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art101 says goodbye to the net


Guest art101

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Guest art101

Thanks to all who replied to my query.

I think I'm about to give up on SpamCop. Spammers won the time and bandwidth wars. China and Comcast are partners in spam.

Spammers now routinely spam my SpamCop address. My SpamCop address is now worse than useless. I still spend time and bandwidth reporting spam, but why bother? Nobody cares and nobody listens.

The Internet was the most important advance in human communication since the invention of the printing press. It's been highjacked by thugs and racketeers. Every day, I get closer and closer to throwing this damn box through my back door. Next time I wanna make art, I'll go down to the creek and draw pictures in the mud with a stick.

http://www.art101.com

http://www.art101.com/video/nospam.html

http://www.art101.com/tourdecure

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I still spend time and bandwidth reporting spam, but why bother? Nobody cares and nobody listens.

Those of us who use the Spamcop blocklist are always grateful (although we may not say so) to everyone who valiantly reports spam. Those reports are what make the blocklist effective.

That's why I still plough through my held mail regularly and submit my own received spam.

But if it is too great a burden and you have better things to do then nobody will criticise you for just leaving held mail to gather dust. You can just delete it all without reporting once in awhile.

But your reports are welcome AND they make a difference to the task of blocking spam.

Thanks.

Andrew

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The Internet was the most important advance in human communication since the invention of the printing press. It's been highjacked by thugs and racketeers.

Quite a bit of printed material could be said to have been "highjacked by thugs and racketeers" as well.

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Guest art101

All incoming email to art101 addresses will soon bounce back with the following auto-reply.

-----

Due to the ongoing spam avalanche, I no longer accept incoming email from most Internet Service Providers. A short list of blacklisted ISPs and domains includes Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, Charter, Earthlink, RR, Rogers, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, SBC, Hotmail, and ATT. That's the short list.

If your ISP is on this list, call them and ask why they still sanction spam. You'll be on hold forever. When an underpaid overworked underling hands you lame excuses, politely cancel your account.

All domains in China (.cn is the new spam capitol of the world) are now blacklisted at art101. Ditto for all incoming email from all domains in India, Pakistan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Brazil, Russia, Argentina, and dozens of other major spam conduits all over this beat-up dirtball we call planet earth.

I'm sure there are lots of very nice people in the countries listed above, but I don't happen to personally know anybody there. The only email I've ever received from anybody there is just more greedy, greedy, money-grubbing spam.

A little online detective work ultimately traces most spam to jerks right here in the good old USA. Online drugs, software piracy, a bigger dick, mortgage refinancing scams, you name it... American spammers splatter it all over the world. They've learned how to partner and hide behind hungry overseas ISPs. We're all assaulted by digital home invasion gangs.

The Internet was the most important advance in human communication since the invention of the printing press. It's now utterly highjacked and polluted by scammers, spammers, pornographers, and racketeers.

Within the next few weeks, all art101 email and webhosting accounts will close. The spammers won. One art101 webhosting account will remain online for a little while longer:

http://www.art101.com

The umbilical chord to this ongoing online nightmare will soon be cut. I'm nearly free. The Internet is a monstrous tower of babel... a stunning failure. Historians will marvel at the mess we made of a wonderful opportunity.

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Guest art101

It's OK, Zachariah. Thanks for your reply. I feel much better, now that I know the nightmare is almost over.

Feel free to copy my auto-reply to your family and friends. And your elected officials. And that jerk from Montana (Google "Conrad Burns," co-author of the utterly lame "Can-spam" act, which pretty much legalizes spam in the USA). And the Direct Marketing Association, which spent an utterly stupid amount of lobbying money to shove their thievery through Congress. And that jerk who runs the FCC for a jerkoff President who lost the popular vote and only lives in the White House because a corrupt Supreme Court put him there. Anybody who still thinks we live in a free and open democracy isn't paying attention. Anybody who still thinks we live in a free and open democracy probably watches Fox News.

But I digress. I'm just about outa here. Can't wait to go somewhere clean and quiet and truly free. Peace to you and yours.

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Hi Art --

I just wanted to commisserate a bit with you. I watched the video at your site. My domain was joe-jobbed by the very same spammer you got hit by, I think. I tracked the pharmaceutical company in the ad down to ISPs in Florida and "ad agencies" in Florida. Several emails mentioning legal action and fraudulent use of my corporate identity later, and the pharmaceutical company website dropped off the DNS map. We may have even been working at the same time, maybe even with several others, and not known it!

I noticed in the news video that you use a Mac. Well, at least you have a bit of a silver lining there. while your email may be totally futzed, imagine having to deal with the spyware, adware, and other hijackers Windows users constantly deal with! I spent the past two weeks removing adware from systems, and it isn't an easy thing to do. Even the helpful software doesn't do it all, and you have to make several trips into registry editing and more. The accountant at one of the places couldn't get into his system because it kept being totally taken over by one of these things, blanking out the entire screen except for the adware's button to click to get more adware. He was totally lost as to how to get control of his system back, and I nearly gave up and just formatted and reinstalled everything. :) Not that Macs will never or can't ever get hit by these things, but, so far, we've been passed over, and I hope it stays that way for a long while.

Between the spam wars and the spyware wars, I'm nearly ready to turn Luddite myself.

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Guest art101

Hi offbalance. I don't think you're off balance at all. You seem fairly balanced to me. Sorry to hear that Eddy and his pals ripped off your time, domain, good name, and bandwidth. It's a small world after all, huh?

Florida used to be the spam capitol of planet earth. China now clearly owns that title. People's Republic my ass. These jerks murdered their citizens at Tiananmen Square. They now sell crap at your local shopping mall. No surprise that greedy greedy spammers moved their thievery to greedy greedy ISPs in China. Welcome to the future... an online shopping mall from hell.

Yeah, I use a Mac. I bought my first Mac in 1986. Bill Gates is probably the Antichrist. Steve Jobs could have changed the world, but he opted for iTunes, iPod, and OSX. Macs are now almost as stupid and pointless as PCs. Welcome to the future... an online shopping mall from hell.

"Between the spam wars and the spyware wars, I'm nearly ready to turn Luddite myself."

Amen, dude. All my email accounts will be canceled on 30 June 2004. I'm nearly free. It's a whole new world, full of hope and promise.

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Let me just add one word of caution. If you're truly talking about an auto-reply all you are going to do is hurt innocent internet users. Not a single spammer I know of uses a legitimate from address. What will end up happening is some poor guy whose address was hijacked as the from will end up with an avalanche of your auto-reply!

--Louis

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Guest art101
What will end up happening is some poor guy whose address was hijacked as the from will end up with an avalanche of your auto-reply!

Argh.

How can I make myself more clear, Louis? The spammer mindset won this race. As a free and open conduit for human communication, the Internet is dead... utterly highjacked by spammers, scammers, corporations, bureaucrats, politicians and racketeers.

I'm gonna kill most of my online accounts soon. It's an exercise in free will. My apologies in advance to anybody who has a problem with my upcoming email auto-reply. Collateral damage; friendly fire.

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I don't have a website nor a website server so, perhaps, the Internet is a different experience for those who do.

However, there are ways to prevent spammers from getting your email address if you are an ordinary user. There are ways to put email addresses on web sites so the spammers can't get them.

In the beginning, no one had to use these measures so there are many who are determined to keep using an email address and defeat the spammers by not giving it up. Others have simply changed email addresses - even businesses. Others use filters (which if you are willing to give up the internet altogether, you would not even have to scan in case there was an error).

If you are referring to the commercial aspect of the interent (online shopping mall), I expect the serious users of the internet are still quietly ignoring the hoopla and using it the way it began.

OTOH, I don't know if we wouldn't be better off with less communication including radio and TV. It may take longer to get in touch and to know what is happening, but since there is little I can do about earthquakes and abuses even in the next town, much less across the world, why do I need to know about them immediately?

Did science progress more slowly because scientists were isolated by distance?

And it would be better for everyone, maybe, if I never read your rant, but paid more attention to those in my house and my neighborhood.

Miss Betsy

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My apologies in advance to anybody who has a problem with my upcoming email auto-reply. Collateral damage; friendly fire.

Auto-replying to spam or viruses is abuse, and you will find that it is a violation of the terms of service of every internet provider out there.

It has the same problem as the "bogus" bounce spam feature.

It is likely to get your ISP's mail server on any blocklist that uses spam-traps, and spamcop.net is not the only one. If one of your auto-replies goes to a SORBS spam trap, it will cost your ISP a donation to charity to get that I.P. address released.

If your auto-reply actually goes to a spammer, all they seem to do is respond with more spam to it.

If you are getting a lot of spam, it means that your ISP is wasting money accepting spam from known spam sources.

The spamcop.net blocking lists are good for finding new sources of spam, but for many of us, once the spam source gets listed by spamhaus.org and other open-relay / open proxy databases, we (tinw) never see the spam from those sources to report it.

-John

Personal Opinion Only

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I certainly appreciate frustration due to illegal and unethical harassment with seemingly no recourse, but there are millions of people who operate and benefit from their own web sites and who don't find it necessary to repudiate the internet. That combined with the extremist partisan political ranting raises questions about this person's objectivity. (The Can spam Act regulating how spammers "can spam" instead of protecting our right not to be spammed was bipartisan, and it had nothing to do with "Fox News".)

But there is a tremendous battle ahead to save the potential of the internet from both political and ordinary "racketeering" abuse. Much of the battle is over the concept of ownership, and it is just starting. The root of the spam problem is that there is no recognition or protection of property rights -- from the rights of companies who bear the burden of unwanted network traffic trespass to the rights of the individual who finds his own PC taken over by those who have no regard for his privacy or private property. That disregard extends all the way to Washington and those represented by the Direct Marketers lobby, both of which want to "regulate" and control the internet, not protect our rights. In this, the spam problem is related to the corporate "PC-as-packaged-appliance" mentality that wants to take control over our PC's and everything that happens inside them.

In a civilized society the rights of the individual are respected and protected, and government -- as it once did in response to the Mafia and organized crime -- would strenuously go after the blatant perpetrators of abusive intrusions into peoples' homes and businesses by spammers and purveyors of trojans and viruses. But today there is no significant response to the widespread complaints, in part because most of those complaining only say in cynical frustration to "do something" (vaguely implying regulation) rather than demanding that our private rights be respected and enforced with no qualifications. Meanwhile, and despite the explosion in technology and innovation in the free market, the lobbyists manipulating the system largely out of public view are gradually leading us towards a bureaucratically controlled and regulated internet that is quite literally a form of economic fascism. The internet as a monumental advance in human civilization and personal convenience is worth fighting for. Don't give it up.

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I certainly appreciate frustration due to illegal and unethical harassment with seemingly no recourse, but there are millions of people who operate and benefit from their own web sites and who don't find it necessary to repudiate the internet.  That combined with the extremist partisan political ranting raises questions about this person's objectivity.  (The Can spam Act regulating how spammers "can spam" instead of protecting our right not to be spammed was bipartisan, and it had nothing to do with "Fox News".)

But there is a tremendous battle ahead to save the potential of the internet from both political and ordinary "racketeering" abuse.  Much of the battle is over the concept of ownership, and it is just starting.  The root of the spam problem is that there is no recognition or protection of property rights -- from the rights of companies who bear the burden of unwanted network traffic trespass to the rights of the individual who finds his own PC taken over by those who have no regard for his privacy or private property.  That disregard extends all the way to Washington and those represented by the Direct Marketers lobby, both of which want to "regulate" and control the internet, not protect our rights.  In this, the spam problem is related to the corporate "PC-as-packaged-appliance" mentality that wants to take control over our PC's and everything that happens inside them.

In a civilized society the rights of the individual are respected and protected, and government -- as it once did in response to the Mafia and organized crime -- would strenuously go after the blatant perpetrators of abusive intrusions into peoples' homes and businesses by spammers and purveyors of trojans and viruses.  But today there is no significant response to the widespread complaints, in part because most of those complaining only say in cynical frustration to "do something" (vaguely implying regulation) rather than demanding that our private rights be respected and enforced with no qualifications.  Meanwhile, and despite the explosion in technology and innovation in the free market, the lobbyists manipulating the system largely out of public view are gradually leading us towards a bureaucratically controlled and regulated internet that is quite literally a form of economic fascism.  The internet as a monumental advance in human civilization and personal convenience is worth fighting for.  Don't give it up.

...Kewl -- until this post, I had thought I was the only conservative-libertarian here! :) <g>

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Spamcop's banner title is "Protecting the internet community through technology, not legislation." I don't know where in the forums the detailed meaning of that may have been discussed. Spamcop itself is clearly a technology enterprise.

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Doubtful that you'll find anything in reference to it here )yet) .. SpamCop has been around since something like 97 (I hope I'm at least close, it's been a long time) ... and these Forums basically started this year ..

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Here is an indication of Julian's views from a June 2001 interview at http://www.seattle24x7.com/people/julianhaight.htm

Seattle24x7: Can spam be legislated out of existence?

Julian:: I'm rather skeptical of the legislation angle. The attempted spam bill by Congress started out as a great bill when it was introduced. But by the time it was up for a vote, it was almost a tacit endorsement of spamming. spam is also an international problem so that U.S. law really doesn't apply.

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