Jeff Burchell, sysop of the Huge Cajones anonymous remailer, responds to Helena Kobrin

Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 17:06:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Burchell 
To: Helena Kobrin 
Subject: Re: Unauthorized use of Copyrighted Material

> 
>      1.   Send out a cancellation of these messages.

I can't do that.  My service does not post directly to USENET, and as 
such, is not responsible for placing the article onto usenet itself.  To 
send out a cancelation, I would have to forge one, which would violate 
the Terms of Service of my upstream provider, which could get me removed 
from the net.  You need to talk to the person who runs the mail to news 
gateway that posted this.

>      2.   Preserve all information related to the posting which is
> on your system.  This is imperative because it relates to
> litigation which is in progress, and in which preliminary
> injunctions have been issued prohibiting posting of these works.

Now, if I were keeping logs, it wouldn't be a very anonymous remailer, 
now would it?  As soon as a message has left my system, I no longer have 
any details about it.  I can't identify the sender, the recipient, or 
even the text of the message.  Sorry.


-Jeff




Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 11:06:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Burchell 
To: Helena Kobrin 
Cc: mix-admin@nym.alias.net
Subject: Re: your mail

On Sat, 12 Oct 1996, Helena Kobrin wrote:

> 
> 
> Dear Jeff,
> 
>      I e-mailed you in September regarding a posting of copyrighted
> material through your remailer, requesting that you cancel it.  You
> responded that you could not do so without violating the Terms of
> Service of your upstream provider.  Actually, your upstream
> provider, the remailer admin at nym.alias.net acknowledged the
> severity of the infringement, and said that it would be appropriate
> for the administrator of huge.cajones.com to cancel such a message,
> since it originated from that machine.  

My upstream provider is not nym.alias.net, it is MCI and BBNPlanet, and 
forging Usenet headers is still a violation of their Terms of Service.
Also, I am in contact with the admin of alias.net.  He did not say it 
would be appropriate for me to cancel the message, he said that it 
WOULDN'T be appropriate for him to cancel them, and that you should 
contact me, as maybe I would feel differently.  I don't.  It is 
inappropriate for anyone other than the sender of these messages to 
cancel them.  

>      We have just discovered a repeat of the same posting.  The
> headers are at the bottom of this message.  I am therefore
> requesting that you cancel these postings immediately.

I won't cancel these messages, I did not send them, and I'm not 
interested in forging headers.  If you want them canceled, do it 
yourself, I'm not going to do your dirty work for you.  Feel free to use 
the remailer network to do so.

>      You stated that your system does not keep logs.  Does it have
> any information regarding these postings?  Particularly this close
> to when they were made?

No.  Once a posting has left my system, I can't tell you anything about 
it.  It's that simple.

>      This may well become a recurring problem, as it seems that
> your remailer is being used for this illegal purpose on a repeat
> basis.  If it has no record at all of these postings, i.e., even if
> not set up to do so currently, could it be changed so that these
> particular postings would get captured and prevented from going
> through if they came through again?

No.  The remailer is designed to be as simple as possible, and is no 
where near intellegent enough to discern what material is copyrighted and 
what isn't.  Furthermore, I run the remailer as a hobby, for free.  I 
don't have time, money, energy or desire to add such funtionality to the 
remailer, and do not see myself doing so in the future.

As a software developer, I'm quite understanding when it comes to matters 
of copyright.  However, when I take issue with someone who I believe has 
violated my copyright, I don't attack the intermediaries.  I take it up 
with the person who is responsible (even if i don't know or can't find 
out who it is).

I would suggest that you bring the issue back out into the open on the 
Usenet group where it happened.  Presumeably, whomever posted this 
material probably reads the newsgroup.

-Jeff

P.S. Contacting me again requesting information that you are 
aware I do not have, regarding something that came through my remailer, 
or requesting that I break my contract with those who provide me network 
access, will be considered harassment and treated as such.