Oh, Verio!
From The Federalist:
President Bush's very modest tax cut proposal is being debated with all the passion that raged over the Emancipation Proclamation, and for the same reason. At stake is the question whether some men have the right to live at the expense of others. Today the taxing power, rather than chattel slavery, is the instrument by which the parasitical element of the population subsists. And that element, which includes politicians, panics at the slightest reduction in the state's power to plunder. Once you start liberating taxpayers, even a little tiny bit, nobody knows where it may end. -- Joseph Sobran
It's a bit odd to find this one in The Federalist, since they could be fairly categorized as "moral busybodies":
Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. -- C.S. Lewis
And a man after my own heart:
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. -- Mark Twain
Oh my!
Members of a religious sect in Afghanistan are continuing to smash statues all over that country. It's gotten so bad that advisors to Al Gore have told him to cancel his trip there out of fear that he'll be mistaken for one. -- Ira Lawson
John Gilmore at Cryptime - Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers: Cryptome has mirrored this page from John Gilmore's web site, because Verio is threatening to cut off Mr. Gilmore's web service. He refuses to stop running an open relay for email sending. Verio already fixed the problem by blocking all outgoing email from his site, but for some reason this isn't good enough for them. John recommends contacting Darren Grabowski of "Verio Security" in his defense. I'm no lover of spam, but the people to fight are the spammers, not innocents who get used by them. This is the same as the drug war. You can try all sorts of things to stop the senders, but unless people stop responding to spam, it will continue to exist. I used to get really mad when I received spam and sent angry letters off to the originators, if I could find them. Nowadays, I just press the delete button without even looking at the message. Most of it is easily recognizable from the bogus return address. Takes very little of my energy. If Mr. Gilmore's mail relay really starts attracting spammers, he'll be forced to do something about it just to recover his bandwidth. Still, I assume that Mr. Gilmore agreed to Verio's Acceptable Use Policy. I doubt they would have provided his service had he not done so. Contractual agreements trump everything else. Though I think it will be bad for Verio's business to terminate Mr. Gilmore's service, I for one will never do business with them if they do, they can cut him off for any reason they please. Anyway, I sent the following email. [cryptome]
To: Darren Grabowski <drg@verio.net>
Subject: toad.com
Cc: John Gilmore <gnu@eff.org>, nospam@eff.org, bill@billstclair.comMr. Grabowski,
I read today at Cryptome about Verio's decision to cut off John Gilmore's T1 line, toad.com. Shame on you. I realize that Mr. Gilmore's open mail relay violates Verio's acceptable use policy. I've read it. You implemented a solution to that supposed problem on March 14 by filtering all out-going email from toad.com. Why do you now claim that you "have no choice but to terminate" Mr. Gilmore's services? Nonsense. You have lots of choices.
The most logical choice would be to change your policy about open mail relays. Open mail relays are not the problem. Spam is the problem. Mr. Gilmore does not send spam. Shutting down open mail relays does as much good at ending spam as spraying defoliant on coca farms does at ending cocaine distribution. None. Nada. Zilch. The reason that spammers continue to send spam is the same reason that junk mailers continue to deliver tons of paper to snail mailboxes. It works. People respond. If you want to end spam, you need to convince people to ignore it. As soon as the response rate drops to zero, the spammers will stop. Until then, nothing else can do anything but harm the innocent.
Mr. Gilmore pays Verio for a million bits a second of bandwidth. If he wastes that bandwidth by allowing spammers to use his sendmail port, that's his problem, not yours.
Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com
Mike Godwin at Cryptome - WATCH OUT: An International Treaty on Cybercrime Sounds Like A Great Idea, Until You Read The Fine Print - the U.S. department of justice is working through the Council of Europe to create another Orwellian treaty. This one forces any signatory country to investigate an alleged internet offense from any other. Really bad stuff. [cryptome]
Stewart Baker is one of the chief lobbyists for the treaty opponents. As a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service, he's got street cred on these issues in corporate America.What worries Baker and his colleagues? Consider the following hypothetical: A Los Angeles screenwriter corresponds by e-mail with a neo-Nazi in Germany while researching a script. Shortly after, he finds federal agents examining the files on his home computer. The agents also visit America Online Inc. to retrieve records of the screenwriter's AOL usage.
The agents are fulfilling a warrant issued by German authorities allowing them to search for Nazi propaganda. Such material is unlawful in Germany but not in the U.S. They framed their warrant in terms of "suspected terrorist activity."
manuka at kuro5hin.org - US Gov't Scientist Fired for Web Post: Ian Thomas, who used to work for the USGS Patuxaent Wildlife Research Center, was fired for posting a map showing the distribution of caribou calving areas in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). His map was apparently based on some old or inaccurate data. Instead of simply informing him of his error and asking him to fix it, he was canned. The article contains a short introduction from manuka and an email from Ian Thomas. There's a mirror of the images Mr. Thomas created at http://www.dqc.org/~chris/gis-gallery/. They have been removed from the USGS web site. The images in question are, I believe, the ones dates 07-Mar-2001 and 08-Mar-2001. Interesting discussion at kuro5hin (below the article). The LA times article referenced in the story has moved here.
Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post Magazine via MPP - Below the Beltway, 3/18/01: Mr. Wiengarten visited the offices of the Marijuana Policy Project. He writes a light-hearted piece about his failure to get a rise out of the straight-laced staff with his typical reefer jokes. Good for a laugh.
Carl S. Kaplan at the New York Times -
When Linking Isn't Better Business 
- the
Better Business Bureau's's linking policy hits the Times. The BBB
doesn't like anyone linking to them without permission. [tomalak]
When is a link over the line? Imagine, said Sableman, that a Web site called "Joe's Junkyard," has links to very reputable organizations, including, General Motors's authentic auto parts. Imagine, too, he said, that Joe's Junkyard does not sell GM parts. "It's possible that that link, and its placement on the home page, could falsely suggest an affiliation between Joe's and GM," said Sableman. "That might be grounds for an unfair competition violation. But there has not yet been a case alleging that."
RadioFlightSim "is a free radio control flight simulator writen in Java and the Jazz3D engine." It works with Windows wjview.exe, the built in Java VM, but I can't figure out how to control it. [meat]
