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Content Moderation Case Study: Usenet Has To Figure Out How To Deal With Spam (April 1994)

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Summary: In the early 1990s, facing increased pressure from the commercial sector who sensed there might be some value in the nascent Internet, the National Science Foundation began easing informal restrictions on commercial activity over the Internet. This gave rise to the earliest internet companies -- but also to spam. Before the World Wide Web had really taken off, the place where a great deal of internet communication took place was Usenet, created in 1980, which was what one might think of as a proto-Reddit, with a variety of newsgroups dedicated to different subjects that users could post to.Usenet was a decentralized service based on the Network News Transfer Protocol. Users needed a Usenet reader, from which they would connect to any number of Usenet servers and pull down the latest content in the newsgroups they followed. In early 1994, a husband and wife lawyer team, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, decided that they would advertise their legal services regarding immigration to the US (specifically help with the infamous Green Card Lottery to get a green card to the US) on Usenet.They hired a programmer to write a perl script that posted their advertisement on 5,500 separate news groups. While cross-posting was possible (a single post designated for multiple newsgroups), this particular message was posted individually to each newsgroup, which made it even more annoying for users -- since most Usenet reader applications would have recognized the same message as read in different newsgroups if it had merely been cross-posted. Posting it this way guaranteed that many people saw the message over and over and over again.

It is generally considered one of the earliest examples of commercial spam on the internet -- and certainly the most successful at the time. It also angered a ton of people. According to Time Magazine, Canter and Siegel faced immediate backlash:
In the eyes of many Internet regulars, it was a provocation so bald-faced and deliberate that it could not be ignored. And all over the world, Internet users responded spontaneously by answering the Spammers with angry electronic- mail messages called "flames." Within minutes, the flames -- filled with unprintable epithets -- began pouring into Canter and Siegel's Internet mailbox, first by the dozen, then by the hundreds, then by the thousands. A user in Australia sent in 1,000 phony requests for information every day. A 16-year-old threatened to visit the couple's "crappy law firm" and "burn it to the ground." The volume of traffic grew so heavy that the computer delivering the E-mail crashed repeatedly under the load. After three days, Internet Direct of Phoenix, the company that provided the lawyers with access to the Net, pulled the plug on their account.
It wasn't just Usenet users. Immigration lawyers were also upset in part because Canter and Siegel were asking for money to do what most people could easily do for free:
Unfortunately, it also provided an opportunity for charlatans to charge exorbitant fees to file lottery entries for hopeful immigrants.In truth, all it took to enter the drawing was a postcard with your name and address mailed to the designated location.Canter and Siegel, a husband-and-wife law firm, decided to join the lottery frenzy by pitching their own overpriced services to immigrant communities.
The two were unrepentant, later claiming they made over $100,000 from the advertisement. They quickly set up a new company called Cybersell to do this for others -- and signed a contract to write a book for HarperCollins originally called "How To Make A Fortune On The Information Superhighway."Decisions to be made by Usenet server providers:
  • Would they need to start being more aggressive in monitoring and moderating their newsgroups?
  • Would it even be possible to prevent spam?
  • Should they even carry news groups that allowed for open contributions?
Decisions to be made by ISPs:
  • Should they allow Canter and Siegel to use their internet access to spam newsgroups?
  • How should they handle the backlash from users angry about the spam campaigns?
Questions and policy implications to consider:
  • What is the boundary between allowed commercial speech or advertising and spam? How do you distinguish it?
  • Is it possible to have distributed systems (as opposed to centralized ones) that don't end up filled with spam?
  • What are the legal implications of spam?
Resolution: Canter and Siegel remained a scourge on the internet for some time. Various service providers were quick to kick them off as soon as it was discovered that they were using them. Indeed, many seemed willing to talk publicly about their decisions, such as Netcom, which shut down their account soon after the original spam happened and after Canter and Siegel had announced plans to continue spamming:
NETCOM On-Line Communications has taken the step ofcancelling the service of Laurence Canter of Canter andSiegel, the lawyer commonly referred to as the "GreenCard Lawyer". Mr. Canter had been a customer of NETCOMin the past. He had been cautioned for what we considerabuse of NETCOM's system resources and his systematic andwillful actions that do not comply with the codes ofbehavior of USENET.Mr. Canter has been widely quoted in the print andon-line media about his intention to continue hispractice of advertising the services of his law firmusing USENET newsgroups. He has also widely posted hisintention to sell his services to advertise for othersusing the newsgroups. We do not choose to be theprovider that will carry his messages.
That link also has notices from other service providers, such as Pipeline and PerformanceSystems, saying they were removing internet access.Others focused on trying to help Usenet server operators get rid of the spam. Programmer Arnt Gulbrandsen quickly put together a tool to help fight this kind of spam by cancelling the messages when spotted. This actually helped establish the early norm that it was okay to block and remove spam.As for Canter and Siegel, they divorced a couple years later, though both kept promoting themselves as internet marketing experts. Canter was disbarred in Tennessee for his internet advertising practices, though he had already moved on from practicing law. Cybersell, the company they had setup to do internet advertising, was apparently dissolved in 1998.

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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Sep-2020
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Ubisoft Bows To Monster Energy To Rename An Upcoming Game Horribly

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Veteran Techdirt readers will have been so tempered by stories about Monster Energy playing the trademark bully at this point that the mere mention of the company should cause them to roll their eyes. Still, the history of what we've covered in the Monster's attempt to win the trademark-protectionist championship are still constructive in one very important way: Monster Energy regularly loses these disputes. That in itself shouldn't be terribly surprising; the company's decisions on just how often to enforce the trademark rights it has are often so absurd that it would be a shock if it put together any sort of real winning streak. But what is surprising is when victims of Monster's bullying choose to actually concede to the bullying, given that losing track record.But it happens, even when the victim is a large enough entity that it could fight if it wanted to. A recent example of this is how Ubisoft changed the name of an upcoming video game after Monster Energy opposed its trademark application for it.

Ubisoft's Gods & Monsters recently underwent some rebranding, switching its name to the demonstrably-worse Immortals Fenyx Rising a few weeks ago. It has gone over like a lead balloon. In fact, it had our team wondering if we should just refuse the new name and stick with the old one!As uncovered by TechRaptor, Monster Energy opposed Ubisoft's trademark for the title "Gods & Monsters." The logic goes that Monster has enough of a presence within video games that Ubisoft's use could reasonably cause confusion among consumers.
Logic which runs counter to the purpose of trademark law, to how trademark law actually works in terms of market designations, as well as to good business and marketing. Taking those in reverse order: the name change is almost objectively terrible. I have yet to find any publication that thinks the title switch was even a wash for Ubisoft, never mind beneficial. The universal opinion seems to be, and I agree with it, that Ubisoft to one extent or another participated in a bit of self-harm by this rebranding.Now, on to the actual legal question. The consensus here too seems to be that Ubisoft could have easily have won this battle on the merits, but didn't want to simply to avoid any delay stemming from a legal battle.
Playing armchair attorney, this seems like something Ubisoft probably could've won, no? My guess is that it has less to do with whether or not Ubisoft cared to spend the money on this legal battle, and more to do with just getting the game out on shelves. Immortals has been delayed already, and its sales factor into Ubisoft's fiscal year that ends in March 2021. Fighting a protracted trademark infringement case would further delay the game. Going ahead with the name Gods & Monsters would result in an injunction. Ubisoft may be in the right, but it doesn't have the time to prove it.
Which is all probably true, but only if Ubisoft couldn't have gotten a declaratory judgement when Monster Energy first opposed the trademark application. Because it is quite clear that there is no infringement here. Whatever participation Monster Energy has in the video game space, most of which is mere sponsorship and advertising, it still isn't a maker of video games. Ubisoft should have needed merely to point that out to get its use declared legit. Couple that with the broader question as to whether literally anyone would make the association between a video game called Gods & Monsters and an energy drink company and I would guess getting a court to side with it would have been fairly easy for Ubisoft.But Ubisoft decided against that route and bowed to Monster Energy's bullying. Which is how we get Immortals Fenyx Rising instead of Gods & Monsters. An objectively worse name. For no reason, other than trademark bullying.Cool.

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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Sep-2020
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