response 76 of 163:

Sep 26 14:42 UTC 2000

        That's an odd way of looking at things, considering root a "privilege".
It's correct in the technical sense, that it is a privilege for file and
process access, but it's not correct in the general sense, that it's some sort
of public trust that must be carefully guarded to prevent abuse.  There are
already laws to prevent people who shouldn't be filching around in your mail
from doing so (although your definition of "shouldn't be" might not agree with
the law's) but there is no guarantee anywhere that I'm aware of that you
should be able to run programs on someone else's system without their scrutiny
of what the program does and whether or not it is a potential security threat
or adversely affects the system.  

        M-net had a policy against images (and the policy was never written
in an AUP) even existing in users' home directories.  At one time, a cron job
ran through all files and checked for magic numbers indicating popular image
formats, though occasionally this restriction was ignored.  I believe GREX
has a similar, if not identical, policy regarding images on users' web pages,
and perhaps personal directories.

        Either way, good semantical confusion.

response 78 of 163:

Sep 26 14:44 UTC 2000

        Err, laws', not law's.

response 80 of 163:

Sep 26 16:19 UTC 2000

In the context of this item, M-net General item 253, starting about 
response 10, is a laff riot.  jp2 acknowledges that he and willard 
were booting people off the system for their behavior in party.
jp2 defends it as an appropriate response to "harrassment."

response 82 of 163:

Sep 26 17:31 UTC 2000

guess i'm being filtered.  anyone care to answer my question?

response 84 of 163:

Sep 26 18:48 UTC 2000

        What's m-net's AUP?

response 86 of 163:

Sep 26 19:28 UTC 2000

        From m-net general 253:

> Response 16: 
> Date: Tue, Sep 26, 2000 (10:43)
> From: buzzard@arbornet.org (buzzard)
> 
> Willard also felt the need to boot me off, several times yesterday, for
> disagreeing with his views. I also called him nasty names, however this is
> protected speech. I sent e-mail to EFF and they should be contacting Tod
> shortly.
> 
> Looks like Arbornet will be losing its blue ribbon rights thanks to Mike
> No-wood.

> Response 22: 
> Date: Tue, Sep 26, 2000 (11:18)
> From: Senator Howard (jp2)
> 
> A little bit of both. He was acting like a reall asshole in party but I
have
> also booted people for less. Typically they behave after one or two times
> through the process.

> Response 23: 
> Date: Tue, Sep 26, 2000 (11:45)
> From: Opium Ad Hoc (tanis)
> 
> As much as I would like to boot people someimtes, its kind of bullshit that
> you use your root privileges as such.

> Response 50: 
> Date: Tue, Sep 26, 2000 (14:46)
> From: Senator Howard (jp2)
> 
> Fucking with buzzard for sport is one thing. (Notice, he still isn't
> complaining about me...?) Look deeper, there is more going on here.
> 
> However, when a user tells me they are receiving harassing telegrams or
> hot chat requests even after the user has asked the offender to stop, the
> offender needs a kick in the ass. The user told me of the problem, so I
> politely but firmly informed the offender to stop then told the user to
> let me know if it happened again. Five minutes later I am informed it
> continued. So I telegramed the offender and said, I warned you, and now
> you are being kicked off and *BOOM* he was gone. He logs back in and
> telegrams me saying he cam kick me off too. Never one to let power go
> unexercised, I replied, "No, I'm in charge around here. See?" and there
> he went again. He behaved after that. This is not a freedom of speech
> issue. 

        So booting someone to "fuck with [them] ... for sport" is an
acceptable thing to do with a root account, and yet disabling a file that's
prohibited by an unwritten (but commonly understood, and understood by the
perpetrator) policy is unacceptable?

response 88 of 163:

Sep 26 20:05 UTC 2000

No, Michael, this is about you.  Aren't you glad?

response 90 of 163:

Sep 26 20:11 UTC 2000

        You haven't been following my posts.  I'm asking for a concrete
definition of what you consider to be abuse of a staff account, since you're
asking for a concrete definition of what users can and can't do.  I would be
very interested to see what kind of freenet could run where the staff had no
control over what programs users ran.

response 92 of 163:

Sep 26 20:16 UTC 2000

And buzzard wished you would leave *him* alone.  So?

response 96 of 163:

Sep 26 20:21 UTC 2000

re #90
I'm asking the same thing.

In a more perfect operation, I'd have complaints submitted to the staff
alias email for tracking purposes; as well, staff would submit an
email to the staff alias when they are required to intrude someone's
privacy or boot a user from the system. This in fact, would create a nice
trail if situations required investigation or explanation.
Without making too much of a security risk, we could safely say that those
email submissions could be made public as a sort of log of staff operations.
But, that's just one suggestion which I've come up with little thought.

I think folks shouldn't be put-off by a little responsibility for their
actions, whether they are a user making a complaint to the staff or
whether it's a staff with root priviledge. After all, it's a community
asset and we should all share a smidgeon of burden to be accountable amongst
our peers and the community as a whole.

response 98 of 163:

Sep 26 20:26 UTC 2000

I agree, it's crazy.
(As for my capacity as a representative, it's exactly true. I'm not a root
nor am I sysadmin.  I'm not into micromanagement with staff as President.)
I'm a member of Grex, as well. I certainly am not out of line
asking about the AUP, nor should i be questioned for doing so.