From kre@munnari.OZ.AU Fri Dec 04 06:09:23 1998
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	Fri, 4 Dec 1998 17:08:34 +1100 (from kre@munnari.OZ.AU)
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>
To: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
Cc: paul@vix.com, richard@sexton.com, iesg@ietf.org
Subject: Re: Who is censoring namedroppers? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "03 Dec 1998 18:30:05 -0000."
             <19981203183005.27579.qmail@cr.yp.to> 
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 17:08:34 +1100
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Sender: kre@munnari.OZ.AU

    Date:        3 Dec 1998 18:30:05 -0000
    From:        "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
    Message-ID:  <19981203183005.27579.qmail@cr.yp.to>

  | Were all the previous subscribers aware of it?

All?  Who knows?   Certainly most should have been.   But some people
can keep themselves ignorant of almost anything.

  | How exactly were they informed?

There was some discussion some time ago when spam started to be a problem
(this is some time ago now).

Further, if you recall the message sent to the list recently (from Paul)
asking/informing about a pending patent which was (partly) DNS related.

That one had words added to it along the lines of "no further messages
on this topic will be approved" (as while asking the DNS community if
they know of that patent (application?) was reasonable, namedroppers is
not the place for extensive discussions of patent issues).

Namedroppers is in a worse position this way than many other IETF lists,
as it is (and has been for a very long time) gatewayed into usenet,
which makes it a much easier target to find for spammers.

kre

ps: so, yes, we knew, and I don't recall anyone objecting.    It also means
that for this particular list, it can be a good idea to send messages both
to the list, and to the author of the message to which you're replying (even
if they're on the list), as that avoids the delay which occurs because of
the moderation of the  list, and allows a brief exchange to be queued and
sent to the list all at once.  Of course, some people's mail filters prevent
that...