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eye WEEKLY                                            December 22 1994
Toronto's arts newspaper                      .....free every Thursday
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EYE.NET                                                        EYE.NET

                             SCAMTA CLAUS
                Registering Xmas With Jolly St. InterNic

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL


Ho ho ho and fuck off already.

eye.NET has received almost a dozen press releases from different
net.Santas. Are we not yet all weary of this proliferation of Santas
stinkin' up the net? Every time you turn around, one more online
"Santa" is pleading altruism and a humanitarian desire to Help The
Children.

Many are marketing scams.

Suggesting Santa is "noncommercial" is ridiculous. Santa's the symbol
of crass consumerism -- overfed parent figure doling out store-bought
products. O Holy Night. Yee-haw.

But the underhanded nature of some of these net.Santas irks more than a
few -- including Karen Kostaszek (schoolnet-admin@carleton.ca),
director of the SchoolNet Support Group and president of Ingenia
Communications. Ingenia is the independent consulting firm that pitched
the idea of SchoolNet to Industry Canada about two years ago. SchoolNet
has a slew of newsgroups in the can.* hierarchy -- things like
can.schoolnet.math, etc.

Kostaszek wrote email recently: "As you may be aware, many Santas have
recently appeared on-line. We have uncovered the fact that some are
actually promoting the sale of `I emailed Santa' buttons, and that kids
that send messages to Santa get the advertising before they get a reply
(if they get a reply)." It started when an Ottawa primary school
teacher wanted a class to write email to Santa. The CBC brought a
camera to film the event for an O-Brave-New-World story. Teach called
SchoolNet for a Santa email address to write and was given
santa@northpole.net -- which had been mentioned in the Ottawa Citizen.

Teach soon called SchoolNet back, angry. Upon sending Santa email, each
kid received the exact same automated reply from "elf@northpole.net" --
saying something like, "Ya, Santa got your letter, but he can't answer
right now 'cause he's out loading the sleigh." Mr. Elf then tries to
sell the kid a "commemorative button" proclaiming "I emailed Santa" --
$5 for the first button, $3 for each extra. VISA, cheque or money order
accepted.

                        KAREN THE CARPET BOMBER 

Do a "whois" search on "northpole.net" and you'll find it's
administrated by a Robert C. Hall (rob@intacc.net) and gives you an
Ottawa phone number.

Hall says his company, NorthPole Productions, has been overwhelmed with
email and has no choice but to use automated replies, "because we are
now receiving over 2,000 messages per day for Santa." So when will Hall
have time to deliver personal replies? April? Meanwhile, why not flog
some merchandise, right?

"We get really frustrated when we are trying hard to promote
educational networking and something like this happens," Kostaszek told
eye in a phone interview. "Teachers are wary of getting on the net to
begin with, then they find this kind of thing. It destroys our whole
initiative."

Kostaszek was so pissed off at this blatant front for direct sales to
children she suggested people might want to mailbomb northpole.net .

Mailbombing is where you send scads of email (usually just junk files)
to an address, hopefully choking the target. If thousands of people
sent a meg or two of garbage info to santa@northpole.org, that would
get the attention of the recipient. It's grassroots activism and worked
well against net.sociopaths Canter & Siegel -- the carpet bombing
crashed the host system so many times the system deleted C&S's account
permanently: mission accomplished.

Business culture is used to callous TV-style advertising -- clubbing
people over the head remorselessly, and they can't do a damn thing in
retaliation. On the net, the public can mount "from-below" campaigns
and send thousands of angry letters. You're on an equal footing with
business and business better listen because the public can hit back
hard. And after decades of being helpless, there's a lot of pent-up
anger waiting to be tapped.

Kostaszek is cognizant of the fact shopping mall Santas are also
commercial shills, like santa@northpole.org . We all know that, which
is the point. We know what we're getting from mall Santas. Email Santas
are new and parents should know their kids are being directly marketed
to by "elves." Next year, SchoolNet might approach Canada Post about
providing their traditional Santa service on- line. "That way, everyone
can keep their Santa services, but users have a choice of a
noncommercial forum for sending email to Santa," Kostaszek says.

                       THE REAL SANTA'S NAME IS JEF 

As far as I'm concerned the real Santa has been on the net for years
and his real name is netter Jef Poskanzer, founder of the First Church
of Santaism (which was featured in last year's Rolling eye).

The First Church of Santaism practises two fundamental rituals:
exchanging presents and laughing at Satanists who can't spell. Accept
no substitutes. Read newsgroup alt.religion.santaism for heated
discussions of fundamental First Church dogma. Currently, debate rages
over the important theological question: "Does Santa have a penis?"

"Anastasia H Addams" (addams@post.its.mcw.edu) posted on Dec. 5: "Santa
does have a penis. The whole sliding down the chimney to leave gifts is
a symbol. You know, vagina, chimney, presents, sperm. He probably has a
really big one and I bet he shaves his pubic hair."


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