Here, in its almost full glory, is the letter that CERT sent to the admin at berkeley. I've removed the addressee, since there's no need to involve that person. I have not, however, removed the name of the sender. Don't you just love that phrase "illegal trading of commercial software"? Based on what you sent out, I confess that I see nothing wrong with CERT's note. They're right -- anonymous ftp is abused that way. I've seen it happen on a fair number of sites -- folks upload packages for others to snarf. The pattern of some of the transactions I've seen suggests that folks are chatting anonymously via IRC or some such, and are using third-party machines as anonymous relay points. Other transaction patterns suggest the creation of sub rosa archives by folks who have no legitimate right to use the machine. Files distributed that way (and I'm speaking here of what I've seen personally, not just rumors from CERT or the net) include copyrighted PC software packages. Now -- there's a lot of room for disagreement about whether or not it's proper to charge for software, or whether or not algorithm patents are or should be valid. But I suspect that most people on the list would agree that if someone has written something that they don't want distributed that way -- as evidenced, for example, by a copyright notice -- their wishes should be respected. That's common courtesy, if nothing else. Similarly, if you want to distribute files, use your own machine. Don't abuse someone else's, when you know perfectly well that that's not a proper use of anonymous ftp. Again -- neither CERT nor I am talking about things like RSA software. That's a can of worms I'm not going to open in this forum. And they're probably not even talking about files that legitimate users are making available. They're talking about abuse of other folks' machines, almost always with neither the knowledge nor the consent of the system owner. And the outcome is predictable; I've seen a number of cases where anonymous ftp has been shut down, to the detriment of the entire community. --Steve Bellovin