Re: [eff-austin] Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?
* Sunder <sunder@sunder.net> [2003-08-04 17:00]:
Yes, this is the problem I'm trying to address. Normally when Alice tries to transmit information to Bob, if Mallory decides to sabotage the communication, this is a denial of service attack, forbidden by criminal law.
Why is it forbidden by law?
I can think of hundreds of reasons DoS attacks are illegal. Now I'm not sure if it's illegal everywhere; I'm only familar with the way it's written in the California Penal code, which is where Mallory is located in this case. But to answer your question, just look at all the damage that's caused by DoS attacks. Look at the Slammer worm. It would be a seriously neglectful to allow such damaging attacks on people and businesses.
Bob signed a contract with Mallory waiving certain rights in exchange for the service provided by Mallory. Mallory provided full disclosure of it's rights to Bob along with Bob's responsabilities, etc. Bob chose to accept those terms, how is this illegal again?
First of all, Bob was coerced into this contract because Bob had no idea that the fine print said there may be cases where he doesn't get the service he thinks he's paying for. Specifically, Mallory didn't tell Bob that she would be filtering his mail for him, and certainly didn't tell Bob that she would take the liberty of blocking some non-spam mail as well. Such a contract is quite questionable, and I'd like to see it put before a court for fair analysis.
If the service Mallory provides Bob is inadequate, that's between Mallory and Bob, not between Alice and Bob. Alice and Mallory have no contract what-so-ever. It's upto you, Alice, to convince Bob of this fact. If you can't, that's Bob's choice, not yours. And you have no business to interfere between Bob and Mallory.
The problem with this argument is that Mallory is not just denying service to Bob, but Alice as well. Furthermore, Alice may not even have the option of explaining the service problem to Bob, because Mallory is preventing Alice from talking to Bob. Mallory is everyone's business, because a malicious attack on the Internet affects everyone. The fact that Bob is paying Mallory money doesn't make it okay- in fact, it worsens the problem, because the perpetrator is being compensated by her own victims.
However, if the communication passes through Mallory's back yard, we can let the attack happen because it's on Mallory's property.
Wrong. Bob agreed to those terms of service, it's not a denial of service, it's part of Bob's agreement with Mallory.
Such a contract is predatory, and has no business in this country. It prays on ignorant users, and provides a false representation for what the user is signing up for. FYI- you can't put anything you want in fine print, and expect it to be legally enforceable. Even if two parties agree that an illegal activity is okay, this does not legalize the activity.
At the same time, if I sabotage the city water line that passes through my property, I can be held accountable. And rightly so.
No. Either you have agreed to live in said house by purchasing it, and have therefore become a citizen of said city, and by such actions agreed to abide by it's laws, or pre-existing laws allowed the city to run such water services through your propery. This too is by contract.
This is just what I said. You're making my point here. Absolutely, I cannot sabotage the city water line that goes through my property.
Where, Ms. Alice, is your contract with Mallory again?
No contract necessary; criminal law is enforceable w/out a contract. Even more so, actually, because there is no chance of a contract removing the effect of Alice's claim.
AOL isn't even a human, so to put the private property rights of AOL above the well-being of any human is a silly mistake.
So, in that case if you need a red stapler, you should be able to break into AOL's offices and steal one????? Since fucking when?
Certainly not- there is no superceding free speech right or anything of the kind that would entail stealing a stapler. Blocking email, OTOH, violates multiple rights: free speech, right to assemble and petition the government, freedom of enterprise.. it could even run into public safety issues. So this stapler analogy doesn't really work here.
In my particular case, AOL is blocking me from talking to friends and family.
That's the choice of your friends and family, not yours. Take it up with them, not AOL.
While I have gotten all but one friend and all family members to drop their AOL/Earthlink services, this still remains an issue for users whome I don't know personally.
and AOL is vandalizing my property by destroying these packets.
No, dumbass, you placed those packets on said network repeatedly after you have discovered that they will be dropped in the bit bucket, that's too bad for you. You've vandalized your own packets.
I didn't do this, I created them- AOL is the one destroying things. I'm the aaahteeest, the creator.. AOL is the destroyer, using their property destructively.
You can argue that how you want, but the bottom line is that AOL is using their property to gain power to control who may talk to who.
And that is their right, as contractually agreed to by their customers - your friends and family members included. You have no stake in this, nor any relationship with AOL.
Like I said, DoS laws don't require there to be a contract between Alice and Mallory. In fact, it *usually* is the case that Mallory and Alice have no contract. If you do a ping of death attack on victim.com, do you actually think that absense of a contract between you and victim.com gives you the right to do this? Absurd. Contract or not, DoS attacks are illegal. If Bob signs a contract with Mallory allowing Mallory to do a DoS attack on him, he's the only one who may not be able to take action. But the state can still take action, as well as other victims who didn't sign their rights away (Alice, for example).
This is clearly an abusive use of property, and I have no tolarance for it.
No, you abused your own property knowing full well it would be dropped into the bit bucket right after the 1st time you tried it. And since you've got no contractual agreement with AOL, you have no expected reasonable expectation that AOL would forward your packets to your f&f, especially if AOL deems your packets to be harmful to it's network for whatever reason.
It's quite reasonable to expect corporations to abide by all laws in their jurisdiction.
They need to be removed from power, and the consumers who contributed to the purchasing of their property need to be given some rights.
So if you're saying that AOL's private property rights are supporting their effort to stop me from talking to my family, then of course I have very little respect for private property rights. I often see people using their private property to cause damage to others, so it's not real top on my list in these cases.
Your idiocy is showing.
Ad hominem. It's natural to get frustrated when your words don't carry much weight, but this only decreases your credibility. You just need to work on better angles, and find better ways to illustrate the points you're trying to support. Even I could come up with a better argument against myself than this worthless argument you present. Need some help? You might argue that AOL's property rights are sacred, and above all other rights. You might challenge me to produce an example of private property being used to damage others. You could argue that it doesn't matter who gave AOL the money to buy their property, it's theirs regardless. Just pick one. The only idiot here is you if you can only produce an ad hominem. You need to work on that.
----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD. \|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 mindfuq@comcast.net wrote:
* Sunder <sunder@sunder.net> [2003-08-04 17:00]:
Yes, this is the problem I'm trying to address. Normally when Alice tries to transmit information to Bob, if Mallory decides to sabotage the communication, this is a denial of service attack, forbidden by criminal law.
Why is it forbidden by law?
I can think of hundreds of reasons DoS attacks are illegal. Now I'm not sure if it's illegal everywhere; I'm only familar with the way it's written in the California Penal code, which is where Mallory is located in this case. But to answer your question, just look at all the damage that's caused by DoS attacks. Look at the Slammer worm. It would be a seriously neglectful to allow such damaging attacks on people and businesses.
No, you're ignoring my whole entire arguement - and that is telling. You realize you're wrong, but just refuse to admit it. I didn't ask why denial of service attacks are forbidden by law. That's obvious. I asked why would AOL's policies in terms of their service agreements be forbidden by law when their customers agreed to them? They're not necessarily considered a common carrier since they decided a long time ago to police the content of their service.
Bob signed a contract with Mallory waiving certain rights in exchange for the service provided by Mallory. Mallory provided full disclosure of it's rights to Bob along with Bob's responsabilities, etc. Bob chose to accept those terms, how is this illegal again?
First of all, Bob was coerced into this contract because Bob had no idea that the fine print said there may be cases where he doesn't get the service he thinks he's paying for. Specifically, Mallory didn't tell Bob that she would be filtering his mail for him, and certainly didn't tell Bob that she would take the liberty of blocking some non-spam mail as well. Such a contract is quite questionable, and I'd like to see it put before a court for fair analysis.
Not at all. Bob agreed to the terms of service and was asked to both read and acknowledge that he read them. AOL's terms of service are available for anyone to read at any time. Regardless, should Bob not live up to his end of said agreement, the contract would be null and void, as would his access. At the same time Bob is free to sever his contract with AOL by the same rules. Your claim that Bob was coerced is exteremely dubious. There is no proof of this, we do not have Bob here claiming this. We have, only you, a third party uninvolved in Bob's agreement with AOL making such claims because you cannot communicate with Bob. Either way, if Bob is unsure of what he agreed to, he (and you) can check these pages: http://www.aol.com/copyright.adp and http://www.aol.com/copyright/rules.html Some relevant quotes addressing your dumb arguements: ------------ "By using this site, you signify your agreement to all terms, conditions, and notices contained or referenced herein (the "Terms of Use"). If you do not agree to these Terms of Use please do not use this site. We reserve the right, at our discretion, to update or revise these Terms of Use. Please check the Terms periodically for changes. Your continued use of this site following the posting of any changes to the Terms of Use constitutes acceptance of those changes." "ALL MATERIALS, INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, AND SERVICES INCLUDED IN OR AVAILABLE THROUGH THIS SITE (THE "CONTENT") ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" FOR YOUR USE." "America Online reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to terminate your access to all or part of this site, with or without notice." "However, America Online and its agents have the right at their sole discretion to remove any content that, in America Online's judgment, does not comply with the Rules of User Conduct or is otherwise harmful, objectionable, or inaccurate. America Online is not responsible for any failure or delay in removing such content." -------------- These are the terms to which Bob has agreed to. It clearly states that AOL may if it chooses to remove access to content it deems harmful for whatever reason. It does not list what those reasons are, therefore, they are at its discretion - NOT AT YOURS. There is no need for any law to change this. Bob and AOL both voluntarily agreed to these terms. End of story.
If the service Mallory provides Bob is inadequate, that's between Mallory and Bob, not between Alice and Bob. Alice and Mallory have no contract what-so-ever. It's upto you, Alice, to convince Bob of this fact. If you can't, that's Bob's choice, not yours. And you have no business to interfere between Bob and Mallory.
The problem with this argument is that Mallory is not just denying service to Bob, but Alice as well. Furthermore, Alice may not even have the option of explaining the service problem to Bob, because Mallory is preventing Alice from talking to Bob.
Stop right there. AOL's contract is with Bob. NOT WITH you, ALICE. You have no claims to make. You have no contract with AOL, it is under no obligation whatsoever to deal with you. If you don't like that, sign up with AOL, agree to their terms, and file a complaint - if those rules will allow you to do so. Otherwise, you have no way to interfere with the agreement between Bob and AOL.
Mallory is everyone's business, because a malicious attack on the Internet affects everyone. The fact that Bob is paying Mallory money doesn't make it okay- in fact, it worsens the problem, because the perpetrator is being compensated by her own victims.
No. There is no such legal entity as "The Internet." AOL, like all other ISP's (I'm stretching the term here) has contractual agreements with other ISP's from which it obtains service. Depending on what those rules allow, AOL may or may not be playing by the rules. That's up to whomever feeds AOL to decide, not you. You are not AOL's ISP. You have no contract with AOL on that level either. AOL is not actively causing any denial of service to anyone other than those who agreed to be subject to AOL's jurisdiction - by contract. Says so in their terms that they reserve the right to do this.
Such a contract is predatory, and has no business in this country. It prays on ignorant users, and provides a false representation for what the user is signing up for. FYI- you can't put anything you want in fine print, and expect it to be legally enforceable. Even if two parties agree that an illegal activity is okay, this does not legalize the activity.
That is not upto you to decide. That is upto Bob. Since you haven't entered any business agreement with AOL, you cannot make such claims against them.
No. Either you have agreed to live in said house by purchasing it, and have therefore become a citizen of said city, and by such actions agreed to abide by it's laws, or pre-existing laws allowed the city to run such water services through your propery. This too is by contract.
This is just what I said. You're making my point here.
I am? So, then you understand that you have no claims whatsoever against AOL since you aren't using their service, nor have any contract whatsoever with them? Then why all the BS?
Absolutely, I cannot sabotage the city water line that goes through my property.
Of course, because they're providing you with water service. Therefore, you have agreed to those implict or explicit terms. You have a contract with the city, or the water company. Either because that's what the laws of the city state, or because you've signed a contract with the water company agreeing to their terms. Just like Bob signed a contract with AOL. So what's your beef???
Where, Ms. Alice, is your contract with Mallory again?
No contract necessary; criminal law is enforceable w/out a contract. Even more so, actually, because there is no chance of a contract removing the effect of Alice's claim.
Where's the crime again?
So, in that case if you need a red stapler, you should be able to break into AOL's offices and steal one????? Since fucking when?
Certainly not- there is no superceding free speech right or anything of the kind that would entail stealing a stapler.
Hey, you're the one that claimed that the needs of humans outweigh those of a corporation. So by that logic, not that I agree with it, should you need a stapler, you should be able to take one from AOL. Of course it's assinine. That's what I'm trying to show you. That your arguement is full of shit.
Blocking email, OTOH, violates multiple rights: free speech, right to assemble and petition the government, freedom of enterprise.. it could even run into public safety issues. So this stapler analogy doesn't really work here.
The 1st ammended prevents >CONGRESS< from limiting the freedom of speech. More precisely from creating laws that do so. It does not limit private or public companies from doing so. The 1st has nothing to do with this. You're clueless.
While I have gotten all but one friend and all family members to drop their AOL/Earthlink services, this still remains an issue for users whome I don't know personally.
And you have no contract with either AOL or that friend. Like I said, you have no right to interfere in AOL's business. If you can convince their subscribers that AOL sucks, and they chose to cancel their service, that's fine, that's wonderful - though if AOL finds out, they may sue you for loss of business.
No, dumbass, you placed those packets on said network repeatedly after you have discovered that they will be dropped in the bit bucket, that's too bad for you. You've vandalized your own packets.
I didn't do this, I created them- AOL is the one destroying things. I'm the aaahteeest, the creator.. AOL is the destroyer, using their property destructively.
Yes, you did. As soon as you hit the send button in your mailer and had a To:, CC:, BCC: header containing @aol.com. Your actions caused your email to be sent to AOL's mail servers, which - as you already expected since you knew, caused them to be deleted. Further, I would urge you read your ISP's terms of service. There's no place in there that they guarantee delivery of email to an end user of another ISP. Because they can't. So you have no such expectation. I'm done with this, you're too clueless to continue. Come back when you get some brains.
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