Usenet Death Penalty
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Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
, the Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) is a final penalty that may be issued against
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s or single users who produce too much
spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
or fail to adhere to Usenet standards. It is named after the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
(the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for a crime), as it causes the banned user or provider to be unable to use Usenet, essentially "killing" their service. Messages that fall under the jurisdiction of a Usenet Death Penalty will be cancelled. Cancelled messages are deleted from Usenet servers and not allowed to propagate. This causes users on the affected ISP to be unable to post to Usenet, and it puts pressure on the ISP to change their policies. Notable cases include actions taken against
UUNET UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was one of the first commercial Internet service providers. Today, UUNET is an internal brand ...
,
CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...
, and
Excite@Home @Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their f ...
.


Types

There are three types of Usenet Death Penalty: #''Active'': with an active UDP, messages that fall under the UDP will be automatically cancelled by third parties or their agents, such as by using
cancelbot A cancelbot is an automated or semi-automated process for sending out third-party cancel messages over Usenet, commonly as a stopgap measure to combat spam. History One of the earliest uses of a cancelbot was by microbiology professor Richard ...
s. #''Passive'': with a passive UDP, messages that fall under the UDP will simply be ignored and will not spread. #''Partial'': a partial UDP applies only to a certain subset of
newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...
s, not the entire Usenet newsgroup hierarchy. To be effective, the UDP must be supported by a large number of servers, or the majority of the major transit servers. Otherwise, the articles will propagate throughout the smaller, slower peerings. UDPs are not casual acts. They are announced beforehand, only after the owner of the offending server has been contacted and given several chances to correct the perceived problem. Since the effects on the users of a server under a UDP can be significant, if the users want to post, the impact of a UDP can induce the operators of an offending server to address problems quickly. UDPs have been issued against
America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
,
BBN Planet Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...
,
CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...
, Erols Internet, Netcom, TIAC and
UUNET UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was one of the first commercial Internet service providers. Today, UUNET is an internal brand ...
.


History

The first UDP software was written by Karl Kleinpaste in 1990,Net Abuse FAQ
though there is disagreement when the term itself was coined: the Net Abuse FAQ claims 1993, but a message posted on 18 August of that year claims that it was coined "years earlier" by Eliot Lear. A UDP was implemented against
UUNET UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was one of the first commercial Internet service providers. Today, UUNET is an internal brand ...
on 1 August 1997 after it became a host for many spammers and was unresponsive to abuse complaints. It forced the provider to implement antispam policies and tools and close their open relays. Executives called the UDP "digital terrorism", threatened legal action, and asserted they had been planning to move against spammers anyway. As the volume of spam from UUNET decreased, the organizers called off the penalty on August 6, though their announcement was stifled by cancel messages from UDP opponents. An active UDP was implemented against
CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...
on 18 November 1997, which was lifted the following day after the company implemented anti-spamming measures and instituted a new acceptable use policy addressing spamming. A UDP scheduled to begin against
Excite@Home @Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their f ...
on 19 January 2000 was lifted the day before it was scheduled to begin after the ISP began scanning for the misconfigured proxy servers on home users' computers which it blamed for spam originating from its network.


See also

*
Shadow banning Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not ...
*
Kill file A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a file used by some Usenet reading programs to discard articles matching some unwanted patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Adding a person or subject to one's kill file means t ...
*
Damnatio memoriae is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. Depending on the extent, it can be a case of historical negationism. There are and have been many routes to , includi ...


References


External links


Entry on the Usenet Death Penalty
at the
Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET A ...

Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions, Part 3/4 (v1.75)




{{Usenetnav Usenet Anti-spam