At 8:10 PM +0000 2/13/97, Attila T. Hun wrote:
+Attila is free to hire agents to screen his mail so he does not receive +spam. He is not free, in a free society, to force such screeners upon +me.
very true. if you if define that your freedom includes the free abuse of your freedoms by others. freedom is a two way street; freedom in my book says that I can do anything I wish which does not infringe on the rights of others. now, that implies that I can
As this relates to "unwanted mail," I think calling this an "abuse of freedom by others" is misleading, and a slippery slope. On this same slippery slope lies the claims by some women, as an example, that images in Playboy "abuse their freedoms" (I'd've thought a different kind of abuse is involved, but I won't get into that here). Is unwanted physical mail also an abuse of freedom? How about unwanted personal letters? How about unwanted conversations in a Cypherpunks meeting? The answer to all of these issues lies outside the State. Invoking the power of Men with Guns to stop these "unwanted contacts" is simply wrong. Attila seems to be arguing that the State has a legitimate role in censoring certain contacts, whereas I argue that technology and contracting can almost always do a better job. I repeat: Attila is free to hire a censor, or nanny, or personal secretary to screen his calls, to sift through his mail to pass on only the most relevant stuff, and so on. Many celebrities and busy people do just this. (In the CompuServe case which triggered this thread, CompuServe certainly could have offered a "filtering" service to its members. This would be unexceptionable, and the right way to go, contractually and technologically.) Attila is not free, in a free society, to claim (*) that his freedoms are being infringed when people send him mail he is not interested in. (* He can certainly _claim_ it, but he cannot bring the State in to enforce his dubious claim about his freedom being infringed.) By the way, I think the "junk fax" and "junk phone call" laws are clearcut violations of the First Amendment. I understand why the herd _wants_ these laws, as it reduces the costs involved in replacing fax paper, running to the telephone only to find someone trying to sell something, etc., but it is quite clearly a prior restraint on speech, however well-intentioned. (There are technological solutions to these problems as well. The laws shield people from having to deal with these solutions, however.) --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."