At 12:47 PM -0800 2/18/98, sunder wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and why?
It eats up your valuable time. You might not see it for what it is, but it is an interruption of normal service. It's annoying as having your pager go off durring sex and having to call back your boss instead of ignoring it. (Presume you can't shut off your pager.) It takes away from the continuity of life.
But *many* things eat up our valuable time. Doesn't mean government action is the answer.
Further, some of us use ISDN to get their email and transferring the extra junk adds to the pay/minute connections.
If you use ISDN and pay minute charges to download an article from me, for example, and you feel it was a waste of your valuable time, should my article be illegal? If someone sees your name somewhere and does the same thing (sends you a letter), should this be illegal? (I threw this last point in because some have argued that there is an implicit agreement that mail on a mail exploder will not be objected to, as it fits the charter, blah blah. So I removed this implicitness by speaking of someone who writes a letter.) If _content_ is not a criterion for spam, as Costner and others have noted, then "wasting Ray's time" is even less of a criterion for what spam is. Look, there's just not going to be a simple government answer to "unwanted communications" that doesn't do serious damage to our liberties. Technological/economic approaches are the only way to go. --Tim May Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^3,021,377 | black markets, collapse of governments.