Subject: Re: Message munging?

From: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 19:04:00 +0100 (BST)

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:59:50 +0100 (BST)
	Philip Hazel <[email-masked]> said...

> Ah well, that depends on what you mean by "relaying". The new draft for 
> 821bis says:
> 
>   2.3.8 Originator, Delivery, Relay, and Gateway Systems 

Yes, the new draft for usenet article formats (of which I am the Editor)
makes a similar distinction, the equivalent terms being
	injector, server, relayer and gateway

Relayers are absolutely forbidden to munge anything (bar Path header),
with the intention that every copy of the article worldwide will be
identical. Gateways are expected to do the minimum necessary to get them
to work (there are various restriction specified, mainly to prevent
looping). The assumption with regard to injectors and servers is that
they are near enough to those to whom they provide service that they can
be "leant on" by their users if they try to be too stupid. It is also
useful that, in newsgroups, there are far more readers than writers, so
any stupidity will rapidly be noticed and commented on (as is happeniong
with certain practices by remarq). And there is a general principle that
if you don't like something passing through your system, then you may
drop it on the floor, but you do not change it.

Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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