Frontier Justice. Wonder when they will blacklist people they

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

> 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/