                       The Bincancel Mini-FAQ

Last Modified: 2pm, April 6, 1997
Maintained By: Shaun Davis-Gluyas <geniac@southcom.com.au>
URL: http://www.southcom.com.au/~geniac/binfaq.txt  (mini version)
                                     ../binfull.txt (full version)


This FAQ answers questions about bincancels that have been frequently 
asked and frequently answered on news.admin.net-abuse.misc and .usenet
Many of the answers here are from various posts made to those two
newsgroups during 1996, not from some coffee meeting somewhere.

Contributions, suggestions and corrections are always welcome.
Discussions on bincancels, cancels and net.abuse should be directed to 
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, not to the maintainer of this FAQ.

Note On Organisation:  The Bincancel FAQ is arranged in two parts.
The Mini-FAQ contains some background information and some
frequently-asked-questions, answered very briefly, with clarity in mind.
The full version contains the same questions (and some extras),
along with a compilation of some of the answers that were posted to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc.  Both the questions and the answers in
the full version therefore tend to be somewhat more belligerent in tone. 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents
========

Basics
  What are cancel messages?
  What are bincancels?
  Who does bincancels?
  Why are bincancels needed?

Frequently Asked Questions
  How can I ignore bincancels?
  Who gave you the authority to do bincancels?
  Isn't this censorship and violation of free speech?
  I refuse to change. There is no law saying I have to do what you say.
  Why did you cancel my binary out of a binary newsgroup?
  On-topic binaries should not be cancelled.
  What if there is no appropriate *.binaries.* newsgroup?  
  But FTP sites are too slow and difficult and...
  Why not cancel spam/money scams/sex ads/smut instead?
  If bincancels are based on size, what about those huge FAQs?
  It's already got to my ISP's server, why cancel it now?
  Aren't the bincancel notices a waste of bandwidth too?
  Why not simply allow members of a newsgroup to police themselves?


Basics
======

Subject: What are cancel messages?

This is from Tim Skirvin's Cancel FAQ, available at 
<URL:http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/cancel.html>:  
"Cancel messages are a specialised form of message to Usenet
 that, when they arrive at a server, request that the post bearing the
 Message-ID contained within be deleted.  In essence, a cancel message,
 if heeded, cancels another post.  Hence the name." 

-------------------------
Subject: What are bincancels?

Cancels for binary messages posted to a non-binary newsgroup.

-------------------------
Subject: Who does bincancels?

Richard Depew, a system administrator, introduced and runs the major
bincancel bot. Other people run bincancelling in the newsgroups they hang
out on. Bincancelling is also done by moderators of particular newsgroups.

-------------------------
Subject: Why are bincancels needed?

Binaries take up disproportionate amounts of bandwidth.  Although many
sites have fast feeds and plenty of memory, many sites have neither.
For those smaller sites, binaries present serious load problems.
Administrators for such sites may be forced to drop the group altogether
rather than damage the rest of their feed.


Frequently Asked Questions
==========================

Subject: How can I ignore bincancels?

By aliasing out the bincancel pseudosite.  If you are not a system
administrator, your admin might do this at your request.  Note that your
admin may not wish to block bincancels, for the reasons given above.

-------------------------
Subject: Who gave you the authority to do bincancels?

Since there is no central Usenet authority, nobody *can* give such 
authority.  However, administrators around the world are aware of the 
bincancels, and many - though not all - accept them as a useful service.

-------------------------
Subject: Isn't this censorship and violation of free speech?

No, because the binary in question can be posted to other groups or made
available other ways with no interference.  There are also other arguments
as to why this is not censorship.  The question is one of "appropriate use
of resources" rather than "free speech".

-------------------------
Subject: I refuse to change. No law says I have to do what you say.

True.  However, there is also no law that forces others to do what *you*
say - that is, there is no way that you can force other sites to accept
your binaries rather than bincancels.

-------------------------
Subject: Why did you cancel my binary out of a binary newsgroup?

Probably because it was cross-posted to a non-binary newsgroup.  There is
no way, technically, to cancel a cross-posted article in one group but not
another.

-------------------------
Subject: On-topic binaries should not be cancelled.

The administrators concerned about bandwidth and memory use can't make 
exceptions for topicality: the binaries in question jeopardize other 
newsgroups' on-topic non-binary posts.  Moreover, cancelling only 
'off-topic' binaries would be getting closer to censorship.

-------------------------
Subject: What if there is no appropriate *.binaries.* newsgroup?

There are several choices.  One simple approach is to put a picture in 
alt.binaries.misc and add a brief pointer to it in the non-binary 
newsgroup.  Another is to make the binary available by FTP, and post a 
pointer to it.

-------------------------
Subject: I can't make my binary available by FTP.

If you wish to provide binaries on a regular basis, you should get access
to an ISP that allows FTP.  By posting your binary to a non-binary
newsgroup, you are asking other users to subsidize you.

-------------------------
Subject: Why not cancel spam/money scams/sex ads/smut instead?

All these things are already being cancelled to various extents.
See the cancel FAQ at http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/cancel.html.

-------------------------
Subject: If bincancels are based on size, what about those huge FAQs?

Very large FAQs are rare and (hopefully) save bandwidth in the long run.  
Neither is true for large binaries.

-------------------------
Subject: Aren't the bincancel notices a waste of bandwidth too?

No; the notices are much smaller than the binaries they report cancelled.

-------------------------
Subject: Why not simply allow members of a newsgroup to police themselves?

First, such "policing" is rarely effective: even those who dislike
binaries rarely do anything concrete about them (i.e. cancel them). 
Second, the 'rights' of the readers of the affected newsgroup clash with
the rights of readers of other newsgroups and administrators, which would
be affected by the excess bandwidth used by binaries in the one newsgroup.

[eof]