On Tuesday 27 May 2003 09:01 am, Tim May wrote:
On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 04:23 AM, Roy M.Silvernail wrote:
Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't yet seen incidents of spammers following up via another comm channel to find out why their spam was ignored and/or repeat their pitch. For that matter, with all the First Amendment blather heard from spammers, I'd almost expect one of them to argue for proactively enforced delivery and some sort of "obligation to read" statute.
No, absolutely _nothing_ in the First can possibly imply any "enforced delivery" or "obligation to read." I assume you are semi-joking, but this bears repeating, especially for those here who seem to be unclear on the concepts.
I understand the limitations of the First, but I wasn't exactly joking. And while I agree that the First cannot be said to imply such obligations, it seems to me that, on the surface, it would not preclude them, either. "Obligation to read" does not directly infringe upon the right to free speech. A deeper examination would probably show that it would infringe on the implied "right to be left alone" that is usually referred to as the "right" to privacy, but I don't think that would be enough to prevent such a law from being enacted. One would hope that it would be thrown out after an appeal reached the proper altitude. But until a properly deep-pocketed party could pursue it that far, many of the more shallow-pocketed would suffer.
Secondly, most if not all of the "anti-spam laws" are, in fact, directly in contravention of the First Amendment.
Does this include descendents of the junk-fax laws? (are there any of those, or haven't the lawgivers made the connection between fax paper and CPU cycles yet?)
The First does not allow government to be in the content examination business. Those who think otherwise need....well, you all know what they need. I am serious. I am fucking sick and tired of bureaucrats, legislators, and even people on lists like this thinking that they have some authorization to examine the letters or e-mails I receive.
How about simply holding companies absolutely responsible for the methods used to distribute their advertising? Couldn't Truth In Advertising be extended to email solicitation? The one thing that *all* UCE has in common is the attempt to sell something, and that requires an identifiable business presence. After all, people can't buy from a company if the company doesn't provide *some* method of contact to accept orders. I'd think that would at least reduce the flow of UCE on behalf of US concerns. It wouldn't touch the foreign-based spam, but how many people are going to order their bootleg toner cartridges from Botswana? The advantage is that the complainant is examining the content, not the Gummint (provided there aren't unreasonable barriers hindering complainants).