
Steve Winter FAQ V2.02
----------------------

From: adams@inil.com (Steve Adams)
Subject: The Steve Winter FAQ, v 2.02
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 02:03:36 GMT

[This is version 2.02 of the FAQ.  Thanx to those who have
contributed information.  If you have information for the
FAQ, please forward it to adams@inil.com]

** New **
This FAQ can now be found on the web.  Point your browser
to http://www.inil.com/users/adams/winfaq.htm.

Mr Winter's attempts to rebut this FAQ can be found at
http://www.prime.org/spss.htm.

*********************************************************
*********************************************************
NOTE: All correspondance relating to this FAQ or Steve
Winter should go to adams@inil.com.
*********************************************************
*********************************************************

=======================
NEW IN THIS VERSION OF THE FAQ:
 - Update on Netcom Lawsuit
  - Web site now active!
  =======================

  The purpose of this FAQ is to provide corroboration for
  persons on the net harassed by Steve Winter.  It is
  designed to be sent by such persons to Sys Admins and
  ISP's to prevent Steve Winter from having their accounts
  revoked or their employment endangered.

  It should be noted that Mr Winter will claim that all of
  the information here is meant only for the purpose of masking
  my opposition to his religious views.  Nothing could be further
  from the Truth.  In this case, and for this purpose, I don't
  *care* what doctrinal views Mr Winter holds.

  Mr Winter continues to claim that this FAQ is false and full
  of lies.  I (and others) have repeatedly asked him to indentify
  the mistakes, errors or other problems with the FAQ.  He has
  refused to do so.  On my own, I have discovered new information
  and made changes to the FAQ in light of this information.

  Numbers in () refer to footnotes at the bottom of the text.

100.  Who is Steve Winter?

 Steve Winter is the operator of a system known as
 "PRIME.ORG". He lives in Durham, NC, and is also a re-seller
 of computer equipment(1).  Recently, he has begun to re-sell
 internet services (presumably from PSI). Mr Winter claims to
 be a Reverend in "Jesus Name Apostolic Holiness Church, Inc."
 He operates a Web page (http://www.prime.org) which describes
 his particular doctrinal distinctives.  He claims the page is
 a ministry of the aforementioned church.

 Mr Winter's email id's are:

 steve@prime.org
 support@prime.org
 cancel.watch@prime.org
 steve.winter@prime.org
 stevewint@prime.org
 postmaster@prime.org
 internet@prime.org
 sysop.support@prime.org
 power@prime.org
 [Note: anything from prime.org is most likely Mr Winter]

 Old winter accounts since October 95:

 steve.winter@ibm.net
 stevwint@gte.net
 revwint@aol.com
 stevwint@ix.netcom.com
 stevwint@cris.com
 stevwntr@cris.com
 steve.winter@worldnet.att.net

 Be warned that if you send him email, it is likely that he will
 complain to your provider or employer that you are harassing him.
 See below for details.

101.  What is PRIME?

 PRIME stands for PreRapture(tm) International Message Exchange.
 It is Mr Winter's personal network of BBS's.  They carry various
 forums for his sect.  You can access a list of the forums by
 downloading the file "prime.zip" from his WWW.  He also provides
 information on home schooling, and his legal dealings with his 
ISP's.

102.  What is "Jesus Name Apostolic Holiness Church, Inc."?

 This organization does not appear to be anything other than
 the corporate charter for a religious organization.  This is fairly
 standard practice amongst churches, but that corporation then may
 not engage in certain businesses, or if it does, must properly
 delineate it's for-profit and non-profit business.

103.  What is Mr Winter's "modus operandi"?

 Steve Winter posts lengthy duplicate messages stating his
 positions, often simply reposting verbatim his scriptural
 citations with no supporting exegesis.  These messages are
 usually massively cross-posted, without regard to whether or
 not the message is on topic for the group.  He has harassed
 numerous groups, including soc.religion.quaker and the
 "christnet.*" groups so badly that the Christnet groups and
 the uk.religion.* groups went moderated, aus.religion.christian
 is now retro-moderated, the Quakers considered but rejected
 moderation, and the promisekeepers group has recently been
 created as a moderated group.

 If anyone questions him, he responds by:

 1) Calling the person a "Lying, dirt, false Christian scum," or
    some variation thereof.

 2) Posting a slightly modified version of his "Acts 2:38" posting,
    or one of his other "canned" responses.  He modifies them just
    enough to avoid the SPAM detectors.  See item 109 below.

 3) If the person sends him email to try and debate the issue, he
    sends a "do not ever email me again" message.  Similarly, any
    attempt to discuss his abuse of newsgroups is treated similarly.
                                                                    
                On occasion, he skips this step and goes to step 4.
 4) He emails and or calls the service provider or employer of the
    person who disagrees with him to have their account pulled or
    service cut off.  He attempted this with me both by calling my
    company and by calling my service provider.  In both cases, he
    was more or less laughed at.

    Several correspondents have reported similar action by Mr Winter,
    including emails and calls to employers.  In most cases,
    fortunately, no action was taken.  In others, employees have
    been asked to remove signature lines that reflected on the
    company, etc.  Mr Winter seems to prefer silencing his opposition
    to actually trying to win debates.

 5) If he does not get satisfaction, he either makes harassing phone
    calls (several people have reported this, and I have experienced
    it personally) or begins posting hate-filled falsehoods to
    newsgroups about the person.

 6) If he is unsuccessful in the above, in at least one case he has
    resorted to an attempt to extort $50,000 from the employer of
    one of his opponants.  He has also resorted to posting false
    and defamatory statements about the employer on investement and
    other groups.

 7) He has claimed to have filed numerous police reports and made
    complaints to the FBI in an attempt to silence those who disagree
    with his methods and/or theology.  It does not appear that any
    action has been taken by any law enforcement agency on his behalf.
    Mr Winter has been repeatedly asked for case numbers or the names
    of the law enforcement professionals involved, but has never given
    any evidence at all that his claims are true.

 8) In numerous cases, Mr Winter has threatened ISP's with lawsuits,
    and now, has actually filed one against Concentric Network, as
    well as one against Netcom. (He claims the Netcom suit is now
    settled, and it appears that they paid him to drop the suit.)

    With regards to Concentric, the case has been removed from
    North Carolina State Court to US District Court.  Mr. Winter
    has also claimed to have filed a lawsuit against his former ISP,
    nando.net.
    It should be noted that Mr. Winter originally named individual
    employees of Concentric as co-defendants, but may have since
    dropped them from the suit.  In both cases, he is seeking
    monetary damages.  Link to http://www.prime.org/legal/index.htm
    for Mr. Winter's complaints and responses to  various motions.
    You will not find any information regarding the actions of the
    other parties in these suits, as he has not seen fit to publish
    them.  I have copies of the Concentric Counter-Claim, plus an
    order from the court rejecting one of Winter's ammended claims
    for deficient legal reasoning, failure to abide by legal rules
    and various other reasons.

    Concentric's counter-claims deny most of the claims made by Mr.
    Winter (they do admit to the obvious - that he was a customer,
    that certain people work for them in the capacity claimed by
    Mr. Winter and that they cancelled his account).  They present
    several affirmative defenses, including lack of cause of action
    in Mr. Winter's lawsuit (obvious, I think to any legal scholar);
    failure to mitigate (which means he didn't take the actions
    necessary to protect himself - follow the rules of Usenet, for
    example); incorrect venue (ie he sued in the wrong court); and
    that the complaints made are uncertain, ambiguous and not
    entitled to relief from the court.

    Needless to say, Concentric has counter-sued and asked for
    sanctions against Mr Winter, including sanctions for defamation
    and for unfair trade pracrtices!  They ask for dismissal with
    prejudice (ie he can't refile the claim), attorneys fees and
    triple damages under North Carolina statues.
    It should come as no surprise that Mr Winter has not posted
    Concentric's responses or the orders of the court.  One thing
    is clear - should Concentric successfully press their counter-
    claims, it will be a simple case for any party to stop Mr.
    Winter's harassment.

    Recently, Mr Winter has changed his web page to say that an
    out of court settlement is pending.

    He has recently posted public threats to file lawsuits against
    the company that "created alt.fan.steve-winter" and against
    the creator of the "Steve Winter FAQ" (ie, me).  He is seeking
    a lawyer to take those cases, but to date has had no takers.

 9) Harassment of regional Newsadmins.
    Several Regional News administrators who enforce the charters of
    their regional NON-USNET groups report getting email and phone
    calls from irate users who claim that they received email from
    'cancel.watch@prime.org', claiming that their article was
    censored from the net.  This is sent not only to the user, but
    also to any identifiable news host that might have carried the
    original cancel.  See item 110 below.

    Mr. Winter is, in this case, clearly trying to drum up support
    against News Admins who are doing their job.  I have seen several
    of his email complaints, and copies of this FAQ have been
    forwarded to several ISPs and system administrators.
    See http://www.prime.org/cwatch.htm for Mr Winter's version of
    events.

104.  What kinds of tricks does Mr Winter pull?

     When Mr Winter is kicked out of a group (eg alt.org.promisekeepers),
     he tries to use that as a way of harassing people.  For example, when
     the aforementioned group set up an anti-crosspost bot, he posted to
     other groups, but set the followups to include a.o.p.  This would cause
     replies to his posts to be autocancelled.

     Mr Winter also would post to 10 or 15 "Big 8" and regional groups,
     but set followups for one "alt" group which did not have good
     propagation. If the reply was restricted to 1 or 2 "on-topic" groups,
     he would put back all of the off-topic groups and again restrict
     followups.   In recent times, he has begun to honor follow-ups, though
     he (understandably) often removes alt.fan.steve-winter from his posts.

     Recently, Mr Winter began issuing cancel messages for "NoCeM" posts
     in alt.nocem.misc.  The purpose of the "NoCeM" posts is to allow those
     who do not wish to see any of Mr Winter's posts to have them
     automatically ignored by their newsreader.  He has solicited an attorney
     in misc.legal to represent him in a lawsuit against those sites and
     users who post the "NoCeM" articles.(2)  Mr Winter's claim that NoCeM
     posts are censorship are patently false, in that nothing is cancelled,
     and they are used only by those who want to use them.  They do not
     remove his articles nor interfere with his articles movement from one
     system to another.

105.  Where has Mr Winter been banned?

     Mr Winter has, at one time or another, been removed/banned/cancelled
     from the following groups/networks/ISP's:

     FIDO net (3)
     Netcom (4)
     Concentric Network (cris.com) (5)
     AT&T ( Worldnet.att.net) (6)
     Nando.net (7)
     RIME, ILink & Intelec networks
      (for flames, personal attacks and harassment) (8)
     alt.org.promisekeepers
      (robo-cancelled for excessive x-posting)
     soc.religion.christian.bible-study
      (posts rejected due to charter violations)
     christnet.*
      (moderated due to his harassment)
     uk.religion.christian
     aus.religion.christian
      (retromoderated due to his harassment)
     atl.*
     fl.*
     ga.*

     There may be others, including soc.religion.christian, but I have not
     verified this as of yet.  Note also that he may have or may in the
     future obtain new accounts from these providers/networks.

     This list is only meant to show a history of his accounts, not
     give a list of where he does or does not have access at any given
     moment.

106.  Why has Mr Winter been banned?

     He was TOSed (TOS=Terms of Serice - ie kicked off for violating the
     rules of the provider) from Netcom and Concentric Networks, and the same
     appears to be true for AT&T Worldnet and Nando.  The newsgroups banned
     him either for excessive cross-posting or failure to abide by the
     Charter, or both.

     In the case of the Bible Study group, he refused to refrain from
     making personal attacks on other members of the group.  His theology was
     never an issue, and anyone who examines the content of the Bible Study
     group will see that opinions from every side of an issue are permitted,
     so long as the Charter is followed.   Mr Winter claims that Charters
     have no force and he is not bound by them.  If he would agree to abide
     by the Charter, his posts whould be welcomed.

107.  What else does Mr Winter do that causes him problems on the net?

     Mr Winter runs a business that supplies computer-related hardware.
     He posts advertising for his business in places which do not generally
     accept advertising or where the advertising is off-topic.  He has had
     numerous articles cancelled for this over the past several years.

     In addition, he posts material to regional groups which do not
     want it, and have charters which state that the material he is posting
     is not wanted.  Most of this has to do with his business.

108.   What should you do?

     If Mr. Winter is violating general nettiquette, contact the
     adminstrator of the site he is posting from (generally "news@site" or
     "postmaster@site").   Respond to him in the newsgroup as necessary, but do
     not try to contact him directly, nor send him anything via email or regular
     mail.  In other words,  work with the system and do not harass him.  If
     it is a post or email from prime.org, then email nisc@psi.com.

109.  Is Steve Winter a SPAMMER

     The answer to this questions seems to be "Yes."  He deftly avoids
     the automatic SPAM detectors by altering the order of his quotes, etc.
     A simple examination of his responses to any deviation from his view of
     theology show that it is the same canned material, slightly altered.  I
     have read nearly every article Mr Winter has posted to UseNet, and it
     can be verified by looking at DejaNews and comparing the various
     postings.

110.  What is "Cancel Watch"?

     In an attempt to gain support for his refusal to abide by charters,
     regional group rules, etc, Mr Winter has created something he is pleased
     to call "Cancel Watch", and has posted a FAQ on this to various groups.
     Mr Winter claims that Cancel Watch is protecting people from being
     cancelled by notifying them of a cancel issued against their post.  His
     goal seems to be to eliminate controls on cross-posting and regional
     newsgroups.  See http://www.prime.org/cwatch.htm for a copy of the FAQ.

     The most important thing to note about this is that he doesn't
     notify users when HE cancels articles!

111.  Who is Steve Adams?

     Steve Adams is the moderator of a soc.religion.christian.bible-study,
     and is a long time participant in UseNet (since 1985).

Footnotes:
------------
(1) Verified in "ProPhone 1996" from Selectphone.  They list his name,
address & phone number, and the SIC code (5734B - Computer Parts sales)
for his business.  The listing is for "Steve and Nancy Winter" - his
wife's name can be verified by looking at his PRIME signup kit and seeing
her name listed as a moderator.  I do NOT give his address or phone number
because I'm not interested in invading his privacy or helping anyone else
to do so.

(2) Reported via email and netnews postings by several persons.

(3) Reported via email and netnews postings by several persons.  It has
been reported that he is once again on FIDO net.  Apparantly he has
twice been kicked off, but by threatening lawsuits forced his way back
in.

(4) Reported by Netcom administrators in UseNet posts.  Verified by his
lawsuit against Netcom, as posted on his own web page.  Note that he
apparantly collected money from them when the suit was settled.

(5) Verified by his lawsuit against Concentric, as posted on his own
web page.

(6) Verified by his 'Formal Complaint Against ATT', as posted on his own
web page.

(7) Verified by his 'The Nando Lawsuit', as posted on his own web page.

      The opinions expressed above are those of the author
                      ---NASCAR-#7-#28-#51---
     adams@inil.com     "Space-age cybernomad"     Steve Adams
                         http://www.inil.com/users/adams

