Usenet News Abuse Discussion

Discussion

There are many forms of Usenet abuse. This document discusses the more common forms, but is by no means an exhaustive list. This document is not a formal acceptable use policy but is provided to give some guidance as to what Demon will or will not consider to be abuse of Usenet.

Chain Letters, "Make Money Fast" and other Ponzi Pyramid-Selling Schemes

These articles are similar to paper versions, where you add your name at the end of a list and send the message to lots of your friends. The person at the head of the list is typically sent some small amount of money and hopes to become rich. Simple mathematics shows why they do not work in theory, and a little thought about human nature will show you why they do not work in practice either.

These schemes, even where they offer no financial or material reward are unacceptable abuse. They waste resources for Internet service providers and for the users who download them. If they do involve money they are also illegal in many countries despite common claims to the contrary within their text.

Demon will immediately suspend a customer's Usenet access for this type of abuse, even if a single such article is posted.

Excessive posting

Excessive posting, commonly referred to as "spamming", means the posting of lots of substantively similar news articles, usually to a large number of newsgroups.

It is irrelevant whether the articles can be considered "on-topic" within the newsgroups or not. The problem caused by spamming is that Usenet resources are needed to store the articles and the cost to readers of the newsgroups to download duplicates of the same message.

The Usenet community determines whether an article has been duplicated too often using the Breidbart Index (BI). This index measures the breadth of any multi-posting, cross-posting, or combinations of the two by calculating the sum of the square roots of the number of newsgroups each article was posted to. If that number reaches 20, then the postings are extremely likely to be cancelled by automatic systems which detect this type of abuse.

Binary articles in Non-Binary Newsgroups

Binary articles contain information which is in a form not directly readable by humans, usually in "base64" or "UUENCODE" sections. These are usually "attachments" of images, executable files, sounds, or proprietary format documents such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Even if the attachment within the article was originally simple text or a web page (HTML), if it has been encoded before posting it is still considered to be a "binary".

Articles posted to "non-binary" newsgroups should contain only simple text which is immediately readable without special tools. The size of any encoded section is irrelevant; the fact it is encoded is what makes it unacceptable. The only exception allowed to this blanket ban is the use of cryptographic authentication signatures such as PGP.

Binaries are only allowed in special binary newsgroups because this allows them to be specially handled by the "newsmasters" who run Usenet's servers. The size of binaries, in particular, means that many systems will not wish to use their bandwidth to receive them, or will expire articles more quickly to prevent them from using excessive space.

In order to make things straightforward for newsmasters the binary newsgroups are all grouped together into hierarchies. Almost all binary newsgroups are to be found in alt.binaries.*, alt.sex.pictures and comp.binaries.* hierarchies.

There are also a small number of local binary hierarchies such as de.alt.binaries.*, as well as a handful of newsgroups with special rules for particular types of binaries such as rec.games.bolo. This handful of groups is specially treated because they have gone through recognised processes to gain their limited exemptions. You should not assume that binaries are acceptable in other groups because "everyone posts them" or "nobody objects". In particular you should note that binaries are not acceptable in any alt.fan.*, uk.* or demon.* newsgroup.

Ensuring that binary articles only appear in binary newsgroups is not just a matter of convenience for the newsmasters but is also important for individual Usenet readers. The appearance of a binary in a text-only newsgroup is usually extremely unwelcome. Besides the size of the article, which will take extra time to download, special tools will be needed to decode and handle the contents.

Forged Headers

There are several types of unacceptable behaviour involving the forgery of article headers or article addresses.

It is abuse to post articles with headers which would mislead recipients into believing that some other system or user had created the articles. Demon Internet's systems will add header lines to try and foil such forgery, but articles will still be treated as abuse even if Demon Internet actions make the attempted forgery apparent.

It is abuse to post articles with headers which would cause responses to these articles, solicited or otherwise, to be delivered to unwilling third parties, or to inappropriate or unreasonable newsgroups. In particular, it is abuse to arrange for email replies to be delivered to an email address which you do not have permission to use.

Illegal content

Some material is illegal to possess or is made illegal to transmit by various Acts of Parliament dealing with material sent over a public telecommunications network such as the telephone system which Demon uses to provide its services.

If you post copyright material or other intellectual property to Usenet you must have permission to do so. In particular it can be illegal to publish 'hacks' or 'cracks' of software products.

It is abuse to post illegal material to Usenet.

Objectionable content

Usenet is a robust medium which is intended for use by adults. Demon's customers may post articles which offend or annoy other users. These may contain foul language or controversial viewpoints.

Demon does not consider this sort of article to be "abuse" and actionable under the Usenet AUP.

This is because the Internet community does not generally consider it appropriate for content based decisions to be made by anyone except by an individual on their own behalf. Therefore, if you are offended by articles made by a Demon Internet customer then you should arrange not to read them in the future, by using facilities provided within your newsreading software such as "killfiles".

However, none of the above is to be taken as any suggestion that you may publish material that is prohibited under local obscenity or indecency laws. For example, it is a criminal offence to even possess child pornography in the U.K. and other content may give rise to civil actions. Demon does not condone the presence of this type of content anywhere on the Internet.