Re: Distributed Data

Roundeye (roundeye nospam at bellsouth.net)
Tue, 9 Mar 1999 13:49:34 -0600 (EST)

I.Clarke nospam at ed.ac.uk wrote:
> I would be somewhat concerned about people abusing this system. Say
> someone registers a popular new CD as soon as it comes out, and then
> instead of filling the database entry in correctly, uses it to advertise
> a product or website?
>
> In the initial discussions I suggested that the first person to submit a
> CD entry has their email address stored. If someone else attempts to
> change this entry then the first person gets sent an email and is
> invited to reject the new entry if it is not serious. A person can also
> elect to resign as the "guardian" of particular database entries.

Before I say this I'll say up front that we should be careful that we
don't get too paranoid about people sabotaging the system. We need to
be sure that we can clean our db up if it gets mangled, and having it
distributed freely is again a good way to ensure it.

Now the paranoia scenario: an evil person/company(/competitor...) goes
out and grabs a stack of really popular CDs, submits them and puts a
bunch of slander/ads/hrefs/whatever in and is listed as the "owner" of
those submissions so they keep refusing any changes.

We just need to be sure that it's easy to fix screwed up entries.

roundeye

--
 "If man pages were written by the Bible's authors they would tell you
 about everything.  If the Bible had been written by the man page authors 
 you'd spend four days trying to figure out who Jesus is." (Howard Merry) 
       Rick Bradley -- http://personal.bellsouth.net/~roundeye