Statement of purpose:                                                                                                                        back
  THE EVENTUAL ELIMINATION OF FLAME SPAMMING (FLAMMING)
 
.    FSORG.org's  FIRST INTERNET CAVEAT EMPTOR
  THE INTERNET IS AN INHERENTLY BIASED and LAWLESS MEDIUM !!
     The businesses and individuals using it are not likely to guide the nature of
     their website content to detract from their own benefit.  With Flame Spammers
     it's even worse: they will amplify the bias within their web content and emails
     to whatever extent they feel it takes to enhance the damage they cause their
     victims, even impersonating them and engaging in every conceivable form
     of cyber terrorism and cyber fraud, in certain cases, even in the name of the victim...

Why we exist: FlameSpam.Org ("FSORG.org") is an anti-cyber-terrorism website, the homesite for FSORG and source page for the anti-cyber-terrorism bulletin known as: the FSORG LIST.  FSORG is a not-for-profit organization committed to the provision of personal rights protection means for the Internet.

FLAMMERS ("Flame Spammers") are individuals or organizations that exploit and/or engage in acts of Flame Spamming for the purposes of committing acts of cyber-terrorism, harassment, anti-competition, extortion or other such harm causing behavior. Flame Spamming is further defined and explained below.

FSORG was founded for the purposes of providing a public forum for alleged victims of FLAMMING to identify their attackers and to take steps to protect themselves.  The current version of the FSORG website is designed to provide those who've been allegedly victimized by various acts of alleged Flame Spam Cyber terror attack(s), to publish the alleged URL of the website purportedly responsible, and to further publish the identity of those exploiting that URL.

FSORG believes that alleged victims, by publishing identifying information such as is readily available in the public sector or from private sources about that URL, may provide helpful information to others having anything to do with the published URL.  This, FSORG believes, could contribute to a ready resolution of differences, or could serve as a deterrent to said FLAMMERS from continuing to FLAM.  FSORG believes that FLAMMING is a virulent misuse of both the internet and the notions of protected freedom of speech.

FSORG also intends to to make tools available to alleged victims of FLAMMING, as well as to provide for various degrees of referral to legal and/or statutory support that can help alleged victims protect themselves from experiencing further violation of their legal and other rights.

FSORG believes that FLAM CYBER-TERRORISM ("FLAMMING") is one of the most seditious and vile means used by individuals who are intent upon taking unfair advantage of the Internet as a means to engage in Cyber Terrorism or even open warfare.  FLAM CYBER-TERRORISM rests on the belief by FLAMMERS that their speech is protected and their identities private under the 1st and 4th Amendments to the United States Constitution and other law. 

However, while it may be that free speech is protected by the 1st Amendment, it is also true that an individual has the right to confront his/her accuser, which in the case of the Internet, may be a very difficult thing to do.  We believe that FLAMMING falls into an area of "not protected" speech. It's intent is inherently designed to mislead the public about, cause harm to and ultimately terrorize the parties about whom have been written. 

Accordingly, FSORG contends that there is virtually no opportunity for an individual to attain equal opportunity and to respond reasonably equally to FLAMMING attacks. Since the Internet is only able to provide opportunity to publicize through the auspices of for-profit commercial businesses called "search engines" (which themselves are dominated by economic interests that prevent individuals of lesser financial means from obtaining sufficient exposure), high cost public portals such as MSN, AOL and YAHOO, and by obtaining Press Coverage, which is exceedingly difficult, FSORG believes that when targeted by FLAMMING, a victim is able to cite "FLAMMING as a form of Not-Protected Speech.  The reason: because of limits on the Victim's ability to respond.

In other words: since the only ability a victim of FLAMMING may have is to reply on an a website that he or she must purchase advertising for on a search engine or portal, the victim is placed AT A SEVERE DISADVANTAGE.  Even if they publish a response, it may not be viewed by the public at all, as the public would have no way of finding it, normally, unless that victim were already a Public Figure with a highly trafficked website of his own, which is not as common as one may think, particularly uncommon in the case of commercial businesses and non-celebrities. 

Furthermore, since a victim might have to respond within a forum controlled by the party doing the FLAMMING (such as on a bulletin board under the FLAMMER's control) or on a website of the victim's own making that has nearly no public traffic visiting it, there exists a fundamental inequity, FSORG believes same points out an inherent problem with the design of the Internet: unlike the Town Square, a victim of Flamming can not go around raising his or her voice in the same medium as the Flammer and even if he could, the typical Flammer might impersonate him and publish inappropriate content in the victim's name, or would not likely be trustworthy enough, under the circumstances to give "Equal Opportunity" to his or her victims.
 
.    FSORG.org's  SECOND INTERNET CAVEAT EMPTOR
  THE INTERNET IS AN INHERENTLY BIASED and LAWLESS MEDIUM !!
    Individuals using it are very likely to guide the nature and tone of their website,
    emails and chat content to the detriment of their perceived competitor or opponent.
    When that harm is based on unacceptable norms of behavior, then it ceases being
    ordinary competition and often becomes abuse, harassment, cyber terrorism or worse.
    In that case, it is considered FLAME SPAMMING, or FLAMMING for short. And their
    competitor or opponent becomes a "Victim of FLAMMING".

Time and time again, the fundamental bias of the party who owns a website has determined the course of the content found on it's URL, there are several billion examples of this on the Internet right now. This fundamental untrustworthiness of a Flame Spammer, coupled to the extraordinary effort it takes to get any visibility on the Internet, short of paying a small fortune to an already popular, heavily trafficked website in order to share their visibility, is the fundamental flaw in present notions of Freedom of Speech when used as a tool to incur damage upon a third party.  Such allows a popular and broadly trafficked passage within the web to be used by FLAMMERS to attack a person in such a way that the person is normally unable to defend themselves and their reputation against said FLAMMING, since they have no forum to respond in their own defense within that is visible enough to capture enough of the viewing audience who have been given the FLAME SPAM ATTACK CONTENT.  Any notion of due process can be utterly wasted by the web, when a FLAMMER uses it to engage in this kind of effort.

FSORG believes this problem constitutes one of the basic flaws of the notions governing Internet Freedom of Speech and it's protection, which must be responded to in some manner: the rather strongly one sided nature of publication associated with the Web. To offset that, we believe it is a responsible act for FSORG to provide the appropriate vehicle for response by victims, responses to those who would FLAME SPAM in the form of identifying the nature of the attack upon the victim. Flame Spam attacks are not just expressions of a public opinion "in the Town Square", to quote the constitutional lawyers, that can in turn be responded to by a public debate before the same audience between the parties to the issue. 

The notion of "public debate" on the internet is disjointed by various kinds of architectural disconnects in the fabric of it's very nature, since the ability of the victim to gain a public podium to even respond to a FLAME SPAM ATTACK can be extraordinarily hampered. FSORG believes that this fundamental and overwhelming power is used strategically by FLAME SPAMMERS to engage in Cyber terrorism. In fact, we believe that a number of Flame Spammers derive personal pleasure by the amplification of their sense of power and importance in invalidating a victim using a widespread campaign of cyber terror in the form of FLAME SPAM.

As a result of our conclusions and the inference one can derive, we believe that FLAME SPAMMING itself could be considered a crime of one person or business entity engaging in the intentional affliction of reputational demise of another for personal gain or pleasure. We therefore conclude that such is an affront to Public Safety and National Security.  As such, such cases must be documented so that they may be tracked, studied and public safety once again attained, or the Internet will never be safe enough for the purposes it was intended.

The individuals involved in Flame Spamming need be documented for the sake of determining causality, accountability and for the taking of steps to protect society from a potentially lethal idiosyncrasy of the Internet. We note that a natural extension to this would be any major business dominant in it's field, using FLAME SPAMMING as a technique for destroying competition.  Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Intel, AOL, Standard Oil and many, many others have faced anti-Trust prosecution by the US Department of Justice for engaging in illegal misconduct designed to destroy competition and competitors. It has occurred to FSORG that use of FLAME SPAMMING could become epidemic if major corporations resort to it, in ways that were used during the heyday of Trust building during the 20th Century when companies set up shop next door to competitors, used their names and impersonated them, engaged in bullying of their customers as if them, harassed their reputation and manipulated local press to record it all as irresponsibility on the part of the poor victim.  In fact, they may already be using FLAMMING as a weapon against competition and to insure market domination.
 
.    FSORG.org's  FINAL INTERNET CAVEAT EMPTOR
  THE INTERNET IS AN INHERENTLY BIASED and LAWLESS MEDIUM !!
    Victims of FLAME SPAM deserve legal protection, the right to confront their
    accuser, and the right to properly rebut false allegations. The modern day
    Internet does not inherently provide these remedies.  Accordingly, FSORG.org
    intends to correct that inherent flaw in the Internet's design by providing a medium
    for publication, and tools that an individual can use to obtain legal protection.

NOTE: While the law clearly has jurisdiction over the user of the Internet, the complexity of policing well over 4 Billion Websites of hundreds, even thousands, of web pages and every individual instance of behavioral inequity is beyond the capability of the Courts and the legal authorities. That is what FSORG.org means by "lawless"...
 
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Copyright 2003 FSORG.org, FLAMESPAM.org.  All Rights Reserved.  Site is subject to change without notice.
FSORG is not responsible for the information provided by any third party posted to it's mailing list, nor the lists of same it may compile and disseminate. The function of FSORG is strictly clerical and administrative. In the event any inappropriate behavior is directed toward FSORG, counsel shall be authorized to take appropriate legal steps. The terms "FLAM", "FLAME SPAM" and "FLAMMING" were coined by FSORG in 2003, and are hereby reserved as service marks of the FlameSpam.org.