Rainmaker Redux XIV:

        To:
                Escape Account Abuse Tracker

Dear Friends,

The undersigned represent radsoft.net, the online organ for Radsoft
Laboratories and Radsoft International, organizations for software
developers, network and system administrators, and IT trainers. Although
the website offers software for purchase for the Microsoft Windows
environments, its primary purpose is the education of software developer
and end user alike. The undersigned have been involved in IT education
throughout the United States and Europe since 1966, and we take pride in
our efforts in the past four years to bring a portion of this expertise
online. Our efforts are further complemented by accredited authorities
from around the world, bringing the total expertise offered to several
hundred years of computing science research, training experience,
network and system administration, and software development, with and
for corporations such as LM Ericsson, Volvo, British Aerospace, General
Electric, the governments of and major banks in several European
countries, and IBM.

We receive a great deal of mail from 'Windows users with woes': people
invariably running Windows 95 or Windows 98 who run into trouble with
those operating environments. We also receive a great deal of mail
asking us to inspect software products. We take great pride in the kudos
given us by major corporations everywhere - IBM, DEC, Compaq, even
Microsoft - for the way we selflessly deal with these matters.

One of the most recurring misinterpretations of the Windows 9x
environment is that although it leaks memory, and considerable amounts
from time to time, that these memory leaks can be stopped short of
re-booting the computer. We have seen the 'rainmaker' products that
promise to stop these leaks come and go, and noticed the same lack of
concrete results with each of them. We have even published articles
online in an attempt to make people understand why no auxiliary utility
can succeed, even in the short run, in preventing this inevitability.

It was recently brought to our attention that one of your Internet
service subscribers has been offering yet another utility claiming to
cure memory ills in Windows. We were informed (and thereafter verified
ourselves) that the web page for this product was submitted to the major
search engines of the Internet as late as April of this year. We were
asked to scrutinize this program. We agreed to do so. The investigation
was further carried out with an additional three organizations in the
US.

Our investigation found that:

1. Although the program will run on Windows of today, it cannot
accomplish a thing, and it will 'run' only because Windows can still
establish an Intel virtual DOS machine for it. Note that this will go
unnoticed by the unwitting end user, and note as well that the author
must be aware of this condition.

2. The author makes no disclaimer anywhere on site that this is the
case. Unwitting end users visiting his site and downloading his product
will not understand the above, but will assume that the product is a
product for their Windows environment, when such is not the case. The
author is completely aware of this as well. Even upon use, the unwitting
end user will not discover the true nature of this program, and again,
the author of the program is aware of this condition.

3. But instead of clarifying matters, instead of issuing a disclaimer
that the product will not do a thing on modern Windows platforms, the
author goes into an ambitious techno-jargon spin to attempt to establish
credentials for himself and his product, largely accomplished with
concocted computing science concepts that do not exist and so-called
facts about earlier Windows environments that are simply inaccurate. We
do not object to inaccuracy of facts per se, or even to their deliberate
misrepresentation, nor do we object to the use of techno spins per se;
we only experience alarm at how this will necessarily affect end users
who read it. They cannot be expected to understand or see through such
things, and so they continue to download this product in good faith, and
again the author is completely aware of this condition.

As we are in the business of education, and as we and associated sites
have long been devoted to the education of the Windows user, and as we
are respected for the accuracy of our software reviews, and as we see it
as a very important public service to publish such reviews, especially
when products make false claims or lure unwitting end users, we decided
to probe further into the matter.

We wrote a simple letter to the author of the program, inviting comment.
We pointed out that as developers we could immediately discern what no
end user ever could, as well as implying our alarm that no disclaimer
had been provided to steer the unwitting end user from its use.

What we expected was a civil reply. What we got instead was anything but
civil. It was, in fact, the nastiest letter we have ever received, ever,
or been shown to us by other online authorities. Already we should have
contacted you and called this person's use of your Internet service into
question.

We decided to publish the transcripts of this email exchange, and we
immediately blocked all email from this person on all our email
accounts. We not accept such use of SMTP.

But since then this person has initiated a campaign the likes of which
are rarely, if ever, seen. We have been called 'cyberpunks with a
Hotmail address'; our journalistic integrity has been called into
question and we are categorized as 'fanatics'; and now that we have
demonstrated that when it comes to Windows we really do know what we are
talking about and are not just 'cyberpunks with a Hotmail address', and
when we have been brave enough to expose this product for the benefit of
our readers, we are suddenly 'know-it-alls' instead, and one of the
undersigned has by this person been repeatedly referred to as a
'ringleader'. This is defamatory. It is written by a crazed mind. It
will not be allowed to continue.

And these slanderous claims are sent not to us, but to dozens upon
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of email addresses around the world. And for
every letter sent, this person is guilty of what he himself describes as
an 'arrogant disregard of personal privacy'. The polemics and the
language of this person continue to devolve - it gets nastier for each
day, as the 'warfare' escalates to new heights of insanity. This, dear
friends, is unqualified, unequivocal harassment: it is slander and
character assassination, and it is malicious, and as such, it is highly
questionable on ethical, moral, and - we now contend as well - legal
grounds.

Carefully omitting any references to his own inflammatory email, this
person has mail bombed, among others, the following individuals and
organizations, all in an attempt to discredit and harass us, to cause us
and our colleagues and friends discomfort, to damage our reputations, to
- yes, to silence us:

- Dr. Peter G. Neumann, moderator of the ACM's RISKS Digest. One of the
undersigned is a regular and respected contributor to this moderated
forum. The Association of Computing Machinery is the most venerated
organization of professional computer scientists in the world.

- David Kirschbaum of Simtel.net. The purpose of this letter was to
induce David to harass us. David decided however to remove the software
products of this author from the Simtel archives as the product
description was, in his eyes as well, directly misleading.

- Network Solutions, Inc. The purpose of this letter was to demand that
our domain be revoked.

- Our presence provider. The purpose of this letter was to threaten our
presence provider with a lawsuit on the grounds that they were hosting a
report which was 'slanderous' and included 'stolen copyrighted
material'.

This 'person' has further explained, in an outright declaration of war
sent to the ACM and Simtel.net, that he has systematically combed our
entire website, with over 230 pages of content, for any direct and
indirect references to our colleagues across the globe, and mail bombed
each and every one of them in an attempt to harass both them and us. As
we have colleagues all the way from Bell Laboratories in New Jersey to
Linux Today in Australia, this campaign is on a level which cannot be
described with any word other than 'sick'. Even with our somewhat
considerable knowledge of goings-on on the Internet of today, this would
easily qualify as the most extreme case of malicious use of SMTP ever.

He has further attempted to incite the few friends he has on the net to
systematically mail bomb us and all of the above individuals and
organizations too.

We have not engaged in a war with this person. We have written but one
letter to him, received but one reply, and finally sent the URL to our
review of his 'product'. Perhaps he does not understand this, but he
should: for we do not write or accept such letters, no exceptions. We do
not approve of such behaviour. We have much better things to do, and
much better people to do them with.

We are perhaps guilty only of panache in the face of such a character
attack. We opted to make light of the matter rather than stoop to the
level of questionable mental health of the opposite party.

Neither are we engaged in character assassination, yet we must defend
our own integrity. Our purpose in publishing a report on this software
was to enlighten and educate our readers. We have received and continue
to receive dozens of letters each day thanking us and praising us for
this report.

We are now duty bound to also inform on the efforts by this person to
silence the truth. This person was extremely nasty from the outset, and
continues to grow nastier and nastier. For someone who contends he is a
successfully employed software engineer, he seems to have a lot of time
on his hands for this self-destructive ritual.

Thus: we are being harassed, and you yourselves must draw this
conclusion as well. And any attempt to squelch the truth about this
software, and the manner in which its author reacts to attempts to
accurately report on it, must be regarded not only as harassment, but as
a threat to free speech, something which is guaranteed under the
Constitution of the United States of America, and no doubt by pertinent
legislation in Canada as well.

Any questions of libel, slander, etc. have long ago been resolved. Any
conclusions we ourselves wished to draw about this person are, we
realize now, completely unnecessary: our readers will themselves draw
the same conclusions. In this regard, there does not seem to be much
room for interpretation at all.

The report was never guilty of copyright infringement: no materials were
'stolen' from any website, and nothing within the product package, which
is offered openly on the website, and nothing in the site's actual HTML
pages themselves, put any conditions on quoting from them. If the case
were otherwise, then the search engines of the Internet, which cache
their search results, would be guilty of copyright infringement and of
stealing, and perhaps this person can schedule his next Quixotic attack
against them.

It is quite difficult for that matter to understand how something on a
public website could be regarded as capable of being stolen anyway. We
simply reported on the product, explained for our readers how they were
mislead by its description, and thereafter published the single level of
correspondence we had with this person before we judiciously broke the
correspondence off.

We are now taking this matter to court. We will be making arrangements
with solicitors in Canada to bring lawsuit against this person for
harassment. We shall also bring lawsuit against your corporation if you
allow this person to continue to use his account with you to continue
this harassment.

This letter is simultaneously sent by blind carbon copy to 79
individuals and organizations whom we suspect may have also suffered at
the hands of your subscriber, to our solicitors in London, and to our
London solicitor's contact in Ontario.

Portions of this letter will also be published online.

Best Regards,

Rick Downes
John C Cattelin