You know what? If Alice puts up a list of all the sites she's blocking mail from, there is no problem with that. She is not coercing anyone. She can block any site for any reason she wants -- maybe she has intestinal gas, or maybe she just doesn't like somebody. Tough toenails. If Bob reads this list and copies it, there is no problem with that either -- Bob's not coercing anyone. Bob winds up blocking the people Alice blocked, even if she blocked them for no good reason. But Bob is evidently okay with that, or at least unable to find a better source of information. If Alice were in a competitive business, and people paid for better or more well-founded recommendations about blocking lists, she'd probably be driven out of business. But whatever; nobody else got into the business, so there's no competition. Alice has a money-losing monopoly that provides marginal service. The only problem arises because Alice started using scans and listings as weapons. That's not wrong per se, as it's not stealing or coercion -- it's just rude. But scans themselves are perfectly acceptable and necessary as the only reliable means of providing this service. I think ORBS was exactly the kind of "reputation service" most folks here argue in favor of, and while some of us may have despised it, that's not sufficient reason to interfere with someone else's ability to publish whatever the hell they want to publish. Or, I'll even go further. It was an example of "private law", where the "law merchant" publishes a list of people who break the laws they sell and then lets the market punish or not as they choose. However flawed the list, and however obnoxious the merchant was about the testing to create it, isn't that exactly what many of you have been arguing for the right to do? Bear
Right. It's a cost-benefit analysis. Bob may pick up some of Alice's bad blocks, and there's a cost to that. But if the benefit of spam reduction outweighs the possibly-minimal cost, well, Bob's got a good thing going and he's quite happy to continue with that practice. -Declan On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 04:01:58PM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
You know what? If Alice puts up a list of all the sites she's blocking mail from, there is no problem with that. She is not coercing anyone. She can block any site for any reason she wants -- maybe she has intestinal gas, or maybe she just doesn't like somebody. Tough toenails.
If Bob reads this list and copies it, there is no problem with that either -- Bob's not coercing anyone.
Bob winds up blocking the people Alice blocked, even if she blocked them for no good reason. But Bob is evidently okay with that, or at least unable to find a better source of information.
If Alice were in a competitive business, and people paid for better or more well-founded recommendations about blocking lists, she'd probably be driven out of business. But whatever; nobody else got into the business, so there's no competition. Alice has a money-losing monopoly that provides marginal service.
The only problem arises because Alice started using scans and listings as weapons. That's not wrong per se, as it's not stealing or coercion -- it's just rude. But scans themselves are perfectly acceptable and necessary as the only reliable means of providing this service.
I think ORBS was exactly the kind of "reputation service" most folks here argue in favor of, and while some of us may have despised it, that's not sufficient reason to interfere with someone else's ability to publish whatever the hell they want to publish.
Or, I'll even go further. It was an example of "private law", where the "law merchant" publishes a list of people who break the laws they sell and then lets the market punish or not as they choose. However flawed the list, and however obnoxious the merchant was about the testing to create it, isn't that exactly what many of you have been arguing for the right to do?
Bear
At 04:01 PM 6/12/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Or, I'll even go further. It was an example of "private law", where the "law merchant" publishes a list of people who break the laws they sell and then lets the market punish or not as they choose. However flawed the list, and however obnoxious the merchant was about the testing to create it, isn't that exactly what many of you have been arguing for the right to do?
Bear
Goodness, you just invented the concept of reputation, in the non-govt-maintained sense.
participants (3)
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David Honig -
Declan McCullagh -
Ray Dillinger