On Sun, 26 Jun 1994, John Buckman wrote:
> A great number of list owners have set their list up so that only
> subscribers can perform database jobs, ths forcing people to join
> the list before doing the search.  The majority are public lists
> who allow for automatic subscription.
 
It is doubtful that all or even most owners of "public subscription"
lists will update their list headers to say "public search".  Since, as
you've described, it is so easy to circumvent this pseudo-restriction
(subscribe/search/unsub), I propose a change in the interpretation of the
rules: if a list is "public subscription", the list is therefore
implicitly becomes "public search", no matter what the setting in the list
header says.  Security by obscurity is false security.
 
-david