IP: Who owns your mailing list? Topica.com may have bought it.

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date:    Wed, 22 Dec 1999 01:18:21 -0800
> From:    Allyn Weaks <allyn () teleport com>
> Subject: Who owns your mailing list?  Topica.com may have bought it.
>
> Who owns your mailing list?
>
> This may be old hat to some, but it was a shock to me.  I own a non-free
> majordomo mailing list at esosoft.com.  List owners generally pay for lists
> in order to have full control over content and the usual majordomo (or
> other list server) features.  Two weeks ago, we started getting an odd
> message back when we tried to send admin commands to majordomo.  I didn't
> think to save one, but it was to the effect that majordomo commands were
> turned off pending an upgrade.  On Wednesday (15 Dec), just before midnight
> PST, we all received a email proclaiming "Your Esosoft Mailing Lists now
> Free!".  Inside was a hyped up description of how all of our lists were
> going to be moved to topica.com in one week, and that this is such a
> wonderful thing because we can get royalties from the advertising that can
> be added to each message if we request it. (By default, so far, each
> message 'only' advertises topica.)  Meanwhile, during much of this week,
> admin commands to esosoft's majordomo were disabled, making it impossible
> to get our subscriber lists or list settings, or maintain the lists,
> without going through esosoft support (who did a good job--she was as
> shocked as the rest of us and did her best to help us cope).
>
> One of the long time esosoft mailing list owners has estimated that about
> 1600 lists were affected.  If we assume that there are an average of 300
> subscribers per list, that's nearly a half million addresses.  How much is
> that worth to topica?  Well, if there are 1600 lists, esosoft is going to
> have to shell out about $40,000 in refunds to us owners, and they're almost
> certainly getting a hefty profit out of the deal as well as getting rid of
> the lists (they apparently want to use those ten servers for higher
> profit-margin virtual servers.)
>
> Meanwhile, there are at least a hundred of us who are irate that our
> subscriber lists have been sold to the very worst of the 'free' list sites
> without our permission (probably many more than a hundred, but some owners
> probably don't know how to find us, and we don't know how to find them).
> If we had wanted to do business with an Ads-R-Us site, we could have gone
> with onelist or similar in the first place.  But being serious list admins,
> we were willing to pay out real money to have full control over content (no
> ads!) and to protect our subscribers.  All gone for naught.  Worse, even
> though many of us frantically told esosoft and topica to cancel the
> transfer before subscriber lists were moved, and were assured that this was
> done, we found out this afternoon that the 'deleted' lists on topica have
> been recreated and the subscriber lists as of Dec 17th handed over anyway.
> (Note that between the time we received notice and the time the lists were
> copied for transfer, majordomo was disabled and there was nothing we could
> do about protecting our subscriber lists, even assuming that esosoft
> wouldn't just rip them out of a backup set.)  As far as I can tell, esosoft
> is covered legally, because the buyout is called a 'partner arrangement'
> and esosoft can assign who actually handles the lists we've paid for, even
> though the services are not even remotely comparable.
>
> Now that it's happened, we've been trying to find other mailing list
> suppliers, only to find that topica has been approaching and trying to buy
> many of them out.  A few are proud to have refused and are using that as a
> (very good!) selling point.  Some have already sold out just as esosoft
> did.  Some won't say whether they've talked to topica.  We've also found
> lists on topica that have never had any known association with them, or
> with any provider who has had association with them.  Some of the lists
> that show up at topica have been run from their start from private virtual
> servers, but topica lists them in their directory anyway.  We don't know
> yet if they're active in any way but are working on it.
>
> Topica does have a copyright/privacy statement.  But according to an
> ex-esosoft list owner who's stuck with topica until she can make other
> arrangements, a topica account rep said in the topica listowners mailing
> list that the statement published on the web isn't the current policy!  It
> _should_ read:
>
>  "Topica does not claim ownership of the Content you transmit through
>  Topica's Service. By transmitting Content through Topica for
>  distribution to your Topica List, you grant Topica a world-wide,
>  royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and
>  publish the Content solely for the purpose of providing Topica's
>  hosting, archiving, subscription, and promotion services. This license
>  exists only for as long as your List continues to be a archived at
>  Topica and shall be terminated at the time your Topica account is
>  terminated."
>
> Note the bit about 'promotion services'.  So they don't claim 'ownership'
> of everyone's work, just the right to use it however they darned well
> please.  None of us in the former-esosoft-listowners group would ever have
> knowingly agreed to such a thing.
>
> So, if any of you run mailing lists, make sure that your contract says that
> none of the list information will be transferred to any other party under
> any circumstances, _including_ partner arrangements.  Better yet, invest in
> a virtual server and run the list server from scratch, with clear and
> strong warnings to any potential hijackers.
>
> Side note: topica.com is the most annoying site I've ever been forced to
> try to use.  You can't get anywhere to speak of without images .and.
> cookies .and. javascript all turned on.  Ads with associated cookies from a
> wide variety of servers pop up every few seconds.  Horrible bugs, too:
> people who subscribe to one list find themselves subscribed to multiple
> lists, and the same for unsubscribe.  Truly a nightmare.  The most
> disturbing thing of all is that some people don't mind it!
>
> If any readers are ex-esosoft list owners in search of the support group,
> let me know and I'll point you in the right direction.
>
> --
> Allyn Weaks    allyn () tardigrade org
> Seattle, WA  Sunset zone 5
> Pacific NW Native Wildlife Gardening: http://www.tardigrade.org/natives/
>
>                 [ Letting any outside entity have access to one's complete
>                   mailing lists is an extremely risky business.  The safest
>                   route (and the one I've always followed) is to maintain
>                   100% control over the maintenance of my lists and related
>                   distributions.  Unfortunately, this option is not practical
>                   for many persons, resulting in the sorts of surprises
>                   described above.
>
>                         -- PRIVACY Forum Moderator ]


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A Happy Holiday and a safe New Year

from Dave and GG Farber

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