Since when does a single article crossposted biweekly to ten newsgroups
qualify as "spam"? We're not talking about BI-defined spam here; the BI was
widely accepted largely because it's pretty much impossible to legitimately
post twenty separate copies of the same article in six weeks, hence it
catches spammers without hitting legitimate articles.
The problem people are pointing to here is that it *is* possible to
crosspost a legitimate article to ten newsgroups; hence dropping such
articles on the floor will impact more than spammers. Canceling them would
also lack the initial justification under which spam cancelers were
welcomed instead of being kicked off by their providers, namely overuse of
disk and bandwidth. Crossposting is used precisely to prevent such overuse;
it is a responsible way to post articles relevant to several newsgroups.
As it is...when people start recommending net-abusive tactics such as
multiposting announcements instead of crossposting them, that indicates to
me that here we have a system that is not working properly and needs to be
tweaked or rethought.
-- jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed@best.com http://www.best.com/~jaed/ Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.