Cancel messages in net.sources

[Marcus Hall]

I just noticed something odd happeneing in net.sources.  Lots of articles are
being canceled.  I don't know if this is something that has been going on for
some time or what, but I wasn't aware of it before.  I counted at least 40
cancels all with the following format:

>Path: tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!think!ejb
>From: ejb at think.ARPA (Erik Bailey)
>Newsgroups: net.sources
>Subject: cancel <x3034 at think.ARPA>
>Message-ID: <dx3034 at think.ARPA>
>Date: 29 Oct 85 20:05:37 GMT
>Date-Received: 31 Oct 85 20:39:39 GMT
>Control: cancel <x3034 at think.ARPA>
>Distribution: net
>Lines: 3
>
>Lines: 1
>
>Inappropriate news group
>

They all claimed to be from 40 different people, but they all were arriving
one after the other and they all had 'Inappropriate news group' as text.

The return paths look like this:

tellab1!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!oliveb!think!ejb
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!
>					hplabs!oliveb!ryan at LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!hpltca!marc
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!lanl!crs
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!hp-pcd!charles
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!haddock!stevel
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!ihlpg!jchvr
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!ukma!sean
tellab1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!3comvax!mikes
(etc)

The articles themselves weren't present, I guess they were deleted at some
previous site.  They cancel messages were obviously generated at oliveb and
made to look like the poster of the article canceled the article.  The news
software is pretty easy to fool into believing that the original poster sent
the cancel message.

I would probably agree that the articles were posted to an 'Inappropriate
news group'.  There has been a lot (an awful lot) of noise on net.sources
recently, but since I was unable to see the articles, I don't know that they
were junk.

I was of the opinion that the proper way to handle noise was to send mail
to the poster of the offending article asking them to cancel their article
or at least be a little more careful next time.  I don't believe that I like
the idea of somebody at oliveb taking it upon themselves to cancel the junk
articles.  I particularly take exception to the fact that this person has
posed as the original authors of the articles when the cancelations were
generated.  This is forgery, isn't it?

I don't like the noise in net.sources any more than anybody else.  Net.sources
is not supposed to be for carrying on discussions.  However, I dislike
censorship of net.* groups even more.

marcus hall
..!ihnp4!tellab1!tellab2!thoth (no matter what this article's header says)