for those in the chicago area, ripco communications is the only local
internet provider that offers a spam filter to its subscribers.
kelly
November 21, 1997
Spam Dispute Brings Usenet and CompuServe to Brink
By MATT RICHTEL
A self-appointed jury of spam foes had condemned CompuServe to the
ultimate penalty: death. The crime: harboring hawkers of
get-rich-quick schemes and pornography who were inundating Usenet,
the unregulated network of thousands of discussion groups.
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Related Article
CompuServe Reports Smaller Loss
______________________________________________________________
But before the spam foes prevented all CompuServe users from
posting to Usenet, the giant online provider abruptly changed its
ways. On Wednesday, it announced it would no longer tolerate
spammers, and the plan was revoked.
"I predict that CompuServe will soon be a definite 'white hat' in
the ongoing battle against spam," said Rick Buchanan, one of the
volunteer de-spammers for Usenet, who initially announced their
"Usenet Death Penalty" against CompuServe on Monday. "Of course,
we'll be monitoring things just in case."
The tension between Usenet, one of the Internet's oldest forums,
and CompuServe, one of the oldest commercial online services, seems
resolved. Yet it underscores ongoing and pressing struggles for
Usenet, which once was the heart and soul of the Internet.
The plain fact is that Usenet is in a fight for its own life.
Increasingly, it has become a dumping ground for spam and is the
single-most heavily spammed forum on the Net. Today, 33 percent of
all postings to Usenet are considered spam, and fully 33 percent
more are commands sent to delete the spam, according to independent
sources.
The troubles stem from the very characteristics of Usenet that made
it so popular in the first place. A global network of 40,000 news
and discussion groups, Usenet is owned by no one, easily and freely
accessible, and, virtually ungoverned, except for the few anti-spam
vigilantes. It is a river of news groups, that, like the Internet
itself, flows from server to server.
So it also has become a central venue for advertisers, particularly
adult Web sites, to easily reach the millions of Usenet
participants. With a few simple commands, advertisers can send the
same message to thousands of discussion groups, regardless of
whether the posts are relevant or offensive to participants.
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This has been my home since 1983, but it's been invaded.
Rick Buchanan,
Usenet member
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In a recent discussion on basketball, for example, 3 of the top 10
posts were for a get-rich-quick scheme (offering $500 a week to
anyone who sends $2 to a particular address), a "Christian Business
Opportunity," and an ad for the "Puerto Rico Business Magazine." In
short, according to Usenet aficionados, the forum is suffering the
Death of the Commons.
"Nobody owns the cow, so everybody is milking it to death,"
Buchanan said.
"This has been my home since 1983, but it's been invaded," he
added. "They're trying to burn it down."
It's a far cry from the Usenet of old. The forum, which sprung up
in the early 1980s, was long fiercely anti-spam. Even as recently
as three years ago, advertisers who interrupted discussions with
irrelevant fodder were met with hate-mail, flame mail and often
were spammed themselves.
The turning point came in 1994. In an issue that gained wide
attention, two Arizona lawyers spammed more than 13,000 news groups
with an ad offering to help people obtain green cards. The lawyers
were widely criticized, but the floodgates had opened. Spammers are
still attacked on Usenet, but their practice faces far less mass
rejection.
At the same time, some observers believe that the evolution (or
de-evolution) of Usenet is not all bad. Shabbir Safdar, founder of
the Voters Telecommunications Watch at the Center for Democracy and
Technology, said that as Usenet has gotten less attractive, it has
been replaced by individual Web-based discussion groups that are
more clearly governed by a discussion host.
"We're seeing the death of the unmoderated Usenet," Safdar said.
"We're going to evolve better systems."
Greg Ryan, president of Exec-PC in Milwaukee, thinks any
pronouncement of Usenet's demise is far too premature. However,
Ryan said the problems confronting Usenet, and the Internet
companies that help to carry the traffic, should not be
exaggerated.
Exec-PC, a regional Internet service provider in Wisconsin, is the
ninth-largest carrier of Usenet traffic in the world. That means
that millions of Usenet posts travel through Exec-PC's five news
servers the computers that store and process news postings each
day. The spam on Exec-PC's servers has increased 500 percent in the
last 6 to 12 months, Ryan said.
"It's amazing. It's a nightmare," he said. "It's money because we
have to pay for the bandwidth and we need more hard disk space."
The trouble is, it's not so simple to stop the spam since it
emanates from thousands of different sources. A handful of
self-proclaimed anti-spammers are trying, though.
Appointed by no one (since Usenet is ungoverned), they have taken
it upon themselves to search out the most egregious spammers. The
anti-spammers then send out cancel messages, which go into news
servers, like the one at Exec-PC, and delete the offensive content.
"Some people don't like what we're doing. They call us a cabal,"
Buchanan said. "I think we're a citizen's militia. We've taken up
arms to save" Usenet.
In the case of CompuServe, the anti-spammers said the Columbus
Ohio-based online service was a consistent source of massive
amounts of spam. Over recent weeks, the cadre of anti-spammers said
they approached CompuServe with their concerns, but got no
response. "Spammers were going there as a safe haven," Buchanan
said.
The use of the "death penalty" is particularly harsh because it
would not only cancel spam coming from CompuServe, but also
legitimate messages. The anti-spammers have only once before issued
a "death penalty," to UUNet in August of this year, but it also was
lifted within days.
______________________________________________________________
Related Article
Usenet Servers Under Hacker Attack
(March 18, 1997)
______________________________________________________________
Almost immediately after CompuServe got news of the anti-spammers
move, it acted. On Wednesday, it posted an "acceptable use policy,"
which dictates rules for using CompuServe to post news messages and
send e-mail. The policy precludes sending spam, chain letters or
other inappropriate posts.
Gail Whitcomb, CompuServe spokeswoman, said the company had not
been ignoring calls from anti-spammers, but said they "had not
contacted the right people." Further, she said the change in policy
at CompuServe was not prompted by the "death penalty," but by the
company's own two-month long investigation in to the problems
"We are very aware of the problem and have been looking at
solutions," Whitcomb said. "We're starting to look at CompuServe
members that are offenders."
Whitcomb said CompuServe joins a small group of Internet companies
that have posted acceptable use policies. In fact, CompuServe is
only one of a growing number of hundreds, possibly thousands, of
Internet companies that are seeking to preclude users from sending
spam, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Jonah Seiger, the group's communication director, said ISPs should
not be responsible for the content of member messages, but they
should try to stop spamming conduct. "It's not a question of
content," he said. "It's a question of conduct."
______________________________________________________________
Matt Richtel at [log in to unmask] welcomes your comments and
suggestions.
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Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
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