Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <87y7gs4l2s.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>He's doing multiple serial injection, not multiple parallel injection.
>Yeah, we definitely do need to clarify terms here; I can see how it's hard
>to have a conversation about this with the current terms.  I think we
>should probably go back to the terms we were using before and use:

>    multiple injection: sending the same proto-article to multiple
>    injecting agents.

>    reinjection: taking a netnews article, converting it back into a
>    proto-article, and sending it to an injecting agent.

Yes, I think the terminology is really the point at issue. The actual
protocol (who MUST/SHOULD/MAY do what, and when) is described correctly in
what you have already written (apart from small differences between IR and
IC, which are a separate issue).

>By those definitions, he's not doing multiple injection because they're
>mutually exclusive.  (Well, unless his conversion process recovers exactly
>the same proto-article as he had originally, which one can do with care in
>a local news environment that's under one's complete control, but which is
>not horribly interesting in the general case.)

>> But, in fact he was multi-injecting,

>He was injecting once and then reinjecting, thereby leaving himself open
>to all of the possible problems created by running the article through an
>injecting agent more than once.  He SHOULD be doing multiple injection
>instead (as defined above), for precisely that reason.

No, this particular guy could not have done multiple injection, because he
was not the original injector of that article. What he should have done is
refrain from doing anything in this situation. Of course, if the original
genuine injector had managed to put an Injection-Date there, then the
possibility of harm arrising from what we should now call the reinjection
is much reduced.


>> And he would probably argue, also, that his whole setup - newsreader,
>> CNEWS and all - could legitimately be regarded as one large MUA, since
>> he intended it to appear that way to the world outside.

>Posting agent, you mean, I assume.

Posting/reading/followup.

>Sure, if he wants to argue that, he can analyze it on that basis, but that
>means he can't do IHAVE to any other site.

Absolutely, but in this particular scenarion he wasn't (though there are a
bunch of other scenarios where that might have been a problem).

As we have said before, such leaks are bound to arise in the real world
whatever we say, and insisting that an Injection-Date, once added, is
NEVER removed protects against lots of them. But your wording now says
that, which is fine.

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