My Response To The Spammers' Threats

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 02:18:05
To: khskllp@aol.com
From: Christopher Flaherty <chrisf@pipeline.com>
Subject: Re: Cease And Desist Flaming
Cc: webmaster@compuserve.com, abuse@compuserve.com, abuse@aol.com, webmaster@sailahead.com, abuse@mindspring.com, abuse@uu.net, postmaster@www.kia.co.kr, postmaster@sailahead.com, postmaster@samsung.com
X-Attachments: C:\PIPEPLUS\DOWNLOAD\CHRIS\THREAT.TXT; C:\PIPEPLUS\DOWNLOAD\CHRIS\THREAT02.TXT;

I would like all the postmasters involved to take a good look at the headers and the content of all the messages I have enclosed in my attachments--and especially within the message immediately below. The sender of that message insists that they have a legal right to spam, saying that "spamming is a protected activity under the laws of free speech," which no doubt contradicts the user agreements of every single domain which I am addressing.

Apparently, I am being accused of "inflammatory internet hacking, telephone hacking, flaming, jamming, and other illegal activities," when all I have done is reply to unsolicited spam which I did not ask to receive in my mailbox. I am being accused of "internet terrorism," when all I did was tell the alleged senders how much I despised receiving their unsolicited mail in the first place.

For the record, I have not engaged in any of the above "illegal activities" or so-called "internet terrorism" of which I am accused. All I have done is reply to unsolicited email, which the Supreme Court has recently affirmed that I have every right to do, according to the First Amendment. In contrast, however, there are at least 3 bills being considered by Congress which would create harsh penalties for unsolicited commercial email--a.k.a. spam. Perhaps the sender of the email below should be more concerned with that than with threatening legal action.

In addition, I also suspect that the email below is forged, since the "Return-Path," "Reply-To," and "Authenticated Sender" addresses are all different ("Return-Path: "; "Reply-To: khskllp@aol.com"; "Comments: Authenticated sender is "), and the "To:" line is an obviously fake address ("To: suspected_flamer@somewhereincyberspace.com"), indicating that this was just a bulk mailing, and not a specific warning to me personally. I should think that a genuine lawyer would not go through so much trouble to forge their headers. Instead, I believe this is an attempt to get people like me--people who have complained about spam in the past--to stop complaining about spam in the future, with the threat of legal action to make it seem more authentic. This, and the original spam, I think, is the real internet terrorism.

I invite all the postmasters to carefully investigate my attached email and the sender of the "Cease And Desist" notice. I don't like being threatened, and I'm sure all the ISP's involved (as well as Samsung) don't like their names being dragged through the mud.

Attached are 2 .txt files, each documenting the correspondances which resulted from my receipt of unsolicited email which was traced back to sailahead.com in some form.

Thank you for your attention,

Christopher Flaherty
chrisf@pipeline.com

View the original threat once again to refresh your memory.

View the spam from "Bible Mysteries" and my replies to it here.

View the spam from "The Sailahead Mall" and my replies to it here.

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