The Lumber Cartel was a facetious

conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

popularized on

USENET Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

that claimed

anti-spam Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam (unsolicited bulk email). No technique is a complete solution to the spam problem, and each has trade-offs between incorrectly rejecting legitimate email ( false positives) as opposed ...

mers were secretly paid agents of lumber companies. In November 1997, a participant on

news.admin.net-abuse.email news.admin.net-abuse.email (sometimes abbreviated nanae or n.a.n-a.e, and often incorrectly spelled with a hyphen in "email") is a Usenet newsgroup devoted to discussion of the abuse of email systems, specifically through E-mail spam, email spam ...

posted an essay to the newsgroup. The essay described a

: The reasoning provided in the essay was that certain companies first destroy forests and make

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses, Feces#Other uses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is dra ...

out of them, which is in turn used to send

bulk mail Bulk mail broadly refers to mail that is mailed and processed in bulk at reduced rates. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for advertising mail. The United States Postal Service (USPS) defines bulk mail broadly as "quantities of mail prepar ...

. Since sending

e-mail spam Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, refers to unsolicited messages sent in bulk via email. The term originates from a Monty Python sketch, where the name of a canned meat product, "Spam," is used repetitively, m ...

does not use paper at all, the essay argued, the lumber companies would want to stop it before it would surpass paper-based bulk mailing, and consequently only those in the pay of the lumber companies would be anti-spam. The rationale was based in

disclaimer A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship. In contrast to other terms for legally operative langua ...

s in certain spam messages that they were using electronic means in order to save paper. The joke eventually led to a club and numerous

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

websites, most of which have long since disappeared. Gatherings of anti-spammers on Usenet began to ridicule proponents of this theory, and many participants in

chose to dub themselves as members of "the Lumber Cartel" in their

signature A signature (; from , "to sign") is a depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" or other mark that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. Signatures are often, but not always, Handwriting, handwritt ...

s, followed immediately by the acronymic disclaimer "TinLC" (There is no Lumber Cartel), reminiscent of the There Is No Cabal catchphrase. People were able to register with a website about the Lumber Cartel and were given a sequential membership number. That was added to email sig files in

and used on personal websites. There was no verification or requirement to receive the membership number.

References

External links

How the Lumber Cartel startedThe Canadian Branch of the Lumber Cartel (local 42)The Netherlands Lumber CartelThe United Kingdom Lumber Cartel in Craggy Island
{dead link, date=December 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
The ZhongGuo (China) Lumber Cartel, local 88
* The

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab ...

:
Lumber Cartel

Glossary at the Abusive Hosts Blocklist
at

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

Gambling Magazine's 1999 article on spam, mentioning the Lumber CartelThe Lumber Cartel's DNS-based blackhole listThe Lumber Cartel's "Offishul" page.
Email Spamming Usenet Internet hoaxes Satirical conspiracy theories Timber industry Internet memes introduced in 1997

See also

References

External links