[ntp:questions] ntp survey

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Tue Dec 30 21:58:09 UTC 2008


"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:

>Unruh wrote:
>> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
>> 
>>> Tim Shoppa wrote:
>>>> On Dec 29, 10:47 pm, ma... at ntp.isc.org (Danny Mayer) wrote:
>>>>> Antonio,
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are really from nic.br please use your email address from that
>>>>> domain. It is unacceptable to use a gmail account for such notifications.
>>>>>
>>>>> Danny
>>>> This is usenet, where anyone can set their "from" address to anything
>>>> they want, and posting with an E-mail address that is adequately spam-
>>>> filtered makes perfect sense.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure there's any real requirement that anyone has to announce
>>>> any particular e-mail address to run a NTP survey. He made the
>>>> methodology clear, said where the queries will be coming from, and I
>>>> think it's good that surveys continue and, like Antonio and his
>>>> collaborators do, they make the details and results public.
>>>>
>>>> Tim.
>> 
>>> There is no requirement that he even announce his survey!  It is polite 
>>> for him to do so but no more than that.
>> 
>> Well, Under various laws he may be guilty of hacking/cracking/illegal use
>> fo computer time/... unless he gets permission. There has at least been a

>You might have a hell of a time prosecuting him!  Whatever the laws in 
>YOUR jurisdiction, HE is NOT in your jurisdiction.  Prosecution, if any, 
>would have to be under the laws of Brazil.

No. The crime would have been committed in Canada and the prosecution would
occur here. Now if he never came to Canada, prosection might be difficult
(probably not extradictable, and anyway, damages so small that it would not
be worth it). Remember the Russian programer who was arrested when he
visited the US because he wrote a program to unencrypt a horrendously
simple (Ceasar cypher type) encryption on Adobe e books. He spent a few
weeks in jail. And Brazilian law may contain such idiocies as well.

Note that this would be a criminal, not civil tort. I would not prosecute
him, the state would. 



>Even if he were in your jurisdiction, you would probably be laughed out 
>of court if you brought an action against him for stealing two 
>milliseconds of your computer time!

Almost all of the prosecutions for such things should have been laughed out
of court but have not been. In US jurisdictions, the 10 hours at $500 /hr I
spent trying to figure out what he did have been counted as valid damages
in figuring out the impact of people's behaviour. 


>If you want to "tilt at windmills", try fighting the spammers!  For that 
>matter, try enforcing the "National Do Not Call List".  It hasn't 
>stopped my phone from ringing. . . .

I agree. I have no desire to tilt at any windmills. What I was pointing out
was that the claim that they did not have to announce their research but
could simply run their survey may in fact be wrong in law. 






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