For years, the Reverend, or CJIII, as he's known on-line, has been a notorious Internet rebel, bombarding Usenet participants with newsgroup postings and e-mail filled with varied and vitriolic rhetoric. "Fuck you and your family, and go to hell," the Reverend commands one Usenet writer, who posted an article referring to him as "our favorite loon." While the Reverend's on-line postings are not all fueled by expletive, they are commonly venomous. His derisive crusades range from the invasion of 'net pornography to the Darwinian doom of "Mom 'n Pop" Internet Service Providers (ISP's) to "lazy" government workers who are wasting our tax dollars cavorting on the Internet while on the job. The Reverend pulls no punches, and names names.

But he may have named one too many: His former ISP, Fort Collins-based JYM Information Systems, claims that James made a number of false, defamatory remarks about the company over the Internet, not the least-creative being that JYM is headquartered inside a Budweiser brewery. According to the lawsuit, JYM alleges that the Reverend made "claims of incompetence on the part of plaintiffs ... derogatory references to plaintiff('s) family name and ancestry; and false and derogatory references to plaintiff('s) wife." Seeking relief for the damage done to its character, the company is suing James for more than $10,000.

The trouble between the Reverend and JYM began when the provider dumped his account after receiving complaints about the acrimonious and harassing content of his e-mail and Usenet postings. The ISP alleges that "James misused said system thereby causing a third party to consider rejecting all further traffic from JYM clients and subscribers." While the company's lawyer Joseph Fanfara would not go into details, this "third party" was probably another one or more providers, who threatened to blacklist the ISP if they didn't drop James as a customer.

JYM is not the first Internet provider to clash with James - he's been dumped by numerous ISPs and has wound up in court with two of them, besides JYM. When James signed on with Denver-based Dimensional Communications, owner Dave Denny received a thick file about James' behavior from his previous provider. Not one to prejudge his clients, Denny ignored it, but soon canceled the Reverend's account because of the "harassing" nature of his e-mails and Usenet postings. He then found himself in court with the Reverend, who sued him for a refund plus court fees. Denny subsequently considered countersuing for libel after the Reverend allegedly orchestrated an on-line smear campaign against Dimensional, but decided against it because the publicity "was actually helping business." The Reverend went to another Denver provider, and eventually sued them for similar reasons.

The Reverend denies almost everything in the JYM lawsuit, item by item, including a statement that the Internet is a valuable and important forum. Despite his frequent use of the Internet, the Reverend attacks the medium and all who invest their intellectual stock in it. "I believe the Internet is a vast wasteland," says James, "I look at it as basically trivial." He claims that systems like Usenet, which pioneered the Internet with topic-based "newsgroups," have degenerated into useless forums and nests of pornography.

But whether or not the Internet is slouching toward Bethlehem, the Reverend seems eager to help it along the way. He has been accused of numerous violations of "Netiquette," such as excessive cross-posting (posting articles to more than five newsgroups at a time, which the Reverend denies, except by accident) and posting "off-topic" articles in specified newsgroups - usually to attack the technological expertise, or, at times, the mental stability of a particular Usenet participant. When one man argues a particular legal point, James answers the posting with the opinion that the fellow "needs competent legal counsel, and psychiatric assistance." When a recent article on the co.fort-collins.general newsgroup criticized James for posting an off-topic, "excessively long" article four consecutive times (there were "slight variations in each one," James defends), he sarcastically asks the complainant if he's an "Internet mommy."

Many people complain that, while newsgroups can be very useful as a forum to exchange scientific articles and advice (after all, this was the founding promise of the Internet: increased communication will revolutionize the progress of mankind), they're crippled by all the off-topic "noise." The caustic clutter from users like James have led to the topical regulation of many specialized newsgroups, in which off-topic postings are culled and removed. When Chris Gunn, the coordinator of an accounting newsgroup (part of BIZynet) politely informs users that its newsgroup will be moderated to focus on the main topic, James answered "BIZynet sucks. Chris Gunn is a censor. Fuck you BIZynet."

The Reverend has been accused of more than just "virtual" malfeasance. Many claim that James has gone as far as to call his enemies' employers (when those enemies post articles from a company computer) and demands that if they don't fire the employee he'll sue for libel. Though the Reverend denies these accusations, a page on the World Wide Web has sprung up to assist his alleged victims. Titled the "Colin James III Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)," the document hypothesizes: "Help! Colin James sent 150 nasty faxes to my boss and human resources department because of my Usenet posts! He demands that I be fired. Will I be fired?" The FAQ calmly reassures the imaginary victim: "Most probably no. He has complained to employers of at least 90 people in the last six or seven months and no one (to our best knowledge) has been fired." The FAQ claims that when federal employees run up against CJIII, he calls upon the U.S. Inspector General. The Reverend denies this as well.

The Reverend's on-line reputation earned him the notorious "Kook of the Month" award for January, 1996. This honor is intended to recognize "great achievements in the field of kookery" among Netizens. James received a record number of votes - 182 - more than was received by such Kook of the Month memorables as Joan Brewer, the user who inundates the "Bill Gates fan club" newsgroup with her theory that homosexual rape is a standard initiation rite at Microsoft. (Of course, Kook of the Month is run by the same net-head who created the Colin James FAQ, demonstrating that the Reverend is not the only one with itchy fingers and an ax to grind.)

Many people in the on-line community connect CJIII with the Kook Kabal - an amorphous group of "virtual terrorists" bent on the general disruption of Usenet. The Kabal is considered responsible for the creation of the Net.Scum website, which staunchly defends the right to "spam," or send unsolicited commercial e-mail, in the name of unbridled Internet libertarianism. This group's pro-spam ideology has an undeniable anti-homosexual, anti-Semitic flavor, claiming that all who oppose spamming are "Jews" and "faggots."

The Net.Scum site, before it was hacked to death by the anti-spammers, made a point of posting personal information about their enemies, along with a healthy portion of libel. Net.Scum's contemptible ideology and tactics alienated even the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading on-line civil liberties group, which disavowed the site and requested that all of its connections to the EFF site be removed. Net.Scum was dropped by one server after another following complaints of its content, but finally found its home at Cyber Promotions, Inc. Now off-line, Cyber Promotions was run by Sanford Wallace, one of the world's biggest producers of junk e-mail, the Sultan of Spam so to speak. He and his company pioneered the technique and stand as one of its greatest defenders.

As to the alleged connection between him and Net.Scum, the Reverend denies it. Then he modifies this denial, going on to explain that he "contributed" his own list of enemies to the Net.Scum page. Certainly he has common cause with Net.Scum - the bitter hatred of all who would attempt to regulate newsgroups by canceling off-topic posts. And now that he's been kicked off ISP's from Denver to Fort Collins, he has come home to roost: His new provider is (or will be, once it claws its way back on-line) GMTI, formerly known as - you guessed it -Cyber Promotions. With "Spamford" Wallace on his side, there may be no stopping the Reverend.

Except, perhaps, a lawsuit. A legal success for JYM Communications could chill the derogatory atmosphere on Usenet, if users had solid legal recourse to defend themselves against the profligate remarks of their on-line adversaries. There is little to no legal precedent for defamation on the Internet, and Fanfara believes that JYM vs. James is a case of "first impression" and thus would be a landmark decision for the state of Colorado. The plaintiffs hope to hang the Reverend up as an example to other on-line insurrectionists and thus protect the Internet from further defilement.

But in order to crucify James and make him a cautionary signpost on the information superhighway, they have to prove it. The Reverend's wholesale denial implies that none of the slanderous e-mails and postings can be traced back to his computer in Loveland. If he is responsible for them, he could have covered his tracks well enough to avoid any provable blame. "If he is really good," observes Dan Reifsnyder of local provider Tesser LLC, "there's no way he can be traced."

In the virtual universe, where millions of ideas and indignations bounce around like agitated molecules, there is little accountability. Websites can post official-looking U.S. government seals next to neo-nazi rhetoric, and newsgroups are filled with counterfeit "press releases" announcing the latest blunder of some technocratic idiot. But as professional forums are rendered useless and the banter leads to courtroom battles, it seems that the Great Internet - hailed as the immaculate child of the First Amendment and information technology - is reaching its practical limitations. To keep the Internet from being consumed by its own virtues, increased regulation may be on the virtual horizon. Indeed, new technological and legislative protections against unsolicited e-mail are already popping up. But such "regulation" marks a fine and fragile line, laden with controversy.

The Clinton Administration's recent efforts to regulate on-line pornography were met with widespread opposition and these efforts were eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. Misguided attempts like this one strengthen the arguments of the Kook Kabal and weaken the hand of those trying to preserve the quality of Usenet. Newsgroup moderators also face considerable technical hurdles - the network is so decentralized that effective regulation is almost impossible. On-line journalist Thor Iverson refers to Usenet as a "self-policing anarchy. With no controlling body and no commonly agreed-upon way to filter out unwanted posts until they reach individual users, there's almost no process for reducing the number of off-topic posts." Many de facto techniques have been implemented, such as forging user-names to cancel posts, and the highly controversial Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which cancels all messages originating at a particularly troublesome site. Of course, anyone who implements the UDP will be identified by the freedom zealots as a Usenet fascist and find themselves the target of spam bombs and other forms of 'net warfare.

Meanwhile, Reverend James continues to make enemies. Even Scott Weiser, the notorious front-range newsgroup pundit and self-proclaimed champion of free expression ( his articles are punctuated by "I love the Internet ... I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!") has turned against James. In a recent posting, Weiser makes an ironic challenge: "If (CJIII) wants free speech, he can go to Kinko's and photocopy his screeds and nail them up on phone poles, or get a soap box and stand in the park ... where at least people can toss rotten eggs at him if he annoys them too much."

Like any successful villain, James brings out the worst in his enemies. Take the "upstanding Netizens" of co.fort-collins.general, for instance. After a few chiding visits by CJIII, they swamped their own newsgroup with over 70 articles in just a few days, flaming James as a kook, accusing him of spamming, all the usual favorites. Thus CJIII has become a bigger topic among the School Board members and techie housewives of Larimer County than he ever would if everyone just ignored him (as one frazzled user vehemently suggests). Finally someone suggests that this once docile newsgroup become regulated, which then sparks off another endless polemical thread.

The state of newsgroups like this reveals a sad truth of the human condition: Given the opportunity, we are far more given to trading insults than discussing the fine points of an algorithm. The Internet has opened new horizons for human communication, and has given a globally-resonating voice to everyone. It could be argued - at the risk of being spammed out of existence - that some of us should just shut up.