Reliable, mass distribution (was Re: CEOlink)

Thu Mar 21 01:50:50 UTC 2002

On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, Sean Donelan wrote:
> It would be interesting to come up with a protocol that combined
> the robust flooding algorithm of USENET with a way to verify the
> source (i.e. prevent spam).

I'm not sure what problems you see with Usenet that would prevent it being
used for what you require. It's certainly almost as easy to varify as
email. With email you let just about any site on the internet contact you
and send deliver using any address, with news you have a limited number of
sites that you have directly authorized.

You can also sign (via pgp or whatever) news articles the same way you
sign email messages. It is also fairly easy to make news keep working even
after long-term DNS failures (it tends to not be affected by short term
ones).

Verifying the source is not the same as preventing spam, like email spam
most news spam comes from open sites and throw away accounts.

I doubt most people here check most web pages and email messages they
view for DNS poisoning or forged headers.

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