NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Wall Street Journal: We Hate Net Neutrality, but We Love to S-p-a-m!
[ For some readers, this may be a second copy of this item. The
first version was rejected as spam by some *major* mail systems
(including Gmail) -- ironic, given the topic. It appears that the
subject line, possibly combined with my simply including the name
of the spam sending service within the body of my essay, triggered
this behavior -- though the ramifications of that will have to wait
for another day. For now, I have "encoded" the subject and name
below -- let's see how that works. -- Lauren ]
Wall Street Journal: We Hate Net Neutrality, but We Love to S-p-a-m!
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000616.html
Greetings. I always try to separate the staff of news organizations
from their managements. In poll surveys at least, it seems popular
for the public to berate reporters. But as far as my own experiences
go, most reporters that I've dealt with, whether in print, radio, or
television, are hard workers who try quite diligently to maintain a
reasonable balance in reports, while explaining technical topics as
clearly as possible -- the latter a particularly tough task when
writing for non-technical, mainstream media outlets.
But while there are lots of top-notch reporters out there, that
doesn't mean that their managements aren't sometimes blind as bats.
There are various examples of this, but today I'd like to concentrate
on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which has provided a particularly
egregious case in point.
A couple of days ago, the WSJ published an editorial blasting the new
FCC moves on Network Neutrality and Transparency, and explicitly
suggesting that Net Neutrality is largely a plot for "Internet
Socialism" being bankrolled and orchestrated by Google
( http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg02025.html ).
This is utter and complete bull, but the WSJ is welcome to their
opinion, of course.
But at the same time that they're weaving their anti-neutrality
fantasies about Google, the WSJ has been actively participating in a
massive spamming campaign for Wall Street Journal Online that is
flooding mailboxes all over the Net.
These WSJ spams have been increasing in quantity here for some time,
but after receiving about 20 of them this morning that slipped through
my spam filters, it's obvious that the WSJ is rising rapidly toward
the top of the spamming offense list.
Just to be clear, I don't have a "preexisting relationship" with the
WSJ. I don't receive their paper edition. I don't have an account on
their Web site. Their spams are coming in to all manner of account
names here, some of which have only previously been used in very
limited contexts on specific non-WSJ-affiliated Web sites.
The actual spams are delivered from c-o-n-c-u-r-r-e-n-t-l-i-n-k-s.net.
While the exact relationship between that site and the WSJ proper is
difficult to discern from the outside, I have established that the
included links appear to pass through a WSJ-domain ordering-related
site.
I don't much care if these WSJ spams are approved directly by the WSJ
or are the idea of some third-party vendor -- since as far as I'm
concerned the fact that the WSJ is accepting orders resulting from
this garbage makes the WSJ complicit in the spamming itself.
The sensibilities of Wall Street Journal management when it comes to
the Internet are very clear. While they ludicrously consider Net
Neutrality -- a concept that will well serve the vast majority of the
Internet's users -- to be a socialist Google plot, the WSJ
simultaneously has endorsed through their actions one of the worst,
wasteful, annoying, and frequently criminal uses of the Net -- spam.
There's one thing that we can say for sure about the Journal's
management these days -- at least they're being consistent.
"Qui tacet consentire."
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein