Interesting People mailing list archives
Frontier Justice. Wonder when they will blacklist people they
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 09:52:32 -0500
From: boldt () emile math ucsb edu (Axel Boldt) Newsgroups: alt.internet.services,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,biz.misc,comp.mai l.misc,news.admin.policy Subject: The Internet Advertiser's Blacklist Followup-To: alt.internet.services Date: 13 Dec 1994 19:12:11 GMT Organization: Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, Dept. of Mathematics Lines: 193 Distribution: world Message-ID: <BOLDT.94Dec13111211 () emile math ucsb edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: emile.math.ucsb.edu Xref: transit.nyser.net alt.internet.services:31086 alt.culture.internet:5059 alt.culture.usenet:5473 biz.misc:8923 comp.mail.misc:16176 news.admin.policy:18665 THE INTERNET ADVERTISER'S BLACKLIST * 1. What is this? * 2. Who gets included? * 3. What is the philosophy behind it? * 4. What can I do with it? * 5. What if I wanted to punish YOU? * 6. What other blacklists are out there? * 7. How can I help? * 8. The Blacklist in itself. 1. What is this? This is the Internet Advertiser's Blacklist. It is intended to curb inappropriate advertising on usenet newsgroups and via junk e-mail. It works by describing offenders and their offensive behavior, expecting that people who read it will punish the offenders in one way or another. The list is posted regularly to several newsgroups and the most recent version is always available over the WWW as http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/blacklist.html. 2. Who gets included? Everyone who is pointed out to me for sending out unsolicited commercial e-mail or posting inappropriate commercials to usenet newsgroups. The word "inappropriate" in the last sentence is defined by me on a case by case basis and depends mainly on the number of complaints I receive. 3. What is the philosophy behind it? In a nutshell: the Internet is probably as close to an anarchy as we can get. This is good. Therefore, punishing of unwelcome behavior should be done following the same grass roots philosophy that governs the rest of the net. Read more about it in http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/blacklist_philosophy.html. 4. What can I do with it? If you judge that one of the described behaviors is worthy of punishment, you could for example do one of the following. (Note that some of these might be illegal in some jurisdictions. Check the books first and don't blame me.) * Boycott the advertising business. * Send them or their sysadmins a message informing them that you disapprove of their behavior. * Put them in you kill file. (Read all about rn and trn kill files in http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/killfile-faq/ faq.html.) * Filter them out of your mailbox. (If you read mail on a unix host, you might want to use the program procmail for that, which can be gotten via anonymous ftp from syd.dit.csiro.au as /pub/ken/procmail-3.03.tar.gz. Another possibility is filter, which comes with the mail reader elm.) * Use procmail and an AI engine like emacs doctor to engage them in a fake mail dialog. * If you are a system operator, you could stop forwarding mail or news originating from them. * If you operate a cancelbot, you could automatically cancel all postings originating from them. * Say individuals A and B are on the list. You can send an e-mail message to B with fake From-header A saying "I'm interested in your product/service." In this fashion, the advertisers will start to bug each other, end up on each others mailing lists and waste time and money. 5. What if I wanted to punish YOU? Well, in principle you could use the measures from question 4 (except the first and last one) or you could even start a blacklist of blacklist maintainers. But why would you want to do such an evil thing to me, your humble servant? 6. What other blacklists are out there? I'm aware of one blacklist operated by Pierre Beyssac <pb () fasterix frmug fr net> which tries to keep the french usenet hierarchy fr clean of commercials and is posted regularly to the groups fr.news.reponses, fr.news.divers and fr.biz.d. 7. How can I help? * If you encounter an instance of offensive advertising on the internet, tell me about it. My e-mail address is boldt () math ucsb edu; please use the word "Blacklist" somewhere in the subject line. Make sure to check the last version of the list first so that I won't get multiple complaints about incidents already covered! The newest version is always available over the WWW as http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/blacklist.html. * Feel free to contact me if you find that any information in this document is inaccurate. * Please start your own blacklist and tell me about it. I will include a pointer to it here. * Let me know about any creative suggestions for the answer to question 4. * Don't let anyone know about any creative suggestions for the answer to question 5. * Distribute this list widely. * If you know where to find a copy of the original C&S greencard posting, please tell me. 8. THE BLACKLIST IN ITSELF I have formatted it in such a way to make automatic processing easy. Every entry can contain some or all off the fields ID, Name, Address, Phone, Email, WWW, Entered, Changed, Behavior, Remarks in this order. A line starting with whitespace is a continuation of the preceding line. Several Names, e-mail or WWW addresses etc. are separated by commas and optional whitespace. Blank lines separate the entries. Every entry has a unique ID so that your program can decide if it has processed that entry before when a new list arrives. Furthermore, the original offensive article is accessible as http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/<ID>.txt where the true ID is to be substituted for <ID>. ===Blacklist start=== ID: CS941211 Name: L. Canter, M. Siegel Address: 3333 East Camelback Road, Suite 250, Phoenix, AZ 85260, USA Cybersell, P.O.Box 13510, Scottsdale, AZ 85267, USA Phone: (602) 661-3911 Email: lcanter () cyber sell com, msiegel () cyber sell com, market () cyber sell com WWW: http://cyber.sell.com/ Entered: 1994/12/11 Behavior: The famous greencard lawyers. In 1994, they repeatedly sent out a message offering their services in helping to enter the US greencard lottery to almost all usenet newsgroups. (Note in passing: they charged $100 for their service, while participating in the greencard lottery is free and consists merely of sending a letter with your personal information at the right time to the right place.) When the incoming mail bombs forced their access provider to terminate their account, they threatened to sue him until he finally agreed to forward all responses to them. They have signed an agreement with their current access provider, PSI, to refrain from sending out junk e-mail or spamming usenet. The text is available over the net as http://www.psi.com/press/Canter-Siegal-6-23.html. They have since written a book, "How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" and founded an internet advertising company, Cybersell. The book promotes several advertising strategies on the internet including gathering addresses from usenet and sending out junk e-mail, posting commercials to inappropriate newsgroups like they did, advertising on irc and even via talk. They basically contend that all these behaviors are legal and therfore ok. They ridicule the terms "internet culture" and "netiquette" and claim that the internet, once all real-world laws are applied to it, will make a great source of income for attorneys. This book has inspired cancelbots and this list and has earned them a permanent first place on it. Remarks: Don't bug the poor guys at cybersell.com, they were the access providers for C&S during their first spam...:-) ID: PG941211 Name: Peter Gordon, OneWorld OnLine NOOK Address: 794 Fort Street, Box 38026, Victoria, BC, V8W 1H0, CANADA 1275 Pembroke Street, Unit 1, Victoria, B.C. V8T 1J7, CANADA Phone: (604) 592-7953, (604) 385-3694 Email: peter () nook com, peter () carver DataFlux BC CA, offer () nook com, info () nook com Entered: 1994/12/11 Behavior: Sent out junk e-mail on 1994/12/11 posing as Santa Claus and offering forged e-mail as a X-mas gift for $5 apiece. Remarks: nook.com is connected via uucp to the internet host carver.DataFlux.BC.CA [134.87.177.20]. ID: NM941211 Name: Netmart Inc. Email: gls () netmart com, nminfo () netmart com WWW: http://netmart.com/ Entered: 1994/12/11 Behavior: Spammed several unrelated newsgroups on 1994/12/10 with a truly sad announcement of their WWW Mall. ===Blacklist end=== _________________________________________________________________ Date: 1994/12/12 22:27:51 PST (C) 1994 by Axel Boldt <boldt () math ucsb edu>. Do with it what you want. -- Axel Boldt * boldt () math ucsb edu * http://plato.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/
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