GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT; DISTRIBUTE FREELY

	Greetings.  We are NuPrometheus, a loose organization of
highly-skilled technicians in the computing field.  Our name was
deliberately chosen so as to create confusion between us and the
organization back in 1989 that claimed to have a copy of the Apple System
7 source code.

	As you are no doubt aware, unscrupulous individuals and
organizations have subjected the world-wide Internet to considerable attack
and damage as a result of unsolicited commercial email and newsgroup
postings (colloquially known as "spam").  The Usenet, a once-valuable and
thriving (if anarchic) resource for free expression and exchange of ideas
has been all but destroyed by a vanishingly small percentage of unethical
individuals who have crushed all meaningful discourse beneath megabytes of
their unwanted solicitations.  Even electronic mail, a profoundly useful
tool, has been seriously devalued by the mass distribution of ads for
snake oil and illegal pyramid schemes.

	The people responsible for these abuses of network resources
persistently wave the United States' First Amendment in defense of their
activities.  Yet any degree of inquiry will reveal that these individuals
care about the First Amendment precisely to the extent, and no further, that
it permits them to clog the network with their unwanted material.

	Let us be extremely clear on this point:  The material they have to
distribute is universally unwanted.  Anyone making claims to the contrary
is A) lying, and B) trying to sell you spamming services/software.
All responsible ISPs have adopted policies forbidding the dissemination
of spam.  Network administrators worldwide are spending thousands of
man-hours and considerable sums of money closing down their mail relays,
due to mail server hijacking by spammers.

	The desire and intent of the community is clear:  Spam is not wanted
and not tolerated.  Yet, despite this desire -- a desire that has by no means
been kept secret -- these individuals continue to evade technical barriers,
violate the contracts governing their terms of service, and antagonize
millions of people the world over.  They have amply demonstrated by their
behavior that the wishes of the Internet community are not important
to them, and that they will continue to bombard the network with their
material (under the auspices of "free speech").  Though the United States
legislature is considering some new laws intended to curb this activity,
there are as yet no remedies at law by which these unethical people
may be stopped.  It is also unclear how U.S. laws will affect behavior
outside their borders.

	In the interests of preserving the network as a medium of
unfettered communication between individuals, we have therefore taken
matters in to our own hands.

	We at NuPrometheus have developed technology by which we may
remotely disable a site that attempts to spam the Net.  This technology
operates in a manner similar to a computer "virus."  The current incarnation
of this technology may be delivered to any Windows-based system.  Once
delivered, our technology seeks out and destroys all spam and spam-related
programs and files on the system.  It then proceeds to corrupt several
vital system files, and finally the structure of the disk filesystem itself.
The result is an unbootable, unrecoverable machine.

	Our goal in creating this technology was to destroy any economic
advantage a spammer might enjoy from spamming the net.  To that end, we make
a deliberate search for, and corrupt, files of the following types (note:
this list is not exhaustive):
	o Mailing list files
	o Quicken files
	o MS Excel files
	o MS Access files
	o Dial-Up Networking configuration files
	o The system registry (and copies thereof)
	o Spamming software executable files

	Note that the above file types are corrupted before the disk
filesystem itself is corrupted.  Thus, any disk repair done will result in
the recovery of a corrupted file.
	
	We have secured copies of all the latest available versions of
popular spamming software, in addition to common and up-to-date releases of
Windows, anti-viral, and disk recovery software.  We have thoroughly analyzed
their operation, and while we have not managed fool-proof defenses against
all anti-viral software, the laughable security prevalent on most Windows
machines assures us that most systems on which we introduce the technology
will succumb quite readily.

	So, if you are a spammer, please take note:  We are escalating the
issue, and your systems and files are now in jeopardy.  If you persist in
unwanted, unsanctioned, destructive use of the Internet, YOUR SYSTEM WILL BE
IDENTIFIED AND DISABLED.

   -->>                     UNDERSTAND CLEARLY:                    <<--
   -->> SPAMMING THE NET WILL RESULT IN SWIFT AND FIRM PUNISHMENT, <<--
   -->>                   TO YOUR SOLE DETRIMENT.                  <<--

	Windows-NT will not save you.  The latest Microsoft service packs
will not save you.  Norton will not save you.  Your firewall won't save
you.  Packet monitoring will not save you.  Anti-viral software probably
won't save you.  Even regular system backups may not even save you.
Your system will be destroyed, your sales contacts lost, all accounting
records erased, and you will have to spend considerable time as you
attempt to reinstall Windows.

	Is it worth it?  Is it worth losing all that time, all that money?
Can you afford to lose your personal data?  Do you want to spend at
least a week trying to reinstall your software?  If your answer is no,
then we are offering you but a single option:

			    DO NOT SPAM THE NET.

	You may rant.  You may rail.  You may raise Holy Hell.	You may
observe what we are doing is illegal.  If this is the case, we cordially
invite you to go lump it.  Your irresponsible, aggressively anti-social
behavior has left us no other course of effective action.  By your
consistent, willful destruction of Internet resources, you have forfeited
any right to anything remotely approaching civilized behavior (particularly
in light of the fact that you are unwilling to accord such behavior to the
rest of the community).  Your transparent protestations of engaging in
"free speech" are meritless.  We value the community that has developed
in and around the Internet, and we will no longer tolerate its blind,
conscienceless destruction for meager economic gain.

	The intent and will of the community is clear, by its words and
by its actions:

			    DO NOT SPAM THE NET.

	Until effective legislative solutions are in place, we intend to
enforce the will of the community.  We sincerely regret our methods of
enforcement are destructive.  We believe, however, that they will be an
effective deterrent once news of our enforcement activities starts
spreading.

	We are not guided by content.  We will just as swiftly disable a
site distributing spam promoting sexually explicit CD-ROMs as we will a
site distributing spam promoting Bibles.

	We are not anti-commerce.  Indeed, all of us at NuPrometheus have
used the Net to purchase goods and services, from software to new cars.
We invite and encourage entrepreneurs and long-established companies
alike to set up shop on the Net, in the form of Web sites, to announce and
make available their goods and services.  What the community objects to,
and what we will work to stop, is unsolicited mass-distributed email, and
mass postings to Usenet newsgroups.  They are not, and never have been,
a legitimate form of network use or product promotion.

	If you are a businessperson doing business on the Internet, and
you are concerned about how our enforcement of community standards might
affect your business, you need only observe one rule to remain secure
against disaster:

			    DO NOT SPAM THE NET.

	That's all there is to it!  If you don't spam the net, then you
aren't breaking the community's rules, and we will not become involved.
That is our promise to you, and to the entire Internet community:  Our
technology will be directed only at individuals and organizations who spam
the Net, transgressing the clear will of the Internet community.

	Normal users, please take note:  Our technology is quite different
from most viruses, which attempt to proliferate themselves from machine to
machine before wreaking havoc.  Our technology is targeted; it is delivered
to a single machine, and from there it makes no direct attempt to infect
other machines.  We select the machine to be disabled, and our selection
criteria are based solely on spamming activity.  (No, we will not make
this technology available to third parties.  It is a dangerous tool,
and we don't trust anyone else to use it responsibly.)

	In all honesty, we cannot take all the credit for this creation.  We
really must extend our thanks to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), without whose
renowned and conspicuous lack of engineering competence there would have
been far fewer bugs and gaping security holes to exploit, and our job
would have been considerably more difficult.

	We are not suicidal zealots.  We are movitivated by our fervent
desire to protect the community from rapacious exploitation and destruction.
We value our life and liberty quite highly, and do not wish to risk
losing them.  We therefore sincerely hope commercial interests will take
our declaration seriously, and our technology will never have to be deployed.

	Thank you for your attention.

The members of NuPrometheus