, trying
to silence the complaints, wrote a message to the postmasters
of the American University, the University of Georgia and Brown
University (the universities hosting the Hellas list), threatening them
with lawsuits and asking them to close down the list immediately.

The postmasters responded by saying that while they didn't think that
Georgiou had any grounds on which to win a lawsuit, they had had
problems with the list before and closed down the list for a week while
the matter was being investigated.

The verdict is that we're now required to either find other sites to
host the list or get someone from Brown to become a listowner so that
he/she can give quick answers to the postmasters should there arise a
problem.  The postmasters said they'd do whatever is required to ensure
a smooth transition if we finally have to move, something which we
appreciate.

However it's sad and frightening how one person from one country can
close down a public discussion list serving more than 300 people (plus
an estimated 3500 reading via bit.listserv.hellas - this figure is from
the Usenet readership reports published monthly in news.lists) from
many countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Greece, France and so on)
just because he doesn't like what's being said on the list. To close
the list is in fact accepting that Georgiou is right and the members of
the list are wrong.

Georgiou has openly shown us that he is trying to shut us up. First he
removed the articles from the discussion on leon.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr.
Then he disabled our accounts in Greece, then he wrote to postmasters
at our Universities and now he is trying to close down our list. And
close to succeeding it too.

Georgiou is close to succeeding to close the Hellas list
because it's a mailing list. However, he wouldn't be able to do
anything if we'd been using a newsgroup. Why then should a list be
treated differently just because it's a mailing list?

Even if he has the right to do whatever he wants on the machine he
administers, this does not give him the right to close down a list,
simply because we have been publicly discussing his dictatorial
behaviour.  If he had nothing to fear, he would subscribe to the list
and answer the complaints in public. But no, this person didn't even
answer complaints by private mail, I wouldn't expect him to answer in
public. Instead, he chose the devious way.

The matter as concerns my supervisor and postmaster is closed as after
translating my articles to English they didn't find anything on the
basis of which to close my account. I will continue posting in Hellas,
much to Georgiou's dismay. So much for his credibility. What will finally
happen with Hellas I don't know, but time will tell.

Vartan Narinian <vsn@ic.ac.uk>