Antispammers are mad as hell, and they're going on strike.
A cadre of people who spend hours of their own time every day ridding the
Internet's bulletin boards of thousands of commercial advertisements are
tired of cleaning up after the Net's growing mess. And starting today,
they say they are not going to do it anymore.
If the strike--expected to last a few weeks--works as planned, Usenet
newsgroups could be so flooded with spam
that they will be virtually unusable.
The antispammers are hoping that problem will spur Internet service providers
and others who control the floodgates for newsgroups to take some
action against the steadily increasing tide of newsgroup spam.
The people calling for the "moratorium" make up the same
group of just under a dozen antispammers who have used so-called
Usenet Death Penalties to force several ISPs to stop allowing their
customers to flood Usenet with spam.
But the problem is a lot bigger than one or two ISPs, according to the group.
Antispammer Chris Lewis cited statistics showing just how clogged Usenet
has become with spam in a posting to "news.admin.net-abuse.usenet"
calling for the moratorium.
Forty percent of all Usenet traffic is spam, he said. Another 40 percent of
the traffic is composed of messages issued by the antispammers to cancel the spam. That leaves only 20 percent of traffic as non-spam-related.
"The house is on fire," said Rick Buchanan, who spends anywhere from one to
four hours per day canceling the messages. "Spammers are trying to
burn Usenet."
But, he added, "We're doing as much water damage putting out the fire as
the spammers. The cure is starting to become a problem in itself. It's an
arms race that's gotten out of hand and other solutions are needed."
Buchanan and others participating in the moratorium want ISPs to take a
more active role in stopping spam before it hits the newsgroups, by using
such methods as antispam filters.
With so many people taking care of the problem for them, the ISPs have had
no incentive to do more to stop spam, Buchanan said.
"We're hiding the problem," he said. "We're sweeping up their garbage. We
think they should see the heat. They should get the complaints. They should
do something about it."
Buchanan added that with the exception of a few, the moratorium is being
backed by most of the major antispammers, who communicate largely though
newsgroups and email lists.
"It's time to demonstrate in inarguable terms what Usenet is facing, and
force the hands of ISPs," Lewis wrote. "It's like trench warfare: Years of
moving the line back and forth a few yards, and what do we have to show for
it? A tremendous waste of resources and no significant progress towards
ending the war."
Starting today, however, the war will escalate to a new level and
perhaps lead to results. "For an indefinite period after this date, no spam
cancels should be issued. You'll notice that we said 'indefinite period.'
This is because we don't want ISPs to implement short-term solutions," he
added.
IF nothing else, the moratorium, "is certainly going to be interesting,"
Buchanan said. But, he added, "if
nothing happens, if the system breaks down, we may just have to give up on
it."