Subject: _New Scientist_ (UK) on spamming, C&S book review
From: [email-masked] (Ron Newman)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 17:44:49 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.net-abuse,alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.flame.canter-and-siegel,news.admin.misc

I received the following from Charles Arthur, a writer for _New Scientist_
magazine in the United Kingdom.  He told me to "Repost freely in cyberspace".

He wrote two articles on these subjects.  The more recent, published
this month, is a review of Canter & Siegel's book.  The earlier one,
from November 19, 1994, is a general survey of the spamming issue.
Both follow.

His e-mail address is: [email-masked]

-------------
from _New Scientist_, January 7, 1995:

Spam, spam, spam, spam

How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway
by Laurence A. Canter and Martha S. Siegel, HarperCollins, pp
234, $20;

Cyberspace and the Law
by Edward A. Cavazos and Gavino Morin, MIT Press, pp 205,
$19.95

review by Charles Arthur

LET'S begin with what's good about Laurence Canter and Martha
Siegel's book. The title is a publisher's dream: that hot
topic, the Internet, mixed with the promise of riches. A
surefire hit, though they could probably have pressed a few
more buttons: "How to Lose Weight, Increase Your Sex Appeal
and Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" would
outsell the Bible, at least briefly.

     Well, that's it for the good things. After this, you have
to open the covers, and everything goes rapidly downhill. I
don't think that I've ever come across a more badly-argued set
of prejudices in my life.

     Canter and Siegel gained astonishing notoriety on the
Internet in April by advertising their services as immigration
lawyers on every one of thousands of "newsgroups", the
electronic noticeboards on the Internet--a technique known as
"spamming" (see "A spammer in the networks," 19 November
1994). This went against the ethos of the newsgroups, not only
because it was advertising, but most of all because it was
irrelevant. It meant users had to make more effort sorting the
worthwhile messages from the rubbish. Only a tiny bit, in this
case, but big oaks that obscure the view grow from little
acorns planted by immigration lawyers. If every company, from
tiny to huge, decides to post "For sale" and "Your chance to
get rich!!" notices to every newsgroup, I for one will quickly
seek out other, advertising-free sources, on or off the Net.
The advertisers will have defeated themselves.

     As an example of Canter and Siegel's flawed reasoning,
they argue first that there are no rules on the Internet, so
you can do what you want. But when the systems administrators
who run the networks connected to the Internet acted together
to wipe out the lawyers' "spam", they then complained that
this violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of
speech.

     There's also the assumption, which runs through the book,
that everyone on the Internet is, or wants to be, American,
and subject to American laws. Perhaps we should expect this
attitude from lawyers who earn their living dealing with
people who want to immigrate to the US. But it is not true.

     All right, what does the book provide? It splits into two
chunks, personal and technical. The personal bits, written in
a chatty style, laced with bile for anyone who has ever
disagreed with their point of view, form the start and
tailpiece, and describe how Canter and Siegel got onto the Net
and how they feel at ease annoying everyone who thought that
they had found somewhere free of advertising. These sections
are full of factual errors. For example, they claim that the
term "spam" was invented for their posting tactic (it predated
it by years); they confuse private bulletin boards with the
wider Internet; and "libel" is spelt "liable", a wonderful
mistake for a pair of lawyers. And then there are the
opinions: "By the time you read this, some of the [electronic]
protesters we encountered may have been gathered up and locked
away where vandals and the like belong."

     The quieter, middle section of the book is more
technical, with stuff about SLIP, PPP and other Internet
protocols. This is so sensibly written that I'm tempted to
think that Canter and Siegel did what they recommend later in
the book--"hire a geek". A geek is someone who knows much more
than you about technical things. Canter and Siegel seem to
regard "geeks" in the way that some people view Filipino
maids: plentiful, cheap, easily fired once they've done what
you want--and not to be socialised with. But rather than
cleaning the kitchen, geeks set up computer programs that let
you spam the newsgroups. 

     The book is blighted by the lack of an index, though a
small plus is that it gives some brief explanations of
Internet terms such as e-mail, ftp, gopher and World Wide Web.

     Does the book offer a good way to make that fortune?
Well, yes and no. Certainly the techniques described--
spamming, junk e-mailing, using the World Wide Web home pages-
-would work if you were the only one doing them. But the
systems administrators are sharp: software called Cancelmoose
rapidy deals with spamming; junk e-mailing earns endless
dislike, as well as retaliatory e-mail. Generally, once
capable computer people begin to dislike you, anything can
happen. And, if everyone starts advertising on the Net, then
you can bet that it will be charged for. Life will then turn
in to a war where advertisers like Canter and Siegel try to
avoid paying, and offspring of the Cancelmoose hunt them down.
It'll be entertaining to watch.

     Turn thankfully, then, to Cyberspace and the Law, which
is a well-argued excursion around "Your Rights and Duties in
the On-Line World". It has an index. I learned a lot from it:
about copyright of e-mail (who really owns it?), how obscenity
is defined in the US, where "freedom of speech" laws do apply
(only on US government-funded systems), when online contracts
become binding, how interstate laws apply to the Internet, and
what wiretapping means for Americans. Though short, it's far
more useful than Canter and Siegel's effort; certainly worth
buying if you're thinking of marketing through the Internet.
This is where I would spend my $20.

------------------------------------------------------------
from _New Scientist_, 19 Nov 94:

 A spammer in the networks: Millions of people
who chat to each other on the Internet fear they are about to
be deluged by spam - the electronic version of junk mail.
Charles Arthur investigates (1813)

By CHARLES ARTHUR

In the early hours of 12 April, Laurence Canter set a program
running on the computer at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. By
morning, this simple action had brought the culture of the
American entrepreneur into irrevocable conflict with the
global anarchy of the Internet.

     The program started by Canter, who with his wife Martha
Siegel runs the law firm Canter & Siegel, sent a message over
the Internet offering the firm's services to anyone who wanted
to take part in a US government lottery of 'green card' work
permits. He posted the message to around six thousand of the
electronic forums known as 'Usenet newsgroups', on which
people round the world exchange information and opinions with
others who have similar interests. By doing so, he breached
the unwritten rules of the Usenet and provoked an almighty
row.

     When cultures clash, the result is rarely a draw. Canter
and Siegel believe they have discovered an untrodden road to
riches. Advocates of the Usenet claim that if others copy the
couple's actions, the Usenet will be swamped and rendered
useless.

     After Canter sent his message, anyone who logged onto a
Usenet newsgroup hoping to find the latest gossip about their
chosen topic - which range from Amazon women to the Vietnam
war - would have been greeted by a message headed: 'Green Card
Lottery 1994 May be the Last One!! Sign up now!!' Most of the
estimated six million readers probably just deleted it. But
many were infuriated. Blanket posting to all newsgroups
breaches the informal 'netiquette' that has evolved to govern
behaviour on the Usenet, which says that postings should be
relevant to the topic of the newsgroup, and that you should
give back as much to the Usenet as you take out. This does not
preclude advertising. There are occasional 'for sale' notices
in relevant newsgroups, and many business-oriented forums
offer items for sale or carry advertisements for jobs. At
least one newsgroup, which discusses US visas, would have been
a perfect site for the message. Others may also have fitted
the bill. But to many people the message was just an
annoyance, the electronic equivalent of junk mail.

     In Net parlance, Canter & Siegel's posting was 'spam' - a
term that stems from the Monty Python sketch in which spam,
repeated again and again, is the main ingredient of every meal
on a cafe's menu. Spamming has been used to describe
widespread, unwanted postings since about 1990. Last year an
evangelist spammed the Usenet with a long message proclaiming
that 'Jesus is coming'. Minor incidents happen almost daily,
usually from pyramid marketing schemes or chain letters.
Spamming is unpopular because it clogs the Usenet, obscuring
its purpose, which is to let individuals communicate with each
other about subjects that interest them.

     The typical response of disgruntled readers is to e-mail
an insulting message or 'flame' to the writer, or send a
'mail-bomb' - a huge, useless program that takes up large
amounts of the receiver's disc space. Such actions usually
prompt an apology, if only because it becomes hugely time-
consuming to sort out a few positive replies from the hundreds
of angry ones.

     Two things set Canter & Siegel's April posting apart.
First, it was legal, unlike pyramid marketing schemes or chain
letters, which are illegal in many countries. Second - and
more important to those who want the Usenet to stay as it is -
was the two partners' reaction when their breach of netiquette
was forcefully pointed out. They did not, and do not,
apologise. The response to their posting was unprecedented.
They received 20 000 flames and reams of junk faxes. Mailbombs
sent to them clogged the computer system of their 'service
provider', Internet Direct Computer Services, which linked
their PC to the Internet. After that system crashed more than
15 times, the company terminated Canter & Siegel's account on
the grounds that its actions were interfering with the service
to its other clients. The couple promptly switched to another
service provider, called Netcom. But on 20 May, Netcom also
cut them off after Canter boasted on a TV show that he would
spam again. John Whalen, Netcom's president, likens his
decision to turning away a would-be customer at a restaurant
for not wearing shoes. 'Being a responsible provider entails
refusing service to customers who would endanger the health of
the community,' he says.

     Canter and Siegel are unrepentant. In their book, How to
make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway, to be
published in January, the couple pour scorn on the concept of
a 'community' on the Internet. 'Someone may tell you that in
order to be a good Net 'citizen', you must follow the rules of
the Cyberspace community. Don't listen,' they advise. 'The
only laws and rules with which you should concern yourself are
those passed by the country, state and city in which you truly
live. The only ethics you should adopt as you pursue wealth on
the (information superhighway) are those dictated by the
religious faith you have chosen to follow and your own good
conscience.' The couple say that amid all the flames and
bombs, they also received 20 000 requests for information.
They claim to have taken on 1004 clients, who were charged
between Dollars 95 and Dollars 145 each. In their eyes, the
revenue - more than Dollars 100 000 - generated by their
message more than compensates for the inconvenience and
notoriety suffered in acquiring it. Their book outlines an
overwhelming commercial case for spamming by comparing the
cost of reaching an individual through TV, radio and the
Internet. A 30-second advertising spot during a top daytime
soap would cost     Dollars 45 000, equivalent to just over
Dollars 20 per thousand people per minute. A 60-second local
radio slot costs Dollars 285, or Dollars 14 per thousand
people per minute. On the Internet, Dollars 1000 buys a
connection to around 30 million computer users, or 3.3 cents
per thousand people - and for a whole month.

     People who regularly participate in the newsgroups worry
that if enough companies begin spamming, the Usenet's
essential quality as an unregulated source of ideas and
opinions will be destroyed. Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist
with the research organisation RAND in Santa Monica,
California, says that if lots of people follow Canter and
Siegel's example, the proportion of meaningful messages to
irrelevant ones 'will drop even further than it already has,
and the Net will become unusable'. If vast numbers of
advertisements are sent to newsgroups, people will no longer
be able to filter out what they want to read, says Howard
Rheingold, a journalist based in San Francisco who has written
extensively about electronic communities. 'What if you went to
your traditional mailbox every day and got a letter, two bills
and 60 000 pieces of junk mail?' he asks. The few people who
defend the lawyers in messages to newsgroups tend, like Canter
and Siegel themselves, towards impatience with what they see
as a reactionary response to the wave of commerce now sweeping
the Internet. 'This so-called spam is from people who are
trying to be entrepreneurs, which is what made America
strong,' wrote one supporter. This posting prompted a swift
reply from Jon Noring of the publisher OmniMedia, based in
Livermore, California. 'So you'd have no problem with people
putting up billboards in Yosemite National Park? How about
billboards at the top of every mountain and along all the
ocean beaches?' he wrote. 'There's room in Usenet to do
business and commerce, and to also provide the 'parks' and
freedom from advertising that we all like sometime. It's a
balancing act, and what you propose is not a balancing act.
It's a bulldozer, and will work against the business that you
so cherish.' Canter and Siegel say that staying out of those
'parks' would restrict them too much. 'The responses we got
indicate that the broad posting was right,' insists Canter.

     Others on the Usenet argue that if only a few people
respond to a message that is accurately targeted, that's just
too bad. Making a fortune has never been easy, and doing it by
trampling on other people's sensibilities is sure to arouse
resentment. Canter and Siegel counter that the violent
reaction to their message comes from a small elite that has
had the Usenet to itself for years, and resents other people
using it to make money. Siegel goes further by suggesting that
people who discourage spamming are opposing the right to
freedom of speech. Vocal Usenet users dismiss this as a red
herring. Their protest is not against the content of the
posting, but where it is placed. 'It's rather like they stood
up in the middle of a movie and yelled about their next
product, then went to the next theatre and yelled about it
there; and in fact did it in theatres all around the world
simultaneously,' says Gillogly.

     One of the hottest debates in newsgroups that discuss the
administration of the Internet is the best way to stop
spamming. In April a Norwegian programmer devised a
'cancelbot' - a program that automatically detects postings
from Canter and Siegel and deletes them. But some people,
though implacable opponents of Canter and Siegel's methods,
say this would be contrary to netiquette because it amounts to
censorship on the basis of name.

     Others suggest that service providers should impose some
sort of restriction on anyone who joins the Internet and posts
more than, say, 30 messages in a day or sends the same message
to more than 50 newsgroups. Alternatively, such articles could
simply attract a general cancelbot. Another group of people
have set themselves up as 'Net judges', to whom copies of
widely posted messages are sent urgently (This Week, 1
October). If they agree that a message has been spammed, they
may issue a cancelbot. This has, however, led to accusations
that the court is behaving dictatorially. The argument
continues on the Usenet around the clock.

     Ultimately, Canter and Siegel expect their viewpoint to
prevail. 'Every time something new happens on the Usenet,
somebody there predicts it's going to destroy it,' says
Canter. 'But it doesn't.'

     Ron Newman, a programmer at the Media Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that many
companies will think twice before spamming, though not
everyone will stop. 'People with no reputation to think
about - ambulance-chasing lawyers, get-rich-quick scam
artists, sellers of worthless products - will continue to
infest the Net unless some concerted effort is made to keep
them off.' The stage is set for a fight, possibly to the
electronic death.

     New Scientist
     Volume 144.    Issue     1952.

COPYRIGHT (C) IPC MAGAZINES LTD. 1985 - 1995

-- 
Ron Newman		 		MIT Media Laboratory
[email-masked]