Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 11:06:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Burchell To: Helena Kobrin Cc: mix-admin@nym.alias.net Subject: Re: your mail On Sat, 12 Oct 1996, Helena Kobrin wrote: > > > Dear Jeff, > > I e-mailed you in September regarding a posting of copyrighted > material through your remailer, requesting that you cancel it. You > responded that you could not do so without violating the Terms of > Service of your upstream provider. Actually, your upstream > provider, the remailer admin at nym.alias.net acknowledged the > severity of the infringement, and said that it would be appropriate > for the administrator of huge.cajones.com to cancel such a message, > since it originated from that machine. My upstream provider is not nym.alias.net, it is MCI and BBNPlanet, and forging Usenet headers is still a violation of their Terms of Service. Also, I am in contact with the admin of alias.net. He did not say it would be appropriate for me to cancel the message, he said that it WOULDN'T be appropriate for him to cancel them, and that you should contact me, as maybe I would feel differently. I don't. It is inappropriate for anyone other than the sender of these messages to cancel them. > We have just discovered a repeat of the same posting. The > headers are at the bottom of this message. I am therefore > requesting that you cancel these postings immediately. I won't cancel these messages, I did not send them, and I'm not interested in forging headers. If you want them canceled, do it yourself, I'm not going to do your dirty work for you. Feel free to use the remailer network to do so. > You stated that your system does not keep logs. Does it have > any information regarding these postings? Particularly this close > to when they were made? No. Once a posting has left my system, I can't tell you anything about it. It's that simple. > This may well become a recurring problem, as it seems that > your remailer is being used for this illegal purpose on a repeat > basis. If it has no record at all of these postings, i.e., even if > not set up to do so currently, could it be changed so that these > particular postings would get captured and prevented from going > through if they came through again? No. The remailer is designed to be as simple as possible, and is no where near intellegent enough to discern what material is copyrighted and what isn't. Furthermore, I run the remailer as a hobby, for free. I don't have time, money, energy or desire to add such funtionality to the remailer, and do not see myself doing so in the future. As a software developer, I'm quite understanding when it comes to matters of copyright. However, when I take issue with someone who I believe has violated my copyright, I don't attack the intermediaries. I take it up with the person who is responsible (even if i don't know or can't find out who it is). I would suggest that you bring the issue back out into the open on the Usenet group where it happened. Presumeably, whomever posted this material probably reads the newsgroup. -Jeff P.S. Contacting me again requesting information that you are aware I do not have, regarding something that came through my remailer, or requesting that I break my contract with those who provide me network access, will be considered harassment and treated as such. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When they came for the 2nd Amendment, I said nothing, for I owned no gun Then the sixth was next to go, and I remained silent, as I was not on trial They took away the fourth, and I said nothing, as I had nothing to hide And then they came for the First, and I could say nothing."