A truce has been called in the spam skirmish between Netcom On-Line Communications and Usenet activists who had threatened to impose a "Usenet death penalty" against the Internet service provider.
Notice of the penalty, which was to have taken effect today, was served to the national ISP on 14 February. The company was to be punished for its alleged inaction in dealing with spam pouring into Usenet from its networks.
"We've been putting some [anti-spam measures] in place, and it looks like for all practical purposes, the threat of [the death penalty] will be revoked before the end of today," said Gene Shimshock, Netcom's vice president for marketing.
"I'm fairly confident that it's not going to go down," said Doug Mackall, author of the death penalty declaration and member of the group of "anti-spamnmers" who would have enforced it.
Shimshock said that Netcom is communicating its zero-tolerance spam policy to users. Further, the company is taking operational steps through the use of software which identifies spam behavior and curtails it.
"[Netcom] is not allowing people to basically send hundreds or thousands of postings indiscriminately out to Usenet - it's stopping that behavior," said Shimshock.
Before Netcom was granted its reprieve, Mackall said he was pleased with the apparent effect of the death-penalty threat. He pointed to the latest Usenet spam statistics, which show that the volume of junk email originating from Netcom has already declined sharply.
"If they stay like this, they're going to be a model company," said Mackall. "I'm very happy - this is how it's supposed to work," he said.
