Hi Everyone,
Telecom and dozens (maybe hundreds) of other newsgroups have been
spammed by Unbrandamerica.org. The NNTP server used for this spam is
under jurisdiction of Asian Pacific Network. However the server's
address is not registered with APN and so is not in their database, so
it appears they may have used an unregistered open server or something
of that kind to send their spam.
Somehow they were able to bypass the Moderators of newsgroups and post
directly to telecom and other groups. I did NOT approve any of their
spam messages for posting to telecom.
Unbrandamerica.org appears to be part of or associated with
Adbusters.org. Here is what Adbusters says about themselves on their web
site:
"We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters,
students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social
activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing
power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the
21st century."
They have a magazine which they describe as "Based in Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit ... magazine concerned
about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by
commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured on MTV and PBS...."
They also have what they call The Culture Jammers Network "We are a
global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students,
educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist
movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power
structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st
century. We believe culture jamming can be to our era what civil rights
was to the '60s, what feminism was to the '70s, what environmental
activism was to the '80s. It will alter the way we live and think. It
will change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power,
the way TV stations are run, the way the food, fashion, automobile,
sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, it
will change the way meaning is produced in our society."
These radicals appear to have no concept of common courtesy or
decency, only caring about imposing their radical ideas on everyone,
even to the extent of engaging in illegal activities in order to
accomplish their goals.
Unfortunately, because of the way usenet works, there is little we can
do to delete their spam from the net. Once a piece of spam is
accepted and posted on a usenet server, it is almost instantaneously
propogated to hundreds of news servers around the world, and there is
no way we can recall those posts, except 'cancels' one by one . It's
kind of like gossip -- once you have passed on a bit of gossip, there
is no way of getting it back.
Those Unbrandamerica messages were NOT approved by newsgroup
moderators for posting, nor do we in any way endorse the garbage they
are preaching. Please accept our apologies. All we can suggest to do
is to ignore those posts, and continue to cancel them as we find them.
Oddly, there were certain newsgroups which got hit the worst; many of
the Christnet groups were hit very hard, along with some of the social
issues forums. Other newsgroups that the Unbrandamerica people approve
of did not get hit as badly. Perhaps the Unbrandamerica people realize
that while not exactly sympathetic to them, there are _many_ netters
who think 'nothing can be done about spam' and that we have to
tolerate it, and the same netters insist in their delusions that 'no
one wants anything different than it is.' Maybe someday there _will_
be some major changes on the net, with or without the cooperation of
the guys who keep claiming 'nothing can be done, this is an anarchy'
and all that talk. I sure hope so for one.
PAT
Patrick Townson (ptownson@telecom-digest.org)