Although my FAQ does point the reader to commercial sources for material
relating to the person the newsgroups are about, Traci Lords, this is
because of a certain other person, who uses the name aftl-faq on his ISP,
mindspring.com, to not only promote his 'faq', I complain to mindspring to
have the account closed and the web pages removed, he uses the aftl-faq in
his web page, and proclaims it the FAQ to the newsgroups, but he promotes
ILLEGAL activity!!
A FAQ is supposed to educate the users. Why do I get attacked in the
newsgroups, mainly from this guy at mindspring and certain aol users,
because I provide a link to the web page where Traci Lords Videos are
LEGALLY available, Commercial Copies in Full Color Retail Boxes, still in
production?
This person, his fake name is dupasi07, tells people to NOT buy the Retail
Videos, he refuses to even mention the LEGAL tapes, has basically stolen my
entire FAQ, violating Copyright Laws as well, but he tells people to BUY
ILLEGAL BOOTLEG COPIES being made and sold by a place in Amsterdam. This
activity which mindspring.com refuses to terminate is violating the
following laws:
Federal Copyright of Motion Pictures. Videos must be sold in their
original Retail Boxes. The European Distributor of these videos is Colmax
International, and the videos are sold in retail boxes. The Happy Shopper
in Amsterdam sells bad copies on regular VHS tapes, no labels, no boxes, etc..
US Customs Laws: Importing ILLEGAL Material into this country. Although
people who have ordered from this place in Amsterdam, get the plain videos
from an address in Maryland.
The Commercial Web Site selling the videos, legally buys the Retail Boxed
Videos from the North American Manufacturer.
The users in the newsgroups complain they have been ripped off by people
advertising these 'illegal' videos, and ask for a reliable source, and this
dupas guy continues to refer these people to this place in Amsterdam.
Is there anyone out there that knows who we need to contact to stop this
ILLEGAL activity?
Mindsprings Acceptable Use Policy Claims, and I am quoting it here, with my
comments, which they REFUSE to ENFORCE:
MindSpring's Appropriate Use Policy (AUP)
Our previous AUP is still online.
Our Appropriate Use Policy (AUP) is designed to help protect our customers,
and the Internet community, from irresponsible or illegal activities. As
good net citizens, we prohibit the impersonation of others, unsolicited
commercial appeals, and any disruption of Internet services.
Section 1. Violations and Descriptions of Appropriate Use
Section 2. Reporting to MindSpring Abuse
Section 3. Rationale and Ruminations
Section 4. Related MindSpring Documents and Policies
Section 5. Related Internet Netiquette and General Consumer Resources
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Section 1. Violations and Descriptions of Appropriate Use
General Violations
E-mail
News
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
Financial
Excessive bandwidth or disk utilization
General Violations
Impersonation/Forgery:
Adding, removing, or modifying identifying network header information (aka
"spoofing") in an effort to deceive or mislead is prohibited. Attempting to
impersonate any person by using forged headers or other identifying
information is especially frowned upon. Please note, the use of anonymous
remailers and nicknames does not constitute impersonation.
NOTE: Is it not impersonation/forgery to use the posting name aftl-faq, or
aftlfaq, when they are NOT the appointed FAQ maintainer, and they continue
to use said posting name to post the URL to their FAQ, instead of the one
stored in the Archives at rtfm.mit.edu?
Network unfriendly activity:
Any activities which adversely affect the ability of other people or
systems to use MindSpring services or the Internet are prohibited. This
includes "denial of service" (DoS) attacks against another network host or
individual user.
NOTE: Posting newsgorup messages that the FAQ posted by the
Faq-Server@rtfm.mit.edu is SPAM and OFF-TOPIC, I feel is violating my
ability as the FAQ Maintainer to update and post the FAQ.
Privacy violations:
Attempts, whether successful or unsuccessful, to gain access to any
computer system or customer's data, without consent, are prohibited.
Threats:
Threats of bodily harm or destruction of property are always prohibited.
E-mail
Commercial e-mail:
Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. Using a Mindspring
e-mail or website address to collect responses from unsolicited commercial
e-mail is prohibited. Please refer to Section 5 for additional guidance.
Mail bombing:
Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail is prohibited.
Harassment:
Sending threatening or harassing e-mail is prohibited. If after being
requested to stop, a MindSpring user persists in e-mailing another Internet
user, MindSpring may intervene. Extremely threatening or harassing e-mail
is always prohibited.
News
Please use your judgment when posting to any newsgroup. Many groups have
charters, published guidelines, FAQs, or "community standards" describing
what is and is not considered appropriate. Usenet can be a valuable
resource if used properly. Spam and off-topic articles originating from
MindSpring diminish the usefulness of this resource for everyone. There is
no restriction on content, except as defined by each newsgroup. Continued
posting of off-topic articles is prohibited. Please note that commercial
advertisements are off-topic in most newsgroups, especially regional groups
not specifically named for such. The presence of such articles in a group
is not indicative of the group's "intended" use. Please familiarize
yourself with basic USENET netiquette before posting to a newsgroups.
news.answers is a great place to start. Additional resources are detailed
in Section 5.
NOTE: Directing users to IHNORE the FAQ, when it appears in the groups and
news.answers, alt.answers, is in my opinion violating the above use of news..
Newsgroup spamming: Spam is, first and foremost, a numerical metric--
Posting substantively similar articles individually to multiple newsgroups
is spamming by definition. This form of spam is sometimes referred to as
"excessive multi-posting" (EMP). MindSpring considers "multi-posting" to 10
or more groups within a two week sliding window to be excessive. MindSpring
servers currently limit the number of allowable "cross-posts" to 9. For
further clarification and definition of what constitutes spam, please see
Chris Lewis' FAQ "Current Spam thresholds and guidelines." The full version
is posted regularly to the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.misc. This
article is posted once per week and is intended to describe the current
consensus spam thresholds and ensure that the definitions of the terms are
available. It is believed that most spam cancelers use these definitions
and thresholds.
NTOE: This dupas had a guy at aol.com post his FAQ every single week, and
dupas continues to post messages advertising his FAQ as the FAQ to the
newsgroups, and if the FAQ posted by the Faq-Server is SPAM, then why is
this GARBAGE not treated as SPAM by mindspring?
Flames, hostile attacks, or invectives aimed at a group or an individual
poster, are generally considered inappropriate in MindSpring service
groups. Flames in the non-service groups are not encouraged. You're
probably better off ignoring flames than responding to them. Many news
readers offer filtering capabilities that will bring certain messages to
your attention or skip over them all together (kill files).
NOTE: Dupasi07@mindspring.com, oldcritter@aol.com, post flames, hostile
attacks, against the FAQ which is POSTED by the faq-server when scheduled,
and continue to post hate messages against me, and basically telling users
to send their complaints to MY EMAIL addresses, and this PUBLIC posting of
my email, whcih is in the FAQ, is causing me to get BOMBARDED by SPAM, and
as an ISP, I am billing both aol and mindspring the damages under LAW for
sending SPAM to this ISP.
Threatening or harassing news articles are prohibited always. Such articles
may be canceled by MindSpring.
NOTE: They refuse to do anything about the harassing articles posted by
their user, because he has them convinced his FAQ, that NEVER APPEARS in
news.answers or in the archives at rtfm.mit.edu is the FAQ for the usenet
newsgroups.
Do not cross-post a single article to more than 5 forsale, test, jobs, or
binary groups. Such articles may be canceled by MindSpring.
Do not cross-post articles between mindspring.* and non-mindspring.*
groups. Articles cross-posted to more than 5 mindspring.* groups, and
postings to mindspring.* groups that originate outside MindSpring will not
be accepted by the MindSpring news server.
Do not post binary files to USENET groups not specifically named for such
purposes, namely the *.binaries and *.pictures hierarchies. Binary postings
are not allowed in any mindspring.* newsgroup, with the exception of small
test postings to mindspring.test. Please use your MindSpring FTP and web
space to distribute binaries.
NOTE: They post BINARY files to the alt.fan newsgroup in violation of the
FAQ, instead of posting them to the alt.binaries newsgroup.
You may not forge or remove header information. This includes attempts,
whether successful or unsuccessful, to circumvent the approval process for
posting to moderated groups or the issuance of news control messages. Such
articl es may be cancelled by MindSpring.
NOTE: Using the fake name of aftlfaq in newsgroup postings, IMPLIES that he
is the FAQ maintainer, and that he is the approved maintainer...
You may not cancel messages other than your own. You may cancel posts
forged in your name.
Listed below are some general guidelines regarding the mindspring.*
newsgroups. Advertising is allowed only in the mindspring.marketplace.*
hierarchy. Do not multi-post or cross-post advertisements to other
mindspring.* groups.
I apologize for this, but perhaps if someone else were to POINT these
VIOLATIONS out, mindspring would FINALLY ENFORCE their Terms of Use!!
I am suing mindspring.com, for Copyright Infringement, libel, slander, and
defamation, as well as filing anti-trust allegations against them, since we
provide LOWER COST NATIONAL UNLIMITED INTERNET than they do, and their
REFUSAL to address the issues of violations of their terms of use, and
allowing their users to attack a competing ISP is against the law.....
At 08:36 PM 4/3/99 -0800, you wrote:
>I might be flamed big time for this but I honestly can't hold back
>anymore. I usually read technical FAQs, and I've noticed that some
>maintainers are either linking banners to the FAQ web pages or
>blatantly promoting products/books they can profit from. There was
>once a day when FAQ maintaining was a selfless act one did for
>reasons that weren't self profiting.
>
>A while ago I considered writing a book that dealt with the material
>the FAQ I maintain does. I promised myself that if I did manage in
>getting it published I would not maintain the FAQ anymore, and pass
>it onto someone else. The book never made publication, but the
>sentiment still lingers on. And please don't mistaken this post as
>my bitter rant for not getting the book through.
>
>I don't know: I might be wrong. But really, if you're going to sell
>something that you can promote anywhere near your FAQ, just pass the
>FAQ onto someone else. Let's keep this by netters for netters.
>
>--
>Thamer Al-Herbish PGP public key:
>shadows@whitefang.com http://www.whitefang.com/pgpkey.txt
>[ Maintainer of the Raw IP Networking FAQ http://www.whitefang.com/rin/ ]
>
>
>
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