Request for Question Clarification by
missy-ga
on
10 Jul 2003 10:34 PDT
Hello asugymn,
Put your wallet away, please. I'm not going to take your ten bones to
tell you what you probably already know:
There aren't any easier ways, and even if there were, it wouldn't
solve the problem (or rather, problems).
Google Groups is not the only archive of Usenet posts in existence,
it's simply the largest, most complete and most easily searchable.
There are dozens of larger Usenet archives, and hundreds of smaller
ones - tracking down each and every one of them and gaining their
maintainer's cooperation would be the only way to truly solve the
problem. You'd be hard pressed to gain it, however, as most
maintainers keep a policy of non-removal, except by the request of the
original author (if they allow any removals at all). Even I maintain a
small, publicly available archive of humorous posts from a certain
newsgroup, and I don't remove posts for anyone but the original
author, either.
(Though to be fair, the situations are a little different. You're
concerned about libelous postings, some of my users are concerned that
Grandma will search on them and find some scandalously funny post in
which they're mentioned, and be offended because the author swears
liberally.)
Knowing how Usenet works would probably help you understand why what
you want to do (remove someone else's posts) is problematic.
Usenet works on a shared distribution model - John Q. Poster hits
send, and his post goes to his news provider's server. His news
provider peers (connects) with two or three other providers, who in
turn peer with two or three different providers each, and so on,
passing all posts amongst themselves so what is available on one
server is eventually available on all (propagation). HowStuffWorks
explains it very well here:
The Newsgroup Process
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/newsgroup3.htm
Some news providers set an expiry time - they'll only keep a post on
their servers for a specified period of time, be it a week, a month, a
year. Expired posts are deleted from the server to make room for
newer posts. Other news providers (like Google Groups, some
University servers, and archive sites) set no expiry date. All posts
passing through those servers remain indefinitely.
In either case, anything posted to Usenet exists not on one central
server, but on hundreds or even thousands of servers simultaneously
worldwide. Getting one offending post off of Google's server might
make you feel better, but it's still going to be out there somewhere
else.
The other problem is the larger one of censorship and harassment. If
you can have someone else's posts removed, what's to stop them from
having yours removed? This was, in fact, once a large problem on
Usenet - someone would be offended by another's posts or decide that
the person didn't have a right to speak, and would issue a cancel for
their posts. Sometimes for ALL of that person's posts, just out of
spite.
Allowing that sort of behavior was seen as a threat to the purpose of
Usenet (to allow free distribution of ideas and information), so many
news-admins removed the ability to cancel *any* posts at all, not even
your own! Policy has become "Own your words. Do not post in haste,
lest you regret it later." Attempting to delete someone else's Usenet
posts yourself (by way of a CANCEL or SUPERSEDE message) is classified
as net abuse, and is likely to get you TOSed from your ISP and/or
Usenet provider.
In the best case scenario, people would only censor libelous
information. In the worst case, you get someone like Ed Wollman, who
pretty much wanted to censor everyone:
About Ed Wollman's Abuse of the Abuse Process
http://www.smbtech.com/ed/
Unfortunately, the worst case scenario is the more common one, so
news-admins take a completely hands off approach to all posts - they
provide the place to post, but are not responsible for any of the
content.
You *might* be able to persuade Google to remove these posts by having
your attorney send a letter to them, citing the URL of the post in
question, the Message ID, and a few pointed references to the recently
tried Godfrey case in the UK. If you're not familiar with Godfrey v.
Demon Internet, in which a professor successfully sued an ISP and
forced them to remove posts from their server which he did not write,
you can have a look at a similar question I handled a few months ago:
Slanderous Posts Hosted on Google Groups
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=156111
Again, though, getting the posts deleted from Google, while certainly
taking care of your distress at them existing there, won't solve the
problem of their overall existence. They will still be in other
archives, some public, some available only to paid subscribers. You'd
have to repeat the process with every single one of these archives to
ensure the messages are well and truly gone (assuming, of course, that
the maintainers of these archives cooperated).
I'm sorry that there is no easier way. I'm likewise sorry that people
can be such jerks and that you have to deal with the discomfort of
having garbage posted about you.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not alone. I have scads of
horrible things posted about me all over the Internet. If nothing
else, it makes for funny conversations at dinner, and my kids will
have great stories to tell their children about the Net Kooks who used
to try to annoy Grandma. Sometimes, the best thing to do is just
shrug your shoulders and laugh at them.
--Missy
