Stupid Media Watch: Self-Important Windbags Get Spam Blocked

The San Jose Mercury News last week ran an insufferable article describing how Comcast blacklisted e-mail from the oh-so important members of the online community The WELL.

Get a load of this:

“A decade before Microsoft released the first version of its Internet Explorer browser and nearly a generation before MySpace, The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, otherwise known as The WELL, was the place to be on the Internet,” the insufferable article began.

“It was ‘the Park Place of e-mail addresses,’ according to John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a WELL user,” the insufferable article added.

“But to Comcast, e-mails forwarded from The WELL, now owned by Salon.com, are spam. The country’s largest provider of cable and high-speed Internet added The WELL to its e-mail blacklist Sunday afternoon, blocking e-mails from the renowned online community of about 4,000 members,” the insufferable article continued.

To get an idea of what the folks at The WELL think of themselves, check out the following copy from its “about” section:

“The WELL is a cherished and acclaimed destination for conversation and discussion. For twenty years it has captivated intelligent, creative people. It is widely known as the primordial ooze where the online community movement was born — where Howard Rheingold first coined the term ‘virtual community.’

“Now run by Salon Media Group, independent publishers of the ground-breaking Salon.com online news magazine, The WELL continues to cast a long cultural shadow. For many people it’s the place you aren’t quite sure you’ve heard of, but may just wish you had. For members, it’s a place to come up with the next interesting thing and a way to live.”

What? What was that? Oh. Sorry. We dozed off for a second there.

How dare Comcast block spam to its members from such an important group of self-proclaimed brilliant thinkers. Didn’t the Grateful Dead solve cold fusion? Oh, wait. We forgot. That was the band whose music we realized really sucked after we came down from our last acid trip in 1977.

Meanwhile, Comcast representative Jeanne Russo said the company has a three-strikes policy before it blocks incoming e-mail from any organization.

Apparently, spammers have been using e-mail forwarding services such as one offered by The WELL to get past inbox providers’ spam filters.

Russo wouldn’t say how much, but said a lot of spam was coming from The WELL’s forwarding service. According to Comcast, this was the fourth time The WELL had been flagged for spam.

Comcast has a telephone number for e-mailers who believe their messages are being unfairly blocked. A message on that phone number directs callers to an online form at ComcastSupport.com/RBL. Comcast responds to the form within 24 hours, according to Russo.

“We work with companies every day on this,” she said.

Russo said all technicians at any blocked company have to do is call the broadband provider in good faith and say they’re working on the problem and Comcast will lift the block for a month.

As of this writing last week, the techies over at Solon.com had so far failed to do so and, as a result, e-mail from The WELL remained blocked at Comcast, she said.

“We just need some kind of assurance in good faith that they will filter their mail,” she said. “Our first responsibility is to our 10 million customers.”

According to the insufferable article in the San Jose Mercury News, Gail Ann Williams, director of communities as Salon.com, said: “They don’t understand what is going on. They are not paying attention. I would love to have someone to talk to.”

And say what? “We’re really important so you shouldn’t block all that spam coming from our forwarding service?”

Williams also said she was aware of one other incident where Comcast blocked The WELL’s e-mail and said that The WELL got off the blacklist after a member who was also a “high-profile journalist” contacted Comcast, according to the insufferable article in the San Jose Mercury News.

Set aside the fact that a journalist using press credentials to get special service is unethical, the idea that Comcast would loosen its spam-blocking policy because some self-important gasbag reporter called is asinine.

Message to The WELL. Please get over yourselves. Comcast says you’ve got a spam problem. Stop whining and fix it.