no@no.spam (®Old Crab®) wrote:

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Andy Dustman wrote on Sun, 30 Nov 1997 14:03:39 -0500:

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So, I propose a compromise: What if I enable pasting of From:, but if a From: header is pasted in, a short disclaimer is added to the beginning of the body of the message. Would that mess anyone up? I think this would be sufficient to avoid most problems with "forging".

Can't put the disclaimer in a Comments: header?

Why make a test ??? Put the disclaimer *every_time*. People who want to authenticate their nym account have the thing signed by the nym-server... That if you consider that it is not *obvious* to everybody that the "From:" from a remailer might be fake... That BTW *any* "From:", from remailer or from anywhere; might be fake... Only PGP or such allows to be easily sure of the sender.....

That's absolutely correct. That disclaimer should be implicit with EVERY post. Attaching it to anonymous posts, while technically correct, gives the false implication that posts without such disclaimers should be presumed to be genuine. That's a dangerous assumption. Anyone who wants to post an article with a phony From: address can do it far easier with a throwaway ISP account and news posting software that can be configured with an arbitrary From: address than going to the trouble of doing it through a remailer. Could it be that the enemies of privacy and freedom, if they can't ban anonymous posting altogether (at least not right now), would like to make sure that anonymous posts are stigmatized with the cyber equivalent of a yellow star? If some control freaks are to be believed, the only people who post anonymously are either "abusers", "cowards", or otherwise have sinister motives for not promiscuously broadcasting their names and addresses worldwide with every post. My theory is that what really galls them is that the precursor to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech (including anonymous speech) was the ANONYMOUSLY PUBLISHED "Federalist Papers", and they want to make sure it doesn't happen again. <g>

That *everybody* knows that should be controlled when one getting a Usenet licenceá :-))

Don't give the Usenet control freaks any ideas! <g>