Lumber Cartel

Lumber Cartel

The Lumber Cartel was a facetious conspiracy theory popularized on USENET that claimed anti-spammers were secretly paid agents of lumber companies.cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=kUp6p5P8waoC&pg=PA109&dq=lumber.cartel+spam&sig=_mVXjVzCIL_Kea1ltz3sKTj4qGU
title=Spam Wars: Our Last Best Chance to Defeat Spammers, Scammers, and Hackers
author=Danny Goodman
year=2004
publisher=SelectBooks
isbn=1590790634]

In November 1997, a participant on news.admin.net-abuse.email posted an essay to the newsgroup. The essay described a conspiracy theory:

The reasoning provided in the essay was that certain companies first destroy forests and make paper out of them, which is in turn used to send bulk mail. Since sending e-mail spam doesn't use paper at all, the essay argued, the lumber companies would want to stop it before it would surpass paper-based bulk mailing, and consequently only those in the pay of the lumber companies would be anti-spam.

The rationale was based in disclaimers in certain spam messages that they were using electronic means in order to save paper. The joke eventually led to a club and numerous parody websites, most of which have long since disappeared. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=h1K1bIcfhjcC&pg=PA35&dq=lumber.cartel+spam&sig=UDx02J0rzgMDiYrrQ2DDVr00VPk#PPA34,M1
title=Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements
author=Brian S. McWilliams
year=2005
publisher=O'Reilly Media
isbn=0596007329]

Gatherings of anti-spammers on Usenet began to ridicule proponents of this theory, and many participants in news.admin.net-abuse.email chose to dub themselves as members of "the Lumber Cartel" in their signatures, followed immediately by the acronymic disclaimer "TinLC" (There is no Lumber Cartel), reminiscent of the There Is No Cabal catchphrase.

References

External links

* The Jargon File: " [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/L/Lumber-Cartel.html Lumber Cartel] "
* [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35776,00.html Other Ways to Fry Spam] at Wired
* [http://www.ahbl.org/docs/glossary.php Glossary at the Abusive Hosts Blocklist]
* [http://gamblingmagazine.com/articles/34/34-15.htm Gambling Magazine's 1999 article on spam, mentioning the Lumber Cartel]
* [http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/11/12/spam/index2.html Salon.com's 1999 article on anti-spam efforts, mentioning the Lumber Cartel]
* [http://www.dotcomeon.com/cartel.html How the Lumber Cartel started]
* [http://www.lumbercartel.ca/ The Canadian Branch of the Lumber Cartel (local 42)]
* [http://www.lumbercartel.org/ The Lumber Cartel's DNS-based blackhole list]
* [http://bobcathoh.50megs.com/tinLC/ The Lumber Cartel's "Offishul" page.]


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