Guest Editorial

Echomail Censorship
By: Michael A. Grant

Dear Fidonet membership:

Recent events in the distribution of echomail by the Z1B distribution system have revealed a disturbing practice that's apparently been going on for quite a while amongst some Top Level Hubs in the distribution system.

First, a little background. The Z1B was formed out of disagreements and personality conflicts mainly between Bob Seaborn and John Souvestre, both of who were TLH's in the then-NAB distro system. John convinced a few other hubs to join with him in forming a new backbone distribution system, and thus the Z1B was formed. Recently, John Souvestre quit Fidonet, and two of the remaining three top-level mail hubs in the Z1B system felt the main reason for the distro systems being separated was gone, and decided to mesh with the two TLH's in the present NAB system.

Prior to this occurring, a controversy arose in the Z1B around Dale Ross,the third TLH in the Z1B; and problems a moderator, Sean Rima, was having in getting his echos distributed in the Z1B. Sean had previously encountered no problems distributing his echos in the Z1B. However, since Dale had recently started using NoBogus, a program designed to catch dupes and undesirable messages, a large part of those echo's mail got stopped on Dale's system until Dale could manually inspect it. Dale then proceeded to publically brow-beat Sean over the technical standards that he had set up as a trap in his NoBogus config and was using to filter out Sean's messages with (the messages were gated from the internet). This prompted Sean to request his echos be removed from the Z1B system.

In large part because of this fact, but also added to it the fact that Dale Ross had been elected spokesperson for the Z1B and a large number of the Z1B echomail hubs felt Dale was following his own personal agenda and was ignoring the concerns of those he was supposed to be representing, the other two TLH's who moved to mesh with the TLH's in the NAB did not invite Dale Ross to mesh with the top levels in the new distro system. Dale took this as a personal affront, and personally cut off several hubs (without any official vote being taken) from the Z1B's BACKSTAT.Z1B hub list.

At the heart of the matter is NoBogus. Dale remains unapologetic for his use of it, and in fact continues to brag about adding new traps to make his system even more restrictive. This amounts to censorship, plain and simple.

NoBogus is a powerful program, and has uses for mail filtering that go far beyond dupe detection and technical standards. Used in a malicious manner, it could be very damaging to a person a mail hub happens to dislike enough to use the program against, and it could single-handedly cause the demise of an echo. The program can stop an entire mail packet from passing through the hub's system if it finds one word, say, someone's name, in the text of the message body, in the to: or from: field, in the tear line, or in the origin line of any message.

Ross Cassell states that he uses the program for dupe detection only. This is, in my opinion, a good use of the program, as it can effectively detect dupe loops and other dupes that get by some mailers/tossers. I have no reason to doubt his word, as he has shown himself to be trustworthy in my dealings with him, yet I am still uneasy about him using it, as the potential for abuse is still there.

My opinion of NoBogus is that no TLH's should be running the program as a mail filter. Regardless of whether the mail is being deleted or merely held up until the user manually inspects the mail packets, it amounts to censorship of echomail, and in my opinion that goes against everything a mail hub is supposed to stand for. Mail hubs should simply move the mail in it's raw form, and leave any filtering to the individual sysops and the filtering programs, mailers and tossers they choose to run. Dupes are a valid concern, as mis-configured hubs can create them, and reasonable efforts to catch them should be made; however, further filters on the echomail for reasons other than dupe detection are IMO dishonorable in the practice of mail moving.

Dale maintains that his system ought to be very strict in enforcing Fidonet technical standards. Unfortunately, much of the software that adheres to the present Fidonet technical standards has been long abandoned by it's authors, and sysops who are trying new ideas, such as allowing users to post messages from a website, may have trouble finding new, supported software that meets the technical standards and can perform the task. The end result of this is that many messages are finding their way into Fidonet while /not/ meeting the present technical standards. Dale Ross is filtering these messages.

The FTSC is struggling at present to address issues such as Internet only nodes in the nodelist; these issues are long overdue, and the FTSC is far behind in keeping up with the times. This is hardly their fault; things are changing so rapidly in the electronic world around us, and we are sadly lacking as a group for people who have the desire and free time to help advance our hobby. The people on the commitee are capable, but can only give so much; they are doing their best, which is all we can hope for.

Fidonet is shrinking rapidly. People are abandoning it in droves for the Internet, where they are not restricted to finding an abandonware program that they've never heard of in order to meet an echomail hub's restrictive standards. They want to use the latest programs available to them, and they don't want to have to jump through hoops just to participate in Fidonet.

It's high time we recognized that we're behind the times, and opened ourselves up to new possibilities. If someone can find a way to use Outlook Express or PINE to participate in Fidonet, I'd be all for that, and I could care less if the messages those programs create don't meet every technical standard. I also would move the mail that those programs would produce without using any form of a filter on it. Any less would be a detriment to Fidonet as a whole, IMO.

On a closing note, version 2.03 of NoBogus was finalized by it's author in 1994, but was never released until recently to the public. Apparently, John Souvestre had been given a copy of the program, presumably for testing purposes, and then the author died. Dale Ross became very perturbed when Ross Cassell decided to release it, and insisted it was not to be distributed, despite this note in the NOBOGUS2.DOC file inserted by the author, D.J. Murdoch:

--<snip>----

License:

All Fidonet sysops are hereby licensed to use NOBOGUS at no charge. If you think that it has helped you a lot, you could show your appreciation by sending me a small contribution of $5 or $10.

I'd appreciate suggestions and bug reports. Please send them to me at one of the following addresses:

DJ Murdoch at 1:249/1.5 on Fidonet
71631,122 on Compuserve
dmurdoch@mast.queensu.ca on Internet

Mail and contributions can be sent to me at

D.J. Murdoch
337 Willingdon Ave.
Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
K7L 4J3

--<snip>----

The question this brings to mind is; what did Dale have to hide, that he'd go against the clear wishes of the deceased author? John Souvestre also held the program back; so apparently, he's had something to hide for about seven years now.

When did our mail hubs become "Big Brother"?