Clam Wars

[mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)]

LD editorializes:

 > I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the Church of
 > $cientology wars until recently. Here's an executive
 > summary for those who don't give a damn.

Uh huh.

 > 1. There's a gang of flamers (David Gerard, Jon Noring, Ron
 > Newman, Rob J. Nauta, and the like) who try to stop
 > $cientologists from discussing their religion on the Usenet
 > newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. Most of them are
 > disgruntled former cult members and/or members of other
 > similar cults.

Actually, from my infrequent and cursory reading of a.r.s, it is
my impression that the antis are discussing their own views of
Scientology, not trying to prevent anyone else from discussing
theirs.  I would think all opinions related to Scientology would
be on-topic for a.r.s., both positive and negative.

 > 2. The anti-scientologists have caused many cypherpunks
 > anonymous remailers to shut down via their egotistical
 > misuse of them, viz. criminally posting copyrighted Co$
 > writings to Usenet. They did it knowing that the Co$ is
 > likely to harrass the remailer operators, causing them to
 > shut down and depriving everyone of their services.

Well, perhaps.  It certainly isn't very nice to post copyrighted
works via anon remailers.  At least not more than constitutes
"fair use" for the purpose of critical review (or hilarious
laughter, as the case may be).

 > 3. These harrassers are Usenet Cabal supporters, and they
 > are sometimes joined by initerant cabal enforcers such as
 > Peter Vorobieff, who visit a.r.s to lend a helping hand and
 > to flame Co$.

Nothing wrong here.  Flames are the thread from which the fabric
of Usenet is woven.

 > 4. Recently the anti-scientologists have asked me for a
 > copy of my cancelbot, and have been using it to forge
 > cancels for scientologist posts on a.r.s.

It should be noted that said Scientologist posts consist of
thousands of distinct little snippets from the Scientologist
Handbook and other similar tracts, posted as separate articles
from multiple accounts simultaneously.  This is clearly an
attempt to flood everything else off servers while staying clear
of the current definitions of Spam and Velveeta.

While Usenet tends to frown on content-based cancels, I find it
difficult to understand why the cancellation of thousands of
gratuitous posts duplicated amongst a large number of accounts
should be considered "content-based." Does participation in
a.r.s. ever legitimately require this level of posting?  It
shouldn't be too difficult to find non-content-based criteria for
cancelling this crap.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $