ASME's Mechanical Engine…ing Toolkit 1997 December/ASME's Mechanical Engineering Toolkit 1997 December.iso/docs/html/info/spam/shame.txt

Text File | 1997-04-11 | 5.4 KB | 93 lines

S.P.(U.T.U.)M. Shames Spammer into a Rage
               by Mark Frauenfelder, WIRED News

5:00am??25.Mar.97.PST Mike Enlow claims he was simply running a test when
his marketing company spammed the alt.binaries newsgroups of Usenet on 6
January. The self-proclaimed "world's most-respected information
broker/technology marketing consultant" says he thought the alt.binaries
groups would be a good place to try out his advertisement, because "they
were getting spammed to hell anyway."

               But Enlow's "Too Cool......-hotstuff.jpg" file - which
included a picture of a fully-clothed Enlow leaning against a shiny new
Mercedes and a caption advertising Enlow's business Web site - started a
Usenet war that is raging still.

               The members of alt.binaries.slack - dedicated to posting
religious artwork themed around the Church of the SubGenius - saw Enlow's
spam as an opportunity to have some fun and teach the man a lesson,
SubGenius style. The Rev. Funway Plastico, for example, downloaded
photographs from Enlow's Web site and altered them in a variety of ways,
re-posting them to the newsgroup. Some of the images merged Enlow's face
with Bozo the Clown, some embedded his head into containers of Spam, some
pasted Enlow's face into pornographic images. Funway then emailed Enlow a
note that read, in part, "You might want to check alt.binaries.slack to
see what we think of you and your phony get rich quick scam."

               Enlow was furious. "These jerks attacked me like I was a
$5 pyramid scheme," he says. "They have attacked a patriot of America."
He posted a message to alt.binaries.slack that read, in part, "I have a
network of investigators who just live to fuck up people who get too cute
with me," signing his the post "Michael E. Enlow, Pres. National Assoc.
of Investigative Technologists." (Enlow says that he now regrets "lashing
out in anger and fury," adding, "I would never send someone out to create
bodily harm.")

               Shortly after the threat was posted, S.P.(U.T.U.)M. -
alt.binaries.slack's very own Net-abuse response team (the acronym stands
for SubGenius Police, Usenet Tactical Unit [Mobile]) - sprang into
action, said Dennis McClain-Furmanski, the public-relations contact for
S.P.(U.T.U.)M. The unit emailed Enlow, warning him that he "violated and
[is] continuing to violate the rules of the Usenet by posting commercial,
non-Slackful, non-"Bob"-related binaries in our newsgroup," and urging
him to "quit while you are *behind*."

               A movement to police one's own newsgroup is on the rise,
says McClain-Furmanski. "There is the alt.gothic special forces and there
is WASP, the Warez Anti-Spam Patrol." He won't divulge how many members
of S.P.(U.T.U.)M. there are, but says, "Two of us have military training
in psyops (psychological operations) and intelligence work. There are six
regulars on alt.binaries.slack and many occasional posters, and it is
about as spam-free as you'll find on any binaries group."

               But Enlow doesn't buy the claim that S.P.(U.T.U.)M. exists
to rid the newsgroup of Net-abuse. He says S.P.(U.T.U.)M. and the
alt.binaries.slack group are terrorists slandering him and defaming him
with doctored images, which contain captions such as "OK, OK, So maybe
I'm a PINK weasel posturing in front of a car I could never afford. I was
born with a clitoris instead of a brain." Enlow says such statements are
slanderous: "I paid cash for the last seven Mercedes I've owned." He also
says that he has forwarded the altered images and postings to the "FBI
and senators," and is gathering evidence to create a law suit.

               Stacey Son of Internet Servers Inc., the ISP for the
S.P.(U.T.U.)M. Web site, says Enlow recently contacted his company to
complain about the images. However, since Enlow did not produce an
injunction or court order, the ISP did not intervene.

               McClain-Furmanski argues that the altered Enlow images and
text are parody, and therefore protected by the Constitution. He also
claims that no one in S.P.(U.T.U.)M., or alt.binaries.slack has done
anything illegal against Enlow. "The artists of alt.binaries.slack are
not members of S.P.(U.T.U.)M., they are the group that we protect," he
says, adding that "S.P.(U.T.U.)M. is not the same as the Church of the
SubGenius."

               At one point during this escalating battle of threats and
flames, Enlow called McClain-Furmanski on the phone, demanding that
McClain-Furmanski remove the images immediately or he would spend upward
of $1 million dollars in a lawsuit to force his group to comply.
McClain-Furmanski says he replied to Enlow that for each month Enlow
refrained from posting spam to Usenet, one of the four Web sites
currently publishing the altered images would come down. "He didn't much
care for the resolution," says McClain-Furmanski, "but it has been a week
since he has spammed. In another three weeks, a site will come down."

               Enlow, however, says the real battle hasn't even started.
He would like to see the Church of the SubGenius get prosecuted under the
RICO laws, as he believes that the church members are organized criminals
engaged in illegal terrorist activities against him. Seeing himself as a
law-abiding businessman who is up against a nest of filthy miscreants
with abhorrent values, he asks, "Am I witty enough to make world history?
Am I crazy enough? Hell, yes."