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Re: The Barkto Incident
I have often heard from lawyers that the Net is a perfect source of rapid
competitive information. That a company can't engage in bad practices -- or
at least can't deliver a bad product -- because the discussions on the Net
will blow them away. Therefore, the story goes, we no longer need consumer
protection laws because the Net will protect us.
This Bartko article provides evidence of a practice that I believe that
I've seen serveral times in the past, from several different companies--the
practice of creating disinformation about a competitor's products. An
allegedly neutral observer (or an alleged customer) writes horror stories
or defenses containing half truths or lies (favorable or negative) about a
product in a way that is designed to convince readers that this is
relatively disinterested testimony (thus it should be treated as credible).
The effect is to make the medium less powerful because it makes it less
trustworthy as a source of information. Any criticism can be turned back
("that never happened to me and I have the same type of system as you") or
even ("hey, do you work for the competition?") and any praise can be
countered ("gee, I bought one of these and it really sucked. Didn't THIS
happen to you? Why aren't you telling people about that?"). The average
reader can't tell truth from lies in such a medium and we end up being
stuck with the need for neutral investigators.
-- Cem
At 07:14 PM 4/10/98 -0400, James Love wrote:
>I didn't know what the Barkto Incident was, but I found this mention of
>it on the web. Jamie
>
>
>jihad, by Joe Barr, September, 1994
>http://www.pjprimer.com/jihad.html
>
>Rick Segal is an overt on-line Microsoft representative who is quite
>active on CompuServe. If you signed onto Will Zachmann's Canopus forum
>about this time last year, you would have seen him there resolutely
>trying to improve Microsoft's image. Today Rick is in self-imposed exile
>from Canopus following an extremely embarrassing episode which has
>become known as 'The Barkto Incident.'
>
>Bartko was an aberration. It's hard to know if the incident was a
>one-time thing or if it is symptomatic of widespread disinformation
>campaigns. Here's what happened. In January of this year, a newcomer
>popped up in the Canopus forum named Steve Barkto. He said he was from
>Oklahoma City and had been an IBM customer for seven years. He wasted
>little time before attacking IBM, Dave Whittle, and your fearless
>reporter over issues we had previously discussed with Rick Segal. This
>Bartko character had a writing style which was so similar to that of
>Rick Segal's that it immediately caught my eye. In fact, I responded to
>his first message to me by asking if he were Segal in drag. Nobody
>(including myself) took my question seriously. At least not at first.
>
>Then one of the forum Sysop's noted that instead of calling from
>Oklahoma City, where he claimed to be from, Bartko's calls were
>originating from the node closest to Microsoft's headquarters in
>Redmond, Washinton. This led Will Zachmann, who 'owns' the forum and is
>Wizop there, to look more closely. What he found was incredible:
>Barkto's account was in fact owned by Microsoft. It had been opened with
>a corporate credit card belonging to Rick Segal. Will sent a letter to
>the Microsoft Board of Directors demanding an investigation and
>explanation, but no explanation has ever been forthcoming. An internal
>Microsoft 'investigation' was conducted, headed up by Mike Maples, an MS
>vice-president who ironically enough hails from Oklahoma City.
>Unfortunately, it appears the investigation was little more than a
>cover-up. The Barkto Incident did not escape the attention of the
>Department of Justice who was winding up their five-year investigation
>of MS when it occured. They flew a special team to Redmond to take
>depositions on the matter just weeks before Microsoft agreed to the
>Consent Decree designed to stop their predatory and anti-competitive
>business practices.
>
>Not long after the Barkto affair, a similar incident occurred on another
>forum on CompuServe. In the LANMAG forum (short for LAN Magazine), a man
>named Bill Diamond showed up one day and began offering to one and all
>his views on varioius networking solutions. Bill's views just happened
>to be highly critical of those from IBM (especially OS/2), and from
>Novell, whose turf MS is trying to crash with their NT and NTAS
>products. But he was very lavish in praise for those from Microsoft.
>More than a couple of the forum regulars noticed this slant to his posts
>and asked him directly if he were a Microsoft employee. No, he said: he
>was an independent consultant. If you're guessing that he wasn't being
>entirely honest, you're right: he was a Microsoft employee.
>
>
>--
>James Love
>Consumer Project on Technology
>P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
>love@cptech.org | http://www.cptech.org
>202.387.8030, fax 202.234.5176
>
_______________________________________________________________________
Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D. Attorney at Law
P.O. Box 580 Santa Clara, CA 95052 408-244-7000
Author (with Falk & Nguyen) of TESTING COMPUTER SOFTWARE (2nd Ed, VNR)
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