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Black-Hole Web Site Gets Sued
An Austrialian direct marketing firm has filed a lawsuit against an anti-spam activist, charging that the person blocked its e-mail servers and disrupted its business.
This is a problem we first told you about in May, in which anti-SPAM vigilantes set up lists of sites that they say distribute unsolicited e-mail, or SPAM, allowing major Internet networks and backbone providers to block e-mail access to those sites.
This problem could potentially halt your e-mail traffic, whether it’s a renewal request, an e-mail newsletter, or simply a note to an advertiser or reader, is known as the "black hole list."
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A black hole list is simply a web site that a person sets up that lists e-mail servers or networks that the person operating the black hole site feels are "insecure" and either have been or could be exploited by hackers to send SPAM onto the Internet.
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T3 Direct of Perth, has charged that a complaint filed with the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, or SPEWS, caused T3’s e-mail servers to be listed in the SPEWS database, causing a disruption in the company’s business. SPEWS does not have any contact information on its web site, so rather than discover who operates the black hole list, T3 is has filed its lawsuit against the individual who reported T3 to SPEWS.
A black hole list is simply a web site that a person sets up that lists e-mail servers or networks that the person operating the black hole site feels are "insecure" and either have been or could be exploited by hackers to send SPAM onto the Internet.
The problem with a black hole list is that large Internet access providers like Pacific Bell, Prodigy and EarthLink, use those lists to block e-mail access. So if your company’s mail server gets listed on the right black hole list, you suddenly lost the ability to exchange e-mail with roughly half the connected world.
And you usually don’t find out about the problem until your e-mail starts bouncing. Try explaining that to an advertiser who paid for a 40,000-unit e-mail distribution but only got 10,000.
To get on a list, your server simply needs to be nominated by another party (who could be a disgruntled advertiser or a nasty competitor). After being nominated, some of the black hole lists will automatically "scan" your mail server (read that: They try to break into the server), and if they’re successful in breaking in or compromising the mail server, they list you as an open relay or SPAM site and that’s it.
In many cases, the person nominating potential SPAM sites can remain anonymous. Not so with SPEWS, allowing T3 to name a defendant.
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While the legislation currently under discussion in Congress to prevent SPAM requires that all e-mail include a valid return address that reaches a live human being, there is no requirement that any black hole lists communicate with anyone.
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There are no rules for these sites: No requirement that they publish criteria for what constitutes an open relay, no requirement that they remove inaccurate information, no requirement that they even tell you why you are listed in their databases or what it is about your server that they don’t like.
In fact, there is a bit of irony in all this. While the legislation currently under discussion in Congress to prevent SPAM requires that all e-mail include a valid return address that reaches a live human being, there is no requirement that any black hole lists communicate with anyone.
It would be easy to blame the black hole sites for this rampant vigilantism, but they are not the problem. There is no harm in someone setting up a server listing sites they don’t want to exchange e-mail with. The harm comes when large ISPs, big business who should know better, relinquish their responsibility to police their networks to these one-man vigilantes without making any effort to investigate the sites they use.
In October, Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC, of Redwood City, CA, settled a similar dispute with Experian eMarketing.
Danes Won’t Go Deep
A Copenhagen court has ruled that a news web site can not provide links to content within another site without prior permission.
The ruling, believed to be the first to outlaw "deep linking," banned news aggregator Newsbooster from linking to content within the web sites of the Danish Newspaper Association’s 28 member web sites.
Several sites in the United States, including National Public Radio and The Dallas Morning News, have tried to adopt policies that prohibit deep linking into their content without express permission, but were not successful.
For more on this story, please visit: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942187.html
ABM Electronic Media Committee To Survey Internet Strategies
The Electronic Media Committee of American Business Media has launched an online survey to help publishers determine what applications and web site features will help them make money on the Internet.
Publishers are asked to fill out the survey, and the results will be tabulated and used as the basis for a white-paper the committee will draft later this year. To participate, please visit: http://americanbusinessmedia.com/media_services/
committees/electronic/survey.htm before July 22.
The survey was built and is being hosted by GCN Publishing.
Getting Gator-Slapped
A federal judge has slapped a temporary injunction on Gator Software, barring the Redwood City, Californa company from displaying advertising on 10 publication web sites without the site operator’s permission.
The ruling came after several online news organizations filed a lawsuit last-month against Gator, which they say uses web-based software to pop competing ads onto their web pages. The lawsuit charges that Gator is "a parasite on the web that free rides on the content of others."
What makes Gator Corp. and their technology a threat to publishers is that their software tracks the web sites a user visits, and pops up ads based on preferences set by Gator’s advertisers, rather than those of the publisher or web site operator. The Wall Street Journal, which is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, approximately 22 million people have the Gator program installed on their PCs.
WeightWatchers won an injunction on June 11 barring Gator from popping ads for DieteWatch.com, a competitor, onto a user’s computer screen whenever a user went to the WeightWatchers web site.
According to The Wall Street Journal, even The New York Times, which is a plaintiff in this lawsuit against Gator, briefly used the Gator network and its software to pop-up ads for its real estate classifieds section whenever a PC user visited a real estate advertising site.
This ability to track and target advertising to specific user interests is at the heart of today’s integrated, targeted ad buy, and yet publishers typically only track and target users on sites they operate. Gator is the first well-known example of an ad network delivering ads when users visit other web sites, and it is this unique wrinkle that is at the heart of both the lawsuit and the controversy.
Gator’s software is not installed on the web site but is instead installed on the user’s computer. Gator has two pieces of software that users download—one a virtual electronic wallet, and the other a free-offer software package that allows users to receive free products from advertisers. As part of the registration process, users "opt-in" to receive the pop-up ads, making them part of Gator’s network of web users.
Gator operates the Gator Advertising and Information Network, which the company says has 22 million active users and 400 advertisers. Because of the opt-in capabilities and ability to track web usage, Gator’s advertisers can target specific user demographics and specific web behavior as the user moves across the Internet.
The publishers contend in their lawsuit that Gator’s ads rob them of advertising revenue and that users will mistake Gator’s pop-up ads for ads presented by the publisher.
Gator executives have countered the PC owners download Gator software voluntarily and choose to receive the ads on their PCs.
For more information on Gator, visit: http://www.gator.com
For more information on this story, visit: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-940072.html, or http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet
/07/01/online.ads.ap/index.html, or
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet
/10/05/stealth.ads.idg/index.html.
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In This Issue
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Danes Won’t Go Deep
ABM Electronic Media Committee To Survey Internet Strategies
Getting Gator-Slapped
Final Analysis:
GCN's creative, technical and business team Courtenay Communication’s dmnews.com. See how weekly publication's web site does in our constructive critique.
Design Tip:
Need to keep that edit/ad ratio?
Don’t let your photoshoots, illustrations and informational graphics go to
waste. Run those extra images on the Web and promote it in print as an extra online exclusive.
Mark your Calendar:
William D. Littleford Awards Luncheon
August 13, 2002
Union League Club
New York, NY
For more info call: 212.661.6360
American Business Media Publishers' Roundtable
Sept. 19-21, 2002
A day long seminar on ad sales issues sponsored by the American Business Media Publishers Committee.
Chicago, IL
For more info call: 212.661.6360
GCN Publishing
In-Print, On-Line, In-Person: Sure-Fire Ways Your Integrated Buys Will Generate Revenue
September 26, 2002
Atlanta, GA
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GCN Publishing
In-Print, On-Line, In-Person: Sure-Fire Ways Your Integrated Buys Will Generate Revenue
October 3, 2002
Cleveland, OH
516.767.3325
Register today!
Magazine Publisher’s of America
American Magazine Conference
October 20 - 23, 2002
Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa
Phoenix, Arizona
212.872.3700
www.magazine.org
The Folio: Show
Folio: Magazine
October 28 - 30, 2002
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917.981.2936
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