Usenet Death Penalty
Encyclopedia
On Usenet
, the Usenet Death Penalty (or UDP) is a final penalty that may be issued against Internet service provider
s or single users who produce too much spam or fail to adhere to Usenet standards. Messages that fall under the jurisdiction of a Usenet Death Penalty will be cancelled.
There are three types of Usenet Death Penalty:
To be effective, the UDP must be supported by a large number of servers, or the majority of the major transit servers. Otherwise, the articles will propagate throughout the smaller, slower peerings.
UDPs are not casual acts. They are announced beforehand, only after the owner of the offending server has been contacted and given several chances to correct the perceived problem.
Since the effects on the users of a server under a UDP can be significant, if the users want to post, the impact of a UDP can induce the operators of an offending server to address problems quickly.
UDP's have been issued against America Online, BBN Planet, CompuServe, Erols.com, Netcom, and TIAC.
.
A UDP was implemented against UUNET
on August 1, 1997 after it became a host for many spammers and was unresponsive to abuse complaints. It forced the provider to implement antispam policies and tools and close their open relays. Executives called the UDP "digital terrorism", threatened legal action, and asserted they had been planning to move against spammers anyway. As the volume of spam from UUET decreased, the organizers called off the penalty on August 6, though their announcement was stifled by cancel messages from UDP opponents.
An active UDP was implemented against CompuServe
on November 18, 1997, which was lifted the following day after the company implemented anti-spamming measures and instituted a new acceptable use policy addressing spamming. A UDP scheduled to begin against Excite@Home on January 19, 2000, was lifted the day before it was scheduled to begin after the ISP began scanning for the misconfigured proxy servers on home user's computers it blamed for spam originating from its network.
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
, the Usenet Death Penalty (or UDP) is a final penalty that may be issued against Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s or single users who produce too much spam or fail to adhere to Usenet standards. Messages that fall under the jurisdiction of a Usenet Death Penalty will be cancelled.
There are three types of Usenet Death Penalty:
- Active: with an active UDP, messages that fall under the UDP will be automatically cancelled by third parties or their agents, such as by using cancelbotCancelbotA cancelbot is an automated or semi-automated process for sending out third-party cancel messages over Usenet, commonly as a stopgap measure to combat spam.-History:...
s. - Passive: with a passive UDP, messages that fall under the UDP will simply be ignored and will not spread.
- Partial: a partial UDP applies only to a certain subset of newsgroupNewsgroupA usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s, not the entire Usenet newsgroup hierarchy.
To be effective, the UDP must be supported by a large number of servers, or the majority of the major transit servers. Otherwise, the articles will propagate throughout the smaller, slower peerings.
UDPs are not casual acts. They are announced beforehand, only after the owner of the offending server has been contacted and given several chances to correct the perceived problem.
Since the effects on the users of a server under a UDP can be significant, if the users want to post, the impact of a UDP can induce the operators of an offending server to address problems quickly.
UDP's have been issued against America Online, BBN Planet, CompuServe, Erols.com, Netcom, and TIAC.
History
The first UDP software was written by Karl Kleinpaste in 1990, though there is disagreement when the term itself was coined: the Net Abuse FAQ claims 1993, but a message posted on 18 August of that year claims that it was coined "years earlier" by Eliot LearEliot Lear
Eliot Lear is a longtime member of the Internet Engineering Task Force and author of several Request for Comments. He is a consulting engineer for Cisco Systems after working for Silicon Graphics as an Internet Architect. Mr...
.
A UDP was implemented against UUNET
UUNET
UUNET founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the nine Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was the first commercial Internet service provider...
on August 1, 1997 after it became a host for many spammers and was unresponsive to abuse complaints. It forced the provider to implement antispam policies and tools and close their open relays. Executives called the UDP "digital terrorism", threatened legal action, and asserted they had been planning to move against spammers anyway. As the volume of spam from UUET decreased, the organizers called off the penalty on August 6, though their announcement was stifled by cancel messages from UDP opponents.
An active UDP was implemented against CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
on November 18, 1997, which was lifted the following day after the company implemented anti-spamming measures and instituted a new acceptable use policy addressing spamming. A UDP scheduled to begin against Excite@Home on January 19, 2000, was lifted the day before it was scheduled to begin after the ISP began scanning for the misconfigured proxy servers on home user's computers it blamed for spam originating from its network.
External links
- Entry on the Usenet Death Penalty at the Jargon FileJargon FileThe Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
- Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions, Part 3/4 (v1.75)
- Antispam strike under way
- Telstra moves to avert spam death penalty