On Sun, 5 Nov 2000, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Well, let's take this up one level of abstraction. We can stop spam from flooding our inboxes (an economic bad) by: 1. law
"Congress shall make no law ...".
2. AUPs with backbone providers/hosting services (industry self-regulation)
I oppose these because I don't think some organization should have control of my speech simply because I purchase a service from them. If I buy, for example, a 128k ISDN line what the content of that 128k is most assuradely isn't my providers interest. It violates the spirit of the 1st. It is also clear that for any 'self-regulation' to be effective it must fall into one of two, and only, categories. The first is a traditional free market where the individuals make the decisionin in toto. The second is the traditional control economy (where there is 3rd party involved in the transaction). So, which sort of 'self-regulation' do you want, autarchic or socialist? Economics in general is not the way to set ethical standards.
3. cypherpunkly end-user technology
I obviously support anything an individual wishes to do with respect to making choices, provided they don't involve me without consent. This aspect should be pushed strongly. 4. social contracts (for those of anarchist and libertarian bent) Considering human psychology, not bloody likely. 5. technical standards (ala Open Source) Which raises the interesting point with respect to Lessig and his 'code is law' theory and the real power of Open Source standards. It provides a mechanism to prevent the exact sorts of scenarios that Lessig poses in his book. The Open Source community has an opportunity to keep the technical standards in the hands of the people and out of governmental influence. In the case of physical spam, there are resource limitations that simply aren't extant in a digital network. I believe that this distinction, under appreciated by almost all, is going to sink any attempts at really resolving this issue. I'm afraid we'll just have to live with spam, which means our primary protection is #3 above. To be honest, I don't think there is a lot of hope for the Open Source movement to be this effective with respect to 'Open' technical standards. Even though the cost of entry into the market is next to nil once the product is written. Put it on the primary distribution site and it goes out. I'm afraid this may be a case where the free market approach dies. My own view will be because of the economics of greed. It seems to me that most succesful open source authors do it because it helps their professional career. As a result the projects they work on will be strongly related to their professional interests as well. This, at least in my mind, is one of the primary reasons we don't see the level of innovation extant that is possible with this approach. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------