Spam 2 - the thinkhost saga

Ok, well it took long enough to read the last thread, and mostly the only thing I heard was thinkhost saying we were all losers who don't know what spam means

Anyway, I'll start with Chad and DIDS. Never in my life have I ever seen an e-mail from him or his company, nor a post or reply with any information telling you/us to go with them or even check them out. Sure, they have a signiture, and that's alloud, but thinkhost used more than his signiture.

Now the info that pushes all of thinkhost's posts into the spam section is that he posted 17 messages in 1.5 hours. Ouch! And he hasn't addressed that issue yet. Sure, we would be less *phishy* if these 17 messages were posted maybe over a week, but 1.5 hours? That's what I feel makes it spam.

Now don't get me wrong; posting 17 messages with GOOD information in 1.5 hours in an accomplishment, but with each one saying stuff that advertises your company just ins't right.

DEFINITION OF SPAM: someone who posts 17 messages in 1.5 hours all about how you should choose his company (including a whole thread about it) with the username thinkhost.

Sorry, had to add that

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Justin Stayton (President/CEO)
[WEB SITE] www.flamehosting.com
[E-MAIL] [email protected]
[ICQ] 45549000

some of u guys should write for a living. i don't know if ur writing would be interesting, but it's clear from these post that u know how to fill up some space, hehe.

long post

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Folks,

One of the key reasons I took the time to care and reply to the accusations is because I think there needs to be a discussion led by hosting firm reps such as myself about the difference between spam and freedom of speech.

Chad: I refuse to reply to any more accusations from you, until you carefully weigh and reason the true, legal and ethical consequences of your thinking, reasoning, and actions. I also wish to get away from this specific case and focus on the broader, and more important question of how we need to address the problem at hand -- spam vs advertising vs free speech. I hope you will allow me to continue this discussion in that sense. Your personal attacks are sincerely inappropriate here, mainly because you have zero knowledge of who I am and where I am coming from. Your attack on my desire to go into law fell on very hearing-impaired ears, as I am going into law to make a difference, not for the money -- I am already pretty well off, and if you really care to know my stand will be more towards the prosecution side than defense. Why am I in this business? Because I have been for the past four or five years, and I am good at it -- and in the end, after I get the law degree I will have to choose between going into law or continuing to work in this area. Should I choose to go into law, my business partner will likely fully take over the firm but we're quite a few years away from that still. But not to get offsubject -- in the end its issues like this that are important, and the bottom line here is that we as professionals in the field need to address it.

Folks, I want to honestly hear from you. What is the stance on the issue of other hosts who visit this forum who aren't moderators in the forum? Is advertising NOT a form of free speech, and would the same effect and consequence approach [of limiting the free speech when such endangers others] be applicable?

I agree that spam is wrong -- my firm has a LONG record of viciously attacking spammers. But it seems that what Chad and others are implying is that opt-in advertising [which my posts were a form of!] is also spam. Is it?

And then of course I guess what about banner advertisement? By Chad's broad definition, thats also undesired advertising that people are forced to see, but yet I don't hear anyone attacking it. Why not?

Perhaps we need to look more deeply at the freedom of speech, which is a right that applies to both sides, and we always need to remember that if we infringe on someone else's right, they will infringe on ours tomorrow, and in the end, it is OUR responsibility to create a balance.

wow, remind me not to take weekends away from TWF

Well I am at work now and so had to speed read a lot of these posts. There are a few points that this thread has brought to light.
- Do we need to clear up the TOS (and if so how...)
- What do we consider spam in this forum?
- Should we have another forum just for hosts advertising their services (should we charge for this privilege and keep the posts logical and to a standard template?)

I have to say that though very happy this has not really turned into a 'war of words' thread - it is still a shame that it has been blown out of proportion. I believe that by TWF standards Thinkhost did spam the board. I will stand by that decision and therefore by Chad's actions since he deleted them.

I'll get back to this tomorrow as I am off to the gym
JP

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I think the real underlying question is: what is spam? Take the following definition for example:

quote:
The term "spam," as used on this newsgroup, means "the same article (or essentially the same article) posted an unacceptably high number of times to one or more newsgroups." CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT. 'Spam' doesn't mean "ads." It doesn't mean "abuse." It doesn't mean "posts whose content I object to." Spam is a funky name for a phenomenon that can be measured pretty objectively: did that post appear X times?

There have been "customized" spams where each post made some effort to apply to each individual newsgroup, but the general thrust of each article was the same. A huge straw poll on news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and alt.current-events.net-abuse (December 1994) showed that as many of 90% of the readers felt that cancellations for these posts were justified. So, simply put: if you plan to post the same or extremely similar messages to dozens of newsgroups, the posts are probably going to get cancelled.
QUOTE TAKEN FROM http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#2.1

If we used this definition, then thinkhost did really spam, since all of his posts had the same thrust or idea.

Now you asked what people thought: spam, or no spam. I think most of us have already answered that question. In the previous thread (which was closed), the following was the vote:

• WAS SPAM: binny, extrmbob, Brian Farkas, Adam Lysne, Max, Justin Stayton, adam, jackchen.
• WASN'T SPAM: blah.

Wow- I think that pretty much shows what people think. If anyone else has an opinion please post and tell us.

Cheers!

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Flame Hosting: www.flamehosting.com
Justin Stayton (President/CEO)
[WEB SITE] www.flamehosting.com
[E-MAIL] [email protected]
[ICQ] 45549000

[This message has been edited by Justin Stayton (edited 10 April 2000).]

JP: Obviously you have the right to set standards in your own private forum, I won't argue against that.

What Chad was mistaken in doing is contacting my upstream providers. Ironically, I got replies from each of them saying that they get such complaints nearly on a daily basis, where unfair competitors like DIDS just try to put other firms out of business by improperly accusing them of spam. Because your definition of spam is your own and is generally extremely different from the overall definition, this was libel. That is why I reacted in the way that I did.

Justin -- are you not violating my right to free speech by telling me what I can and can not say?

The argument is rather clear here. The constitution is the supreme law of the land according to the supremacy clause. If so, thereby the first priority is the freedom of speech. Clear and simple.

The fact is that what you are doing is using the term "SPAM" to cover something that is not really SPAM by legal definitions -- I guess you could call this "household-SPAM".

What you folks are doing is trying to justify your actions against posts which you didn't like since they were posted by a competitor who is arguably one of the best around, and obviously you don't want someone better than you getting your clients, now do you, and your justification being that it was what you called SPAM but in all reality they were just unfavorable speech.

Is unfavorable speech legal under freedom of speech? Yes and it has been ruled upon time after time after time by the supreme court, and I am more than thrilled to give you the exact case names and numbers if you wish to investigate my words further. I rest my case, at least from a legal perspective.

Now from an ethical perspective -- what I should have done and what I will do from this point forth is attack competitors not by trying to get clients who post in forums but rather by word of mouth. Our services, connection, prices and most of all support are the best, and chances are you will not find another provider like us, and instead of using that in posts which would obviously [and expectedly] spark negative attention from competitors [who are well known for their attempts in unfair business practices] I have and will simply rely on word of mouth and more "unquestionable" fair advertising.

My sincere apologies for posting what many found to be unfavorable speech posts. But they were not spam by a longshot because whether you like it or not, these posts were asking for services that my firm provides and my only fault was my wording which pissed off some of you.

Wow- you twisted my words pretty good. The quote I used in my last post was a definition of what Spam is, not what you can and cannot say. The definition is very general about spam, and I feel that you DID infact spam. Plain and simple.

I also noticed that you're a pretty cocky lawyer. Saying that:

quote:Our services, connection, prices and most of all support are the best.

Just wanted to point that out. Can you prove your services are the best? Can you prove your prices are the best? No.

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Flame Hosting: www.flamehosting.com
Justin Stayton (President/CEO)
[WEB SITE] www.flamehosting.com
[E-MAIL] [email protected]
[ICQ] 45549000

The claim I made about us being the best is questionable and open to attack. But I have the right to make that claim just as anything else. I made that claim with the realization that people would attack it, and thats fine! But it is merely a claim, not an allegation -- big gap between the two.

But do you realize that the definition you gave is a definition of a newsgroup, not a general definition?

Most connectivity providers will take spam as unsolicited advertising. No matter HOW you turn things, you'll realize that my ads were NOT unsolicited legally, which made Chad's e-mails to upstream providers libel. Clear and simple, nothing to argue about.

In the end, my freedom of speech was violated. You can call it whatever your heart desires: pest control, spam control, idiot control, or anything else, but the fact was that legally it was nothing more than unfavorable speech, which has been proven to be legal time after time after time.

Cheerios!

Basically, I am just going to close this thread. It is an overwhelming majority that think thinkhost's actions were spam - whether he likes that or not, it is true. This is nothing more than thinkhost now continually trying to say my actions were influenced simply because he is a "better" host (ROFL). If that is his only argument and his way of making himself feel better at night, by all means.

I am sorry my attitude has been this way in the discussion, but as he has continuously tried to shift the blame of what *he* did onto me and the rest of the administrators, he is attacking my character and it just isn't something I really need to deal with.

His arguments all basically have a small thread that hold them in the air... There is no type of solid base to hold them there for good.

Thinkhost, I too received a reply from UUNet (I am not too worried about Telocity as they don't seem to have much of an established TOS that deals with SPAM which is unfortunate) and it wasn't anything like yours. Let's just say that they *do* agree that your messages were spam, but something so petty just isn't on their top priority list to deal with.

Were my actions irradical - Yes. I apologize for contacting outside people. I have already explained my reasons for doing so, however.

If someone that hasn't already expressed their point of view on this would like to, please ICQ or e-mail me and I will open it for you to make a post. Other than that, this thread is now gone. Thinkhost is just continually repeating himself, trying to uncover that hole that he put himself into (and he is trying to say that the admins put him into the hole).

I sincerely hope you (thinkhost) will pursue that career in law as I think you would be much better at it than at a web hosting CEO (don't take that offensivly - judging by all of your posts, you have a way of manipulating things that would be of much greater use in the law world).

Thanks everyone that participated!

NOTE: I am closing this thread because it is going absolutely nowhere. Each time someone makes a post, thinkhost makes another saying what he has said in his 100+ other posts.

Thinkhost, I hope you will find TWF to be a great resource for yourself, but don't spam it in the future.

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