Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:50:55 -0700 From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@Kithrup.COM> To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: uunet vs. internet Message-ID: <199708052250.PAA22871@kithrup.com> In-Reply-To: <199708052014.NAA01887.kithrup.freebsd.chat@rah.star-gate.com>
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In article <199708052014.NAA01887.kithrup.freebsd.chat@rah.star-gate.com> you write: >Apparently, a group of sysads are cancelling all uunets postings 8) >Rumor has it that Uunet will strike back by using legal action. And yours truly has been quoted in the local paper. And will probably be quoted in at least another. (Spent the first hour this morning dealing with reporter questions via email.) This is not a "group of sysads" -- rather, this is a group of the spam cancellers. You know, the ones who actually try to make usenet still readable? (The ones who stopped for nine days a few weeks ago and watched as usenet became >50% spam in most newsgroups?) In this case, a UDP (Usenet Death Penalty) was issued for uunet dial-up originated postings. THis is basicly just alterdial.uu.net. A statistic: last thursaday (July 31), for the first time, one site measured more than one million usenet articles passing through it in a single day. Of those one million, approx. 40% were spam, 40% were spam cancels, and 20% were legit. traffic. Of the 400,000 spam articles, approx. 250,000 came from an alterdial.uu.net account. People have been complaining to uunet about this for several months. uunet claims it can do nothing. So, the UDP went into play, Friday at 5PM PDT. The press coverage has, so far, been favourable. Except for one very badly-slanted article in the San Jose Mercury News, I'm sad to say. UUNET can try legal action; it will be amusing, since most of the people actually doing the cancels are not in the US -- and one of them works for the gov't of Korea, with official sanction. UUNET has claimed that they decided yesterday to implment some technology to help deal with the deluge of spam coming from them. So the UDP may be called off as early as this evening. We'll see.
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