Fun_People Archive
7 May
Take a Bite out of Spam!

Date: Sun,  7 May 95 20:18:43 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Take a Bite out of Spam!

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: George Neville-Neil <gnn@abekas.com>
Forwarded-by: Richard Golding <golding@cello.hpl.hp.com>
From: zorch@uunet.uu.net (Scott Hazen Mueller)
Subject: take a bite out of spam!

I'm getting tired of the spammers.  I'm snail-mailing the following off
tomorrow.  If it works on telemarketers, it'll work on them.  Yes, I know
about the difficulty of proving who originated an article.  However, the
standards for legal proof differ from those for scientific proof.
Furthermore, if I can drag them into small claims court to defend
themselves, I've won, even if I lose the case.

Besides, if everyone on this list sends their own personalized copy off,
they might at least leave the moderated groups alone.  Who wants to die
the Death of a Thousand Papercuts?

            \scott

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
                                                        4108 Killigrew Drive
                                                        Salida, CA 95368
                                                        23 March 1995



Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel
Cybersell Initiative (CYBERSELL-DOM)
P.O. Box 13836
Scottsdale, AZ 85267-3836


Dear Mr. Canter and Ms. Siegel:

Recently the Usenet groups I moderate have been subjected to postings from
your organization.  These postings are in violation of the stated and
publically-posted charters for those newsgroups.  This violation requires
me to exercise the article-cancellation powers reserved to Usenet
moderators for the maintenance of their group charters.  This cancellation
takes a certain amount of time and effort on my part, as it involves
verifying the presence of the offending articles and then hand-crafting
a cancellation message.  The use of cancel messages by Usenet moderators
is a time-honored tradition on Usenet and is the primary reason why
third-party cancels have not been disabled by the Usenet software authors.
Since most Usenet readers assume that any article in a moderated group
has been approved by the moderator, ignoring your off-topic postings is
not an option, as it undermines my credibility in the moderation role.

In future, each time I must cancel an inappropriate Usenet article posted
by or from your organization to one of the groups I moderate, I will
invoice you the sum of $10 for my time and effort.  The groups I moderate
are, as of this writing:

ba.announce
comp.newprod
comp.sys.sun.announce
news.admin.technical
rec.arts.sf.announce

Any posting to any of these groups from you or your organization will be
deemed as acceptance of this invoicing arrangement.  Failure to pay in
full will result in court action.  You have received full legal
notification.



                 Scott Hazen Mueller

© 1995 Peter Langston