The Bincancel FAQ Last Modified: 7:50pm, August 6, 1997 Maintained By: Shaun Davis-Gluyas URL: http://www.geniac.net/bincancel/index.html This FAQ answers questions about bincancels that have been frequently asked and frequently answered on news.admin.net-abuse.misc and .usenet Many of the answers here are from various posts made to those two newsgroups during 1996, not from some coffee meeting somewhere. Contributions, suggestions and corrections are always welcome. Discussions on bincancels, cancels and net-abuse should be directed to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, not to the maintainer of this FAQ. Note On Organisation: The Bincancel FAQ is arranged in two parts. The Mini-FAQ contains some background information and some frequently-asked-questions, answered very briefly, with clarity in mind. The full version contains the same questions (and many extras), along with a compilation of some of the answers that were posted to news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Both the questions and the answers in the full version therefore tend to be somewhat more belligerent in tone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents ======== Basics What are cancel messages? What are bincancels? Who does bincancels? Why are bincancels needed? Annoyingly frequent questions Who made you God?! We did not give you permission to do that! Who is this "Dick"? Isn't this censorship and violation of free speech? I refuse to change. No law says I have to do what you say. Why did you cancel my binary out of a binary newsgroup? Why did you cancel my picture of my car in foo.forsale? But it was on-topic, damnit! What's wrong with you?! But FTP sites are too slow and difficult and... Ok, so where should I post my picture of my car? There's no rec.autos.forsale.binaries! But what about... Why not cancel money scams/sex ads/smut instead? Is anybody bincancelling in alt.*? If bincancels are based on size, what about those huge FAQs? Fairly common questions How can I ignore bincancels? How can you say that bincancels aren't content-based? It's already got to my ISP's server, why cancel it now? Aren't the bincancel notices a waste of bandwidth too? Depew posts non-binaries to binary newsgroups? Hypocrite! Are there any newsgroups that Depew doesn't scan for binaries? Leave us alone! Stop cancelling in our newsgroup. We'll police ourselves. Everybody in our newsgroup agrees that binaries are essential. Epilogue Who wrote this FAQ? Where can I find more information? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basics ====== Subject: What are cancel messages? This is from Tim Skirvin's Cancel FAQ, available at : "Cancel messages are a specialised form of message to Usenet that, when they arrive at a server, request that the post bearing the Message-ID contained within be deleted. In essence, a cancel message, if heeded, cancels another post. Hence the name." ------------------------- Subject: What are bincancels? Cancels for binary messages posted to a non-binary newsgroup. Bincancels came about after a long discussion among several admins who decided that a cancel bot was needed. Richard Depew started doing it at their request. Richard Depew's criteria used to search for large binaries are: "NEWSGROUPS: Unmoderated groups in the akr, biz, comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, nz, sci, soc, and talk hierarchies (except for comp.binaries.apple2, comp.bugs.2bsd, and rec.games.bolo) BINARY: base64, binhex, uuencode, and xbtoa encoded files, etc. SIZE: > 100,000 characters [(size * (# of parts - .5)), if multi-part]" (Richard Depew) "The 100Kb size limit is just Richard's cancelbot's technical criterion. Binaries do not belong in discussion newsgroups (unless explicitly allowed by the democratically confirmed charter) whatever their size." (Timo Salmi) ------------------------- Subject: Who does bincancels? Richard Depew, a system administrator, introduced and runs the major bincancel bot. Other people run bincancelling in the newsgroups they hang out on. Bincancelling is also done by moderators of particular newsgroups. Richard Sauers does bincancels for alt.comp.freeware and alt.comp.shareware. Christopher Lueg does bincancels for de.talk.sex Micky Wong does bincancels for hk.* Pierre Beyssac does bincancels for fr.* Boudewijn Visser does bincancels for nl.* http://news.rediris.es/~preguntas/news/faqs/es/binarios "I have been doing more bincancelling lately, and I believe JEM did this occasionally as well. I issue a cancel for any misplaced binary, period. Quite a few times, I'll notice a binary that gets missed by Depew's bincancel bot." (Stan Kalisch III) ------------------------- Subject: Why are bincancels needed? "Usenet is a system ideally suited for transferring many small text files without putting undue load on any particular system. Binary files, on the other hand, are usually more efficiently transferred using transfer methods such as FTP. When dealing with hundreds of thousands of articles a day, this efficiency is not just a luxury, it is a necessity." (Tim Skirvin) "Binaries posted to non-binary newsgroups take up bandwidth and disk-space on millions of computers around the world that may have been reserved for discussion postings. The creation of binary groups allow news-admins to choose if they wish to receive those postings, and how long they wish to keep them on their local news-spool. This typically differs from the space/time allocated to binaries and thus if binaries are then posted to discussion groups, they take up resources other than those which the news-admin wishes to allow them. I've got a limited amount of disk-space on my server and thus want to limit & expire binary postings in a different manner to how I wish to treat discussion groups. If posters start posting binaries to discussion groups, _my_ users lose out when the spool space fills up, so I'm all for bincancels, as they clear out the discussion group. If you have a problem with that, talk to _your_ sysadmin and persuade them to ignore the cancels at your site." (Gwyn Evans) "As an example, say at work we wanted no binary newsgroups, so we carry none. In fact we decide to carry no rec.* or alt.* newsgroups (not work related). So we have a very small disk set aside, say 100Mb. But some-one decides to post all of Windoz-97Beta1 to some newsgroup we carry. Wham. No disk left for the discussions we want to carry. Is Depew doing us a service by cancelling this post? You bet." (Ralph Lindberg) "Suppose that Joe runs a BBS on a Packard-Bell Pentium 75 with a 1.2 Gig hard disk and he gets his news feed by 28.8 modem long distance. Joe might not, for some reason, want to carry large binaries. Accordingly, he doesn't carry binary newsgroups. To help lots of people in various situations more-or-less like Joe's, among other reasons, large binaries are ONLY allowed in binary newsgroups, and the people who own the physical facilities which you use to propagate your messages agree with this evaluation." (Joel Rubin) "Because of the nature of Usenet there is no central government to it unlike in many other human organisations. It is self-governed by its users on the basis of the common netiquette including newsgroup creation procedures. The vulnerability of such system to uninformed or deliberately destructive postings unfortunately necessitates what you would call policing to prevent it falling apart as the result of the various kinds of net-abuses. That basically is what also is behind Richard Depew's bincancels." (Timo Salmi) "There has been a long-standing consensus among news administrators that binaries belong in binaries newsgroups, and not elsewhere. See the section on "Binaries" in the "How to Find the Right Place to Post FAQ", URL: http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/finding-groups/general/faq.html" (Richard Depew) "Pics take up space. Lots of space. That's why there's a place for them. Some guys don't take pics 'cause they take up lots of space. So they don't take the groups pics should go to. When you post pics to groups not in that place, or in the Big Eight, guys 'round the world get your pics, though they don't want them. Dick smokes big pics in the Big Eight, so guys who don't want pics won't lose as much space. Dick can't just smoke pics in the Big Eight if they cross into non-Big Eight groups - it's one or all. But it's like life - if your house is half an inch in my space, I can sue, and no one cares if the rest of it is in the right place; it goes, or I get cash. We can't get cash for your pic trash in our space, yet, so "it goes." Make sense yet?" (Michael Farebrother) ------------------------- Annoyingly frequent questions ============================= Subject: Who made you God?! We did not give you permission to do that! "Those of us who run news servers, however, did. Your permission isn't needed." (David Guntner) "God? No, the position is more like janitor -- cleaning up the mess left by people who didn't have the social courtesy to not make a mess." (Alan Larson) "Well, in a way it was you who did, when you did not vote your newsgroup to be a binary newsgroup." (Timo Salmi) ------------------------- Subject: Who is this "Dick"? A mild-mannered news administrator from Munroe Falls, Ohio. ------------------------- Subject: Isn't this censorship and violation of free speech? "No, since binaries in proper newsgroups are ok. These bincancels are non-content-based. That means that the article was not cancelled due to what was in it, only how and where it was posted. The post was a binaries in a non-binary newsgroup. Therefore it was cancelled as net.abuse." (Gwyn Evans) "No, this is not a violation of "Free Speech". You can still post your binaries, as long as you choose the right place to post them. For many people, posting binaries in a discussion group has the same effect as if you started shouting in a meeting room where several people are talking quietly. You would not be surprised if someone lead you out of the room so that other people can continue talking to each other. This is the same for Usenet. You can still express yourself, but people will direct you to a more appropriate place to do it." (Raphael Quinet) "Censorship is not an issue. Anyone can post any binary they want. Just do it properly." (Tom Maciukenas) "The correct phrase is "appropriate use of resources". "Censorship" and "Free Speech" are frequently used as battle cries by people who do not understand what Usenet is about and are not usually interested in learning, especially if it means having to give up their bullhorn." (Jan Isley) ------------------------- Subject: I refuse to change. No law says I have to do what you say. "Law does not enter into it. Common conventions between the sites which actually *carry* the news you're reading, however, do. The common convention between those sites is that binary postings don't belong in non-binary groups. That's why the various binary hierarchies exist. They were created so that the sites which *carry* the news you read can properly allocate space, or decide that they don't want to carry binaries at all due to volume considerations." (David Guntner) "Nor is there a law that requires me to store or forward articles that I consider to be an abuse of my resources." (Jan Isley) "It is futile to post binaries to discussion newsgroups. It is true that no one (other than your own admin) can _force_ you to change, but if you continue to post your binaries in non-binary newsgroups, then they will continue to be cancelled, and no one will ever see them. Is this what you really want?" (Gregory Byshenk) ------------------------- Subject: Why did you cancel my binary out of a binary newsgroup? "The cancels in non-targeted groups are a consequence of the way cross-posts work. A cross-posted article has only one Message-ID. When it is cancelled from one group it is cancelled from all groups." (Richard Depew) "Cancellations cancel every instance of a posting, no matter what newsgroup it was crossposted to. Cancel something in rec.art.fooish and if it's crossposted to alt.binaries.fooish, then both will disappear. There is no other way to do it." (Dave Ratcliffe) "Currently USENET doesn't allow for cancelling a crossposted message in one newsgroup and not in all of the groups that they were crossposted to. It ain't an option." (Scott Anguish) "The solution is simple: don't include both binary and non-binary groups in a crosspost list. If the post is a binary, it belongs *only* in alt.binaries and comp.binaries groups; if it's a text post, then it belongs *only* in the non-binary groups." (Eric Bohlman) ------------------------- Subject: Why did you cancel my picture of my car in foo.forsale? "Because it costs more to store and forward a 200k JPEG to all of the sites that get foo.forsale than your car is worth." (Jan Isley) What Jan is getting at is that Usenet is actually extremely expensive. "Sure, it is not shown as a direct cost for most organisations because the articles are transmitted over an Internet connection that is used for other things, but the cost is still there. I do not have the exact numbers, but I think that a full feed takes on average 80Kb/s (during the whole year). It also takes several Gb of disk space, depending on the expiration time. Multiplied by the number of news servers around the world, this means a lot of money. Even if a single binary article is still a tiny drop in the ocean, it still costs a lot if you take everything into account." (Raphael Quinet) ------------------------- Subject: But it was on-topic, damnit! What's wrong with you?! "The contents of the binary files are not relevant to the criteria for classifying an article as a "large binary". The classification is done by a program that examines form, not content. In my opinion, the best way to distribute a binary is via ftp or the web unless there is great demand for this binary. With the ready availability of ftpmail servers, even uucp sites can retrieve binaries from ftp sites." (Richard Depew) "They were binaries posted to non-binary newsgroups. Therefore, they didn't belong there. Binaries can be posted to binary newsgroups, or better yet, placed on a Web or FTP site for people to go get." (David Guntner) "Why not distribute your binary material in the proper manner? Post it to an appropriate binaries newsgroup or make it available on the net from a suitable FTP or WWW site and announce it on an on-topic discussion newsgroup." (Timo Salmi) ------------------------- Subject: But FTP sites are too slow and difficult and... "Having less than adequate Internet resources than you may need is *your* problem, not the rest of the worlds. Why should we all be forced to pay for your lack of foresight?" (Jan Isley) "Get a provider that gives you your own FTP space if this is your problem. If you can't, I'm sorry." (Stan Kalisch III) ------------------------- Subject: Ok, so where should I post my picture of my car? There's no rec.autos.forsale.binaries! "Please post it *only* to an appropriate binaries newsgroup such as alt.binaries.misc, and do *not* crosspost it to non-binaries groups. Then, if you like, post something in the appropriate discussion group telling people where to find the binary in the binaries group (a "pointer" to the binary). This will permit news administrators and users to choose, in advance, whether to receive these binary files." (Richard Depew) "The word "binary" in the name of a newsgroup is _NOT_ a guarantee that the newsgroup is a binary newsgroup. The example I usually cite in this connection is comp.binaries.ibm.pc (moderated, for binary postings) comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d (the discussion newsgroup for the former, not for binary postings) comp.binaries.ibm.pc.wanted (for asking where on the net to find IBM PC compatible programs, a discussion newsgroup, not for binary postings)." (Timo Salmi) ------------------------- But what about... ================= Subject: Why not cancel spam/money scams/sex ads/smut instead? All these things are already being cancelled to various extents. See the cancel FAQ at http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/faqs/cancel.html Money scams are cancelled by several people automatically. Same goes for many sex ads. Smut is a matter of opinion and taste. If you see a smutty picture posted somewhere other than a.b.p.erotica.*, feel free to post a short request for a bincancel to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Make sure you include full headers, but NOT the binary itself! ------------------------- Subject: Is anybody bincancelling in alt.*? "Check out alt.retromod or news.lists.filters and look for binhide reports. I have been issuing NoCeM reports for large misplaced binaries in alt since Feb 1. Over the past week, the binhide-bot has "hidden" an average of about 100 MB per day. I am hoping this service will encourage news administators to install NoCeM-On-Spool and use it to remove not only misplaced binaries (which can be more efficiently removed with "purge-binaries") but also BI=15 spam (using the Cancelmoose[tm] reports) and whatever other NoCeM services a particular news administrator may wish to use. NoCeM-On-Spool gives the equivalent of authenticated third-party cancels and full control over whose NoCeM-formatted advice to accept and whose to ignore. Howard Goldstein's NoCeM-On-Spool can be obtained from ftp://ftp.mpcs.com/pub/newsadmin/nocem/ . See http://www.cm.org/ for more information on Cancelmoose[tm]'s NoCeM protocol." (Richard Depew) ------------------------- Subject: If bincancels are based on size, what about those huge FAQs? "FAQs longer than 100kb are actually quite rare. Moreover, FAQs are "authorised" and save bandwidth by their mere presence (well, if newbies do indeed read them, that is...). Other documents as big as 100kb would draw serious criticism as well, although not automated, as long text postings are much rarer than long binary postings." (Alain Knaff) ------------------------- Fairly common questions ======================= Subject: How can I ignore bincancels? A news server can be configured to ignore cancel messages. Either give a really convincing argument to your current sysadmin to not accept them, or get an account somewhere that already does not. For example, Dave Hayes, owner of jetcafe.org, doesn't accept them. "All a news admin needs to do is add the word 'bincancel' to a particular line in the newsfeeds configuration file. I will point out that by default, all of these pseudo-sites are accepted (e.g., cancels are accepted). Here is a snippet from the 'newsfeeds' configuration file from a recent version of INN which demonstrates that this convention is widely recognised: ## You can also have ME/bad.site: to refuse articles from a particular ## site (by matching the Path: entry). Other pseudo-sites may be put ## in here, to REFUSE certain types of 3rd-party cancel messages ## (See the "Cancel FAQ" news.admin.net-abuse.misc): ## cyberspam Spam cancels, munged articles, binary postings ## spewcancel just munged articles from runaway gateways ## bincancel just binary postings to non-binaries groups" (Robert Braver) "Although aliasing out is not a perfect solution, because some binaries will be cancelled before they reach you (by sites where the bincancel pseudosite is not aliased out) you will still probably get some 80 - 90% of the binaries that would otherwise be cancelled, if you have a decent feed." (Ian York) "A much better solution for any site than bincancels is to use purge-binaries () It doesn't rely on any cancels issued by anyone, removes binaries from the spool as they come in, and ensures that the site doesn't propagate them to anyone else." (Russ Allbery) Brian Edmonds posts weekly summarisations of the results of using purge-binaries to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet ------------------------- Subject: How can you say that bincancels aren't content-based? "When determining whether a message will be cancelled as a binary, no thought is given to what it says; the only thing that matters is how it is said. The content is irrelevant to the decision, and therefore the cancels are not content-based." (Tim Skirvin) ------------------------- Subject: It's already got to my ISP's server, why cancel it now? "The cancels might well catch up with the articles before the articles are transmitted to some far-off leafs in the distribution tree; since the bandwidth to those leafs tends to be the most expensive, this is a good thing. And the disk space is recovered even when the cancel doesn't catch up with the article." (Seth Breidbart) ------------------------- Subject: Aren't the bincancel notices a waste of bandwidth too? "No. Dick cross-posts small posts to each affected newsgroup, directing them to the full notice which is posted to the news.admin.net-abuse.announce newsgroup. Even this full notice only contains the headers of the cancelled posts and is much smaller than any of the individual posts that have been cancelled." (Gwyn Evans) "Consider it removing a 200 x 200 foot billboard and replacing it with a 3 x 5 inch file card." (Dave Ratcliffe) ------------------------- Subject: Depew posts non-binaries to binary newsgroups? Hypocrite! "Stealth cancels are more disruptive of the fabric of Usenet than are short cancel pointers that let people check up on me. It is healthy for people to question cancels from the newsgroups that they read. That's a mechanism for limiting abuse." (Richard Depew) "I think the inherent point of posting the notice to all groups affected is that readers of all groups understand why the posts aren't there anymore." (Stan Kalisch III) "The cancel notice that they send out is also very necessary for two reasons: One, so binary-posters will know why their posts suddenly disappeared. And two, to hopefully catch others who might not know that there are special places for posting binaries." (Tom Maciukenas) ------------------------- Subject: Are there any newsgroups that Depew doesn't scan for binaries? Yes. Three: comp.binaries.apple2, rec.games.bolo and comp.bugs.2bsd "comp.binaries.apple2 is a special case in that it is the only *unmoderated* group in the comp.binaries hierarchy that permits the posting of large binaries. All the other groups that permit binaries are moderated. All the other *unmoderated groups* in that hierarchy are text-only discussion groups. rec.games.bolo is not a "binaries" group, but its charter does permit the posting of certain binaries, and no size limit is specified, nor is there any way for my 'bot to distinguish "permitted" binaries from misplaced binaries, so I don't scan that group. If the readers of rec.games.bolo would stipulate a size limit of less than 100,000 characters for "permitted" binaries, then I would be willing to resume protecting that group from misplaced binaries. Until then, they are on their own. comp.bugs.2bsd is a different case. Its charter does not mention binaries, but the person who has been responsible for posting the bug reports and fixes has been accustomed to doing this in an encoded format and promised to removed any misplaced binaries himself, so I figure that group is already in good hands... which is also why I don't scan moderated groups without a specific invitation from the moderator to do so. There are a few other groups in the hierarchies that I scan that are unmoderated yet have charters that permit the posting of *small* binaries. There is no conflict between those charters and my 'bot, so I scan these for large binaries as usual. There are no other groups that get special treatment. There are a few files (mostly FAQs) that get special treatment because they include some binary content, or are posted (for what appear to be good reasons) in an encoded format. *These* special treatments are arranged on a case-by-case basis as they turn up. They are certainly not very common - no more than about one new one per month. I keep an eye on these exceptions to make sure no one is abusing them, and if I get complaints about *not* cancelling any of these I will reconsider the exceptions that I have made. Yes, there are a few exceptions to the general rule... with the stress on *few*. :-) The readers of rec.collecting.stamps held a straw poll and decided to interpret their vague charter as banning large binaries... and they invited me to resume bincancels, which I have done. Everyone seemed comfortable with the process except perhaps the original proponent of the group, but he declined to buck the trend." (Richard Depew) rec.games.bolo explicitly allows binaries in it's charter because the newsgroup members considered exchanging small binary files of maps used by the game, and screen shots to be a reasonable form of discussion. rec.games.bolo is not a binary newsgroup, but is a discussion newsgroup that allows relevant binaries to be posted. ------------------------- Leave us alone! =============== Subject: Stop cancelling in our newsgroup. We'll police ourselves. "It's not _your_ newsgroup; you aren't the moderator. The cancels are welcomed by the admins who accept them. Did you cancel the abusive binary? No? Then I guess we did a better job of policing 'your' newsgroup than you did." (Seth Breidbart) ------------------------- Subject: Everybody in our newsgroup agrees that binaries are essential. "Check the charter of your newsgroup. If bincancels are improper under the charter, let us know. If not, and if there is enough of a consensus that binaries belong in the newsgroup, propose revising the charter in the newsgroup and in alt.config, or news.config, depending on the hierarchy of the group. Or consider proposing a binaries group to accompany your discussion group." (Stan Kalisch III) "What you should do is to discuss the special newsgroup situation (provided that you truly represent it, and not only think so) to exclude it from the cancelbot system. As long as the binaries are not crossposted, and the rest of your newsgroup readers agree, the problem of allegedly needing >100Kb binaries should be solvable." (Timo Salmi) ------------------------- Epilogue ======== Subject: Who wrote this FAQ? Many people contributed, including, but not limited to: Russ Allbery rra@cs.stanford.edu Scott Anguish sanguish@digifix.com Eric Bohlman ebohlman@netcom.com Robert Braver braver@ohww.norman.ok.us Seth Breidbart sethb@panix.com Gregory Byshenk gbyshenk@prairienet.org John Cadigan jcadigan@fgi.net Shaun Davis-Gluyas geniac@geniac.net Richard Depew red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us Gwyn Evans gre@mtits.co.uk Michael Farebrother mfare@crypto2.uwaterloo.ca David Guntner davidg@netcom.com Jan Isley jan@bagend.atl.ga.us Stan Kalisch III sjkiii@crl.com Alain Knaff Knaff@choiseul.inrialpes.fr Alan Larson larson@net.com Ralph Lindberg dragonsl@scn.org Tom Maciukenas tomm@dvorak.amd.com Kevin Miller kjmiller@mitre.org Raphael Quinet Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se Dave Ratcliffe dave@frackit.com Joel Rubin jmrubin@ix.netcom.com Timo Salmi ts@reimari.uwasa.fi Tim Skirvin tskirvin@uiuc.edu Ian York iayork@panix.com If I've missed anybody, feel free to enlighten me. ------------------------- Subject: Where can I find more information? The Cancel FAQ: http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/faqs/cancel.html The Net Abuse FAQ: http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html Timo Salmi's faq at ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfaqn45.zip (See "Subject: Do not post binaries directly") How to Find the Right Place to Post FAQ: http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/finding-groups/general/faq.html Most of this FAQ's contributors are regulars to news.admin.net-abuse.*, where net.abuse of all sorts are continuously and vigourously discussed. This document is Copyright 1996-2000 by Shaun Davis-Gluyas, all rights reserved. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced electronically on any system connected to the various networks which make up the Internet, USENET, and FidoNet so long as it is reproduced in its entirety, unedited, and with this copyright notice intact. [end of file]