Re: Spam IS Free Speech
On or About 14 May 97 at 3:46, lucifer Anonymous Remailer wrote:
Ross Wright wrote:
You can not retaliate against free speech, Rick. That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and white.
Crock of shit, Ross.
No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a few bits. Really, there's no call for that. It's wrong.
It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free" bullshit?
What? Like 80 cents per gig? Please a bit here and a byte there isn't going to break anyone. Could someone do the math?
Free speech is a right. You have the right to make some snotty reply, but no right to intentionally harm.
Spammers neither know nor care if they are causing harm to the finances or mental well-being of others.
One message in your in box is no excuse for terror tactics. Mail bombs, arp atacks, calls for regulations: aren't you over reacting? Just a little? I think your mental well being is in question anyway.
If a spammer declares their right to cause me financial loss and denial of service for the time it takes me to rid myself of their unwanted intrusion
What, like 5 seconds a week? Less? Please. It just isn't as bad as you make it seem. Shit I love this, the spammers love this. There is no such thing as *bad* publicity. The more you screem the better it is for the "bad spammers".
then they can have no expectation that I, in turn, will not declare what level of financial loss and denial of service I will cause them.
You have no right to deny them more than the few seconds of service that you lost. Any more than that is terror tactics, and a waste of time. You should be working on better projects than "Let's fuck over the spammers". Wow, that's productive. Shit, man write some useful code.
You, nor anyone else, has a right to lash out at someone for something they say or some ad they send you.
So spammers have no right to lash out at my sending them a gigabyte of email regarding the evils of spamming.
A gig for a few bytes. Why? That's so lame. Such a watse of talented code writing. And why are you escalating this?
It makes *me* feel better.
Ahhh, at last the point. Are you a self centred ass, who's personal feelings are more important that the Constitution?
Ross has failed to explain just how the Constitution promotes the spammer's right to intrude upon the spammer's life and cause them financial loss while denying that right to the spammee.
Well I've tried to describe that you lose about a dime per year.
Ross' personal feelings seem to be important enough to him to cast slurs on those who disagree with his black-and-white opinions regarding his right to spam others without them having a corresponding right to reply in kind.
You can feel free to send me twice as many bytes as I send to you, OK? Feel beter? No! You must fuck me over because I sent you my latest MLM scam. Yeah that's so mature! Come out from behind your remailer and state your opinions, wrong as they are.
Gander. Goose.
Right. If I send you a gig, you send me a gig. If I send you a meg you send me a meg. A few bytes for a few bytes. Are you following what has upset me about this issue, yet? Like for Like, Goose, Gander. You said it, but you don't mean it. Right? You are saying if I send you one message, you have the right to mail bomb me? There's no parity there. It's very distressing how much of a hot button this issue is.
TruthMonger
Lier. Ross =-=-=-=-=-=- Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: (408) 259-2795
You can not retaliate against free speech, Rick. That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and white.
Retaliation by force against speech is wrong, more speech is not unethical. It might be unpleasant, but not wrong.
No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a few bits. Really, there's no call for that. It's wrong.
To make a brief analogy: Say you are a market researcher, and you approach me in the street and ask for some time to answer your questions, I do not commit any ethical wrongdoing if I stand there and scream at you for several minutes. If I physically attack you I commit a crime. All internet traffic is speech, including syn-ack flood attacks and any other denial of service attempt. This is plain and simple, we have to find technological means of thwarting these attacks, they are not unethical, unpleasant yes, immoral no.
It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free" bullshit?
What? Like 80 cents per gig? Please a bit here and a byte there isn't going to break anyone. Could someone do the math?
I won`t do the math but the point is it "costs" you energy to listen to someone speaking in the street, sure, it is a very small amount, but it does cost energy from a strict biological point of view. This does not lead me to believe any crime is commited by someone speaking to, or at me. I shaln`t repeat myself any further, no speech is a crime. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
At 05:51 PM 5/15/97 +0000, Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk> wrote:
You can not retaliate against free speech, Rick. That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and white.
Retaliation by force against speech is wrong, more speech is not unethical. It might be unpleasant, but not wrong.
No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a few bits. Really, there's no call for that. It's wrong.
To make a brief analogy: Say you are a market researcher, and you approach me in the street and ask for some time to answer your questions, I do not commit any ethical wrongdoing if I stand there and scream at you for several minutes. If I physically attack you I commit a crime.
All internet traffic is speech, including syn-ack flood attacks and any other denial of service attempt. This is plain and simple, we have to find technological means of thwarting these attacks, they are not unethical, unpleasant yes, immoral no.
In the case of shrieking at the researcher, the researcher can simply walk away. In the case of a network connection, the ISP cannot simply unplug.
It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free" bullshit?
What? Like 80 cents per gig? Please a bit here and a byte there isn't going to break anyone. Could someone do the math?
I won`t do the math but the point is it "costs" you energy to listen to someone speaking in the street, sure, it is a very small amount, but it does cost energy from a strict biological point of view. This does not lead me to believe any crime is commited by someone speaking to, or at me.
No, spam DOES cost the victim. I'm not saying that the victim is the spam recipient. Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's CyberPromotions. Yes, victims. Their entire businesses consist of keeping wires from one side of routers connected to the internet while the wires on the other side attach to modems and a handful of host computers to serve mail, news, etc. When Spamford sends out his 15000 messages, he is denying the ISPs the bandwidth, CPU and disk storage they are paying for. By filling the ISP's drives, he is also denying every customer of those ISPs from receiving incoming email. Here's Spamford's M.O., to those of you unfamiliar with how CyberPromo Makes Money Fast: 1. Advertise to people that they can send out bulk e-mail for a fixed cost. 2. Ethically-challenged persons who dream of Making Money Fast draft their Ponzi schemes, and send them, along with a certain amount of very non-refundable money, to CyberPromo. 3. CyberPromo sends out the spam by routing it through sendmail demons running on other peoples' (the victims') machines. 4. The complaints and threats of lawsuits land squarely on the shoulders of the persons unfortunate enough to be running the sendmails. It is, after all, their machine which is the origin of the spam. Just look in the headers. 5. The original ethically-challenged persons never see responses to their original paid-for spam; CyberPromo knows this from the get-go but certainly won't inform the spammers of this. 6. When confronted with evidence of the Ponzi schemes by the sendmail operator, Mr. Wallace replies: "Shame on those nasty users, I'll terminate their accounts." 7. Spamford continues to route other spam through the hapless sendmail operators -- his dozens of registered domains make it extremely tough to prevent source blocking. 8. The FBI comes to visit the victimized sendmail operator, investigating *them* for running pyramid scams. This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the last couple of months. Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of Spamford's "right to free speech"? Spamford's speech (or that of his "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers. The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.) It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher. What Spamford has done is to see me walking down the sidewalk carrying a megaphone, and grab me and tell me that I must stand there and hold my megaphone in front of some spammer's mouth while the spammer shouts at a crowd of people who don't want to hear him. All the while, you stand there next to Spamford and claim that I must continue to hold my megaphone for the spammer because it's his "right to free speech", and the only way to avoid it is to turn my megaphone off, denying me the ability to allow anyone else to use my megaphone. The icing on this cake is that if the spammer starts announcing "Make Money Fast" over my megaphone, the FBI will come and investigate ME because I'm the one holding the megaphone! Free speech is NOT the subject here. My right to walk down the street with my (lawfully registered) megaphone has been usurped by a thug. You're telling me that every megaphone owner has a *duty* to hold it in front of every spammer's mouth. Remember, these are finite megaphones. They have batteries that need replacing, and the owners are stuck standing there holding them while the spammers speak as long as they want. Sorry, but those megaphone owners may have other things to do with their megaphones and their time. You're confusing "the right to free speech" with "the right to kidnap megaphone owners". In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution: install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail. ISPs and corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep the spammers away. Restricting the speech they carry. Turning off the megaphones. Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's) ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally damaging way. It's also restricting the traffic he can carry to only that speech originating from his domain. His right to carry YOUR speech has been restricted by his technical solution to keep his machine alive. What is ultimately likely to happen, however, is that Mr. Wallace will be prosecuted under existing laws for swindling the original MMF spammers. He's profiting by charging them to steal resources from ISPs. He *might* be able to avoid prosecution by putting a "warning sticker" on his advertising saying something to the effect that, "if you send a Make Money Fast scam out, the jack-booted thugs will come and haul you away faster than I can send out your e-mails." But then he'd have no business at all! I'm not trying to claim that Mr. Wallace does or does not have the right to speak to us. I simply want to point out that there is real monetary loss to the real victims of his spamming. John -- J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code. Think of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'." +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: mailto:jad@dsddhc.com (work) mailto:jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | For my public key, send mail with the exact subject line of: | | Subject: get pgp key | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com> writes:
No, spam DOES cost the victim. I'm not saying that the victim is the spam recipient. Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's CyberPromotions. Yes, victims. [...]
This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the last couple of months.
Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of Spamford's "right to free speech"? Spamford's speech (or that of his "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers. The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)
It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.
[your unmetered rented mega phone analogy]
The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service. If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage. If I offered to supply a completely unmetered water supply, and there were no clause in the legal agreement prohibiting it, I could use the water supply to drive a mini-turbine and draw free electricity from it, just pouring the water back down the drain. If you have a cell-phone where it costs you to receive calls, and people call you lots with junk marketing calls, I'd argue that it was your problem. You'd need to switch to a cell phone provider which puts all the call metering charges on the caller. (Cell phone tarriffs are structured this way in the UK, I understand some/most cell phones in the US, the receiver pays part or all of the call, this seems a dumb arrangement). If it's still economical for junk callers to call you put a tariff on your line for non-designated callers. It's a mean world, not every one plays nicely, if you offer free services where the user gets some value, it _will_ get abused. The quicker crypto technology is used to fix this on the internet the better, otherwise we get dumb government laws governing email usage instead. See: http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/ for some thoughts on a short term solution to metering. Long term solution use ecash.
In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution: install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail. ISPs and corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep the spammers away. Restricting the speech they carry. Turning off the megaphones.
Long term solution charge for your IP packets per packet. If you get lots of "business" use the proceeds to buy more bandwidth, or put up your prices. Of course I sympathise with your plight on the recieving end of this crap in the meantime. Try if you can to think of it this way: spam is a good thing because it draws our attention to underlying vulnerabilities in internet mail transport protocols. It's better that we are incentivized to fix these problems (and Spamford/cyberpromo is doing us a service by providing this incentive), than it is to leave it to governments to "fix" the problems by dragging laws into it, which will likely result in "Internet drivers licenses" and other undesirable effects. Cypherpunks, I think should be involved in providing crypto solutions to allow metering for services, using anonymous ecash. If we don't do it, someone else will, and it won't be anonymous. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199705221337.OAA00948@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 at 07:37 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com> writes:
No, spam DOES cost the victim. I'm not saying that the victim is the spam recipient. Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's CyberPromotions. Yes, victims. [...]
This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the last couple of months.
Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of Spamford's "right to free speech"? Spamford's speech (or that of his "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers. The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)
It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.
[your unmetered rented mega phone analogy]
The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much as 1 bit worth of bandwidth. I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a word. Just because one has the right of free speech does not mean that we have to be forced to listen. - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: To whom the gods destroy, they first teach Windows... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM4Rixo9Co1n+aLhhAQHpdQP+KO9at62EiWvECR6v42/mA6UjQ1GgfSk0 h+rpEDMa8wJTKENZ6wicEOjb/sccAhnlHXQC41bo7Ulv32JxaIxi02nLSZ5hjCcS mK1jEr7Kwy+SjzrzxOMjSu8+Ml40JwSU7PV2fg83Zqmt03b1cJDlbcWVWRTHxRdC L08UTX1jq4A= =swAx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.
So why are you leaving your machine configured so that he clearly can use your bandwidth? Courts are uneconomical solutions. It's as if I had said the fact that you left a $100 bill sat on your doorstep might have something to do with the fact that you are now $100 worse off, and as if I had suggested to you that a solution might be to be more careful about leaving money/resources in easily accessible places, and perhaps it would be better to store your money in a wallet and it is then as if you had replied: William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes: : Bullshit! No wallets are required. All that needs to be done is for a : court injunction made stopping this particular thief from picking up : my money. He nor anyone else has a "right" to take my money. If : Joe Thief picks up my money without my permission he can be charged : with theft. I am under no contract with Joe Thief and am under no : obligation to keep my money in a wallet. I hope you see the similarity in argument. Clearly you can only issue injunctions against people you can identify. If not you don't get your property back. Your solution is to require legislation, or court intervention ("he can be charged with criminal trespass"). So how are you going to get a reasonable prosecution rate on this one? Perhaps replace cash with a traceable form, so that you can trace who it was that took your money? Perhaps escrow peoples positions so that the government can trace the thief. Perhaps have the government put video cameras up at intervals of 100m in residential areas? The costs and unattractiveness of government intervention are even worse on the net. Do you want legislation stating that you can sue people who send more than a certain number of posts via your sendmail hub? Consider the logical consequences... you must be able to identify people to sue them, therefore: - Internet Drivers licenses must be required - Remailers will be outlawed - Every SMTP session must be authenticated with your True Name Are you in favour of these? Realise that these provisions will be in the 1998 anti-SPAM bill put before congress, and the congress critters will say that the regulation of anonymity on the net was as a result of public demand. In this case, they will probably be right about the demand. Note that I did not say Spamford had a _right_ to spam you, just that with government "solutions" to this problem the "cure" is worse than the problem, at least from a pro-privacy perspective.
I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a word.
Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts were agreed to before hand. You might perhaps with some justification argue that there is an implicit contract to act reasonably, well ok, this is largely the way the internet used to work 10 years ago, but the problem is still how are you going to catch him. What about sendmail forgeries, what about public access terminals, what about remailers, what about free AOL disks, etc, etc. You've got to admit it's worse than hopeless. The government "solution" to the problem would attempt to make the net fully traceable. By arguing for the use of litigation for spam, you are hastening the outlawing of remailers. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 03:07:14PM -0500, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [...]
I as the owner of certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who can enter my house and who can not.
Your analogy is flawed in many ways. 1) The entities entering your house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer equipment is just bits, which have no identity. Spamfords bits are no different than anyone elses. 2) By the very act of connecting to the network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically routed to you.
If I inform Spamford that he is not welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some recource to stop him.
You are perfectly free to disconnect your computer from the net. You are free to try to find a provider that guarantees not to pass any spam on to you. But unless you have some contract with your provider that specifies special rights, when you sign up you implicitly agree to accept the bits aimed at you -- otherwise you couldn't receive any email at all. What you get on the wire is a function of explicit and implicit contractual obligations. This is true whether you are UUNET peering with ANS or whether you are a PC on a dialup line.
IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite simple to do without the above measure.
Identification isn't the problem at all. The problem is that you have no grounds on which to base a suit. Just as you can't sue me for sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own free will. Even if Spamford uses tricks to
cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of his customers in the lawsuit.
Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts were agreed to before hand.
No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents of your house?
All flawed analogies. You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact, that is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not* place any restrictions on that connection. Furthermore, you can't -- no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you. [...]
I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current structure of the internet.
I don't see any legal basis for it. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <19970522144701.16280@bywater.songbird.com>, on 05/22/97 at 03:47 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:
On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 03:07:14PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [...]
I as the owner of certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who can enter my house and who can not.
Your analogy is flawed in many ways. 1) The entities entering your house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer equipment is just bits, which have no identity. Spamfords bits are no different than anyone elses. 2) By the very act of connecting to the network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically routed to you.
No not at all. Just because I am connected to the network I am under no obligation to accept a single bit. I don't have to ever download any mail or I can download all or I can pick and choose what I accept or what I don't.
If I inform Spamford that he is not welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some recource to stop him.
You are perfectly free to disconnect your computer from the net. You are free to try to find a provider that guarantees not to pass any spam on to you. But unless you have some contract with your provider that specifies special rights, when you sign up you implicitly agree to accept the bits aimed at you -- otherwise you couldn't receive any email at all. What you get on the wire is a function of explicit and implicit contractual obligations. This is true whether you are UUNET peering with ANS or whether you are a PC on a dialup line.
Obviously you have not ever entered into contract agreements with an accesses provider. There is no obligation on my part to receive a single bit. If I never run a sendmail daemon then I will never receive a single e-mail message regardless of how many are aimed at my servers. This is the same with any TCP/IP service. The only obligation I have with my upstream provider is to pay my bill. If I choose to bounce everything that is routed from Spamford it is my right to do so as it is *MY* equipment.
IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite simple to do without the above measure.
Identification isn't the problem at all. The problem is that you have no grounds on which to base a suit. Just as you can't sue me for sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own free will.
For the occasional spam then a lawsuit would be pointless. If you decided to dump 10,000 messages a day and deny the use of my equipment by myself and my clients then I would have a very strong case for litigation. You seem to forget that this is MY equipment and it is you who have no rights regarding the use of it. I have the final say so as to who uses it and how.
Even if Spamford uses tricks to
cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of his customers in the lawsuit.
Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts were agreed to before hand.
No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents of your house?
All flawed analogies. You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact, that is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not* place any restrictions on that connection. Furthermore, you can't -- no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you.
Once again it is you who have it wrong. I have agreed to nothing other than to pay my bill for my connection. If Cyberpromo starts filling my clients mailboxes with spam and tieing up bandwidth I am under an obligation to my client to stop him from doing so. My obligation is to my clients to provide the services they have paid for. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed such actions to continue both to my contractual obligations to my clients but also my feudatory responsibilities to the stockholders of my corporation. You do not have a right to send mail to my system I have an obligation to my clients to allow them to receive mail. This is a important distinction that needs to be made. You have no rights regarding the use of my equipment. Furthermore if your actions deprive the use of my equipment by myself and my clients you can find yourself both financially and criminally liable.
[...]
I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current structure of the internet.
I don't see any legal basis for it.
- -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: Windows: The CP/M of the future! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM4Ud549Co1n+aLhhAQH+UwQAkcCaWhwc0g/BIk1CwOd1hJmrHiz2DhtO BfULn8aUuD3kOkDngVInWLEji4FnhKHAJZXsWDIEni3hit3y8/c4E0B/2FAjUl7/ v3WASYGOoHMcfhRUZeLX27V3pcYISyT/cNARHFoltlEeYxa0z1cTId/ln3VtJ0vi E7j8pyZtFac= =HUVY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Tag-O-Matic: He who laughs last uses OS/2.
On Fri, May 23, 1997 at 08:29:59AM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <19970522144701.16280@bywater.songbird.com>, on 05/22/97 at 03:47 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said: [...]
Your analogy is flawed in many ways. 1) The entities entering your house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer equipment is just bits, which have no identity. Spamfords bits are no different than anyone elses. 2) By the very act of connecting to the network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically routed to you.
Note the "automatically routed" clause.
No not at all. Just because I am connected to the network I am under no obligation to accept a single bit.
The only way you can really accomplish that is to disconnect. The interface/modem/whatever in your computer blindly receives the bits that are sent to it. There isn't a thing you can do about it except disconnect. (I consider turning your machine off as disconnecting.) [...]
Obviously you have not ever entered into contract agreements with an accesses provider.
Jeez. I *am*, in my small way, an access provider. And, of course, I have a contract with my upstream.
There is no obligation on my part to receive a single bit.
You don't read very well, do you? I said "automatically routed bits". You can't stop receiveing those bits unless you turn your machine off.
If I never run a sendmail daemon then I will never receive a single e-mail message regardless of how many are aimed at my servers. This is the same with any TCP/IP service.
Yes, because the network layer negotiation doesn't complete the connection, and the other side agrees to stop sending. Basically, you have convinced the other side to stop sending. You still receive any bits on the wire, and the only way you can stop that is by disconnecting.
The only obligation I have with my upstream provider is to pay my bill. If I choose to bounce everything that is routed from Spamford it is my right to do so as it is *MY* equipment.
Good, though trivial, point. Not what I was talking about, though. [...]
Identification isn't the problem at all. The problem is that you have no grounds on which to base a suit. Just as you can't sue me for sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own free will.
For the occasional spam then a lawsuit would be pointless. If you decided to dump 10,000 messages a day and deny the use of my equipment by myself and my clients then I would have a very strong case for litigation. You seem to forget that this is MY equipment and it is you who have no rights regarding the use of it. I have the final say so as to who uses it and how.
[...]
All flawed analogies. You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact, that is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not* place any restrictions on that connection. Furthermore, you can't -- no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you.
Once again it is you who have it wrong. I have agreed to nothing other than to >pay my bill for my connection. If Cyberpromo starts filling my clients mailboxe>s with spam and tieing up bandwidth I am under an obligation to my client to st>op him from doing so. My obligation is to my clients to provide the services th>ey have paid for. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed such actions to c>ontinue both to my contractual obligations to my clients but also my feudatory
You mean "fiduciary", I presume. But "feudatory" is cute.
responsibilities to the stockholders of my corporation.
Recall that -- what is it? CyberPromo -- sued AOL, and forced them to not block their spam...though I guess AOL was able to give their customers the ability to block, and there was an appeal -- I don't remember the details anymore...
You do not have a right to send mail to my system I have an obligation to my cl>ients to allow them to receive mail. This is a important distinction that needs> to be made. You have no rights regarding the use of my equipment. Furthermore >if your actions deprive the use of my equipment by myself and my clients you ca>n find yourself both financially and criminally liable.
I agree that if I flood your box with the intent of denying service I would be liable. That's not the normal mode of spammers, though. As an individual you only receive one or a very few copies of a particular message. It's just that there are a great many messages. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199705221633.RAA01999@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 at 10:33 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.
So why are you leaving your machine configured so that he clearly can use your bandwidth?
Courts are uneconomical solutions. It's as if I had said the fact that you left a $100 bill sat on your doorstep might have something to do with the fact that you are now $100 worse off, and as if I had suggested to you that a solution might be to be more careful about leaving money/resources in easily accessible places, and perhaps it would be better to store your money in a wallet and it is then as if you had replied:
Oh I don't know if they are that uneconomical. I think a class action lawsuit filed by a few 100 ISP's against Spamford would shut him down.
William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes: : Bullshit! No wallets are required. All that needs to be done is for a : court injunction made stopping this particular thief from picking up : my money. He nor anyone else has a "right" to take my money. If : Joe Thief picks up my money without my permission he can be charged : with theft. I am under no contract with Joe Thief and am under no : obligation to keep my money in a wallet.
I hope you see the similarity in argument.
Yes unfortunatly I nolonger have that thread. If you could give me a date that was posted I will look at the archives.
Clearly you can only issue injunctions against people you can identify. If not you don't get your property back.
Your solution is to require legislation, or court intervention ("he can be charged with criminal trespass"). So how are you going to get a reasonable prosecution rate on this one? Perhaps replace cash with a traceable form, so that you can trace who it was that took your money? Perhaps escrow peoples positions so that the government can trace the thief. Perhaps have the government put video cameras up at intervals of 100m in residential areas?
Perhaps criminal trespass was a little extreme on my part though no new laws would be required for such a prosecuition.
The costs and unattractiveness of government intervention are even worse on the net.
Do you want legislation stating that you can sue people who send more than a certain number of posts via your sendmail hub? Consider the logical consequences... you must be able to identify people to sue them, therefore:
- Internet Drivers licenses must be required - Remailers will be outlawed - Every SMTP session must be authenticated with your True Name
Are you in favour of these? Realise that these provisions will be in the 1998 anti-SPAM bill put before congress, and the congress critters will say that the regulation of anonymity on the net was as a result of public demand. In this case, they will probably be right about the demand.
Note that I did not say Spamford had a _right_ to spam you, just that with government "solutions" to this problem the "cure" is worse than the problem, at least from a pro-privacy perspective.
I am not looking for the governmental intrusions that you have listed above. They are not needed to take care of Spamford. I as the owner of certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who can enter my house and who can not. If I inform Spamford that he is not welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some recource to stop him. IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite simple to do without the above measure. Even if Spamford uses tricks to cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of his customers in the lawsuit.
I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a word.
Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts were agreed to before hand.
No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents of your house?
You might perhaps with some justification argue that there is an implicit contract to act reasonably, well ok, this is largely the way the internet used to work 10 years ago, but the problem is still how are you going to catch him. What about sendmail forgeries, what about public access terminals, what about remailers, what about free AOL disks, etc, etc. You've got to admit it's worse than hopeless. The government "solution" to the problem would attempt to make the net fully traceable.
By arguing for the use of litigation for spam, you are hastening the outlawing of remailers.
I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current structure of the internet. The whole spam issue could be handled in a non hostile manner. Spamford et al. could sign a contract with me to allow x amount of messages/day onto my system for y $'s. I then could use these funds to compensate my users with lower rates, better equipment, ...ect. Other ISP's could chose not to allow spam on their systems and use this as a marketing tool. Some users would like the lower rates and tolerate the spam others would opt to go with a no-spam ISP. Either way everyone comes out a winner. Unfortunatly Cyberpromo and other such companies have decided that they can have a free lunch at others expence. - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: Windows: A View to be Killed. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM4TAco9Co1n+aLhhAQG3tgP+MuM7ezGSWaENKIWDnv4EYCwbdnr5ZE27 3nTj9cs7SINLpf4nR/2oew3Uffb05TvNfz/e4qpwGHkN0ZRtrQRUY1/TV3brEfM7 21+ijNFr6AH9qXuIC7lhPz3d9F0jBbq2VA57VZS+42UtkRqSiizbAZS22NNkV/Ip r1babUB7BvY= =3qQM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
At 12:40 pm -0400 on 5/22/97, John Deters wrote:
Adam's "Tragedy of the Unmetered Commons" certainly provides a solution. Metering and charging e$ for mail-routing services would allow it to occur while stopping the freeloaders.
The tragedy of the commons, of course, is that nobody owns it. :-). Eric Hughes and his penny-roll experiments to the contrary... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
At 09:13 AM 5/22/97 -0500, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
In <199705221337.OAA00948@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 at 07:37 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.
I certainly agree with the cypherpunk theory of Strength Through Mathematics instead of PseudoStrength-via-threats-of-imprisonment Through Legislation. Adam's "Tragedy of the Unmetered Commons" certainly provides a solution. Metering and charging e$ for mail-routing services would allow it to occur while stopping the freeloaders. Blocking sites also provides a solution, although it proved too tough for my ISP to keep up with the Chameleon that is Spamford. To be honest, not all the spam that struck my ISP's site was proven to be CyberPromo's fault. I recently saw in alt.2600 a "fan" program for spewing spam. It runs under Windows, and I imagine "3133t hack3rz" have been having a field day running someone else's program to do what Spamford had to write on his own. They seem to be trading the addresses of unprotected sendmail demons running on the net that they can abuse. For now, preventing forwarding seems to be the only currently available solution, until e$ makes its way into the protocol stack. (Hurry up, Robert!) Of course, I'm not thrilled to think that every router on the internet is going to start charging me for packet delivery, nor do I want to spend .001 cents for visiting really.cool.foobar.com. I'm also scared to death of what my bill would be if I was charged a dime for every AltaVista query. The "bonus services", however, such as e-mail routing, or ftp proxying, certainly could be provided for a nominal cost.
Just because one has the right of free speech does not mean that we have to be forced to listen.
That's not ever been my point. Again, the spammers are not even trying to get this ISP or their customers to listen, they're just (mis)using their computer facilities to blow spam about the earth. Free speech is not the issue. It's "abusive overuse" of what used to be a publically available resource. John -- J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code. Think of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'." +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: mailto:jad@dsddhc.com (work) mailto:jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | For my public key, send mail with the exact subject line of: | | Subject: get pgp key | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
At 10:13 am -0400 on 5/22/97, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites.
As someone who has something on the order of 15 Eudora filters just for Spamford himself (go take a look at whois for cyberpromo to see how domains he has registered), this is easier said than done. I've taken to killing his ip blocks, but that gets a lot of sites, TidBITS among them, in the crossfire. You end up filtering *in* people who you want to see mail from, which is an interesting logical conundrum... I'm in favor of creating digital bearer certificate postage stamps, myself. Don't care who sends me unsolicited e-mail, as long as they have to pay, preferrably through the nose, for the privilege... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03020934afaa29712cbc@[139.167.130.248]>, on 05/22/97 at 10:53 AM, Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> said:
At 10:13 am -0400 on 5/22/97, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites.
As someone who has something on the order of 15 Eudora filters just for Spamford himself (go take a look at whois for cyberpromo to see how domains he has registered), this is easier said than done. I've taken to killing his ip blocks, but that gets a lot of sites, TidBITS among them, in the crossfire. You end up filtering *in* people who you want to see mail from, which is an interesting logical conundrum...
I actually do this for all aol, compuserver, prodigy accounts. I only filter in the few accounts that I wish to correspond with and the rest go into the bit bucket.
I'm in favor of creating digital bearer certificate postage stamps, myself. Don't care who sends me unsolicited e-mail, as long as they have to pay, preferrably through the nose, for the privilege...
My biggest concern with the pay as you go approach is 2 fold: 1. It woun't stop Spamford and his ilk as they are the ones who have the $$$ to spend. 2. Once the jennie is out of the bottle you will see everyone's cost go up as everyone will see this as a way to get a peice of the action. If the INet goes mettered rate the only ones who can afford to spend any time on it will be the corporations who have the money to spend. I remember when I had a compu$erver account years ago and how fast the tab ran up as everything had a charge on it. It was cheaper to stick with BBS's & FIDO and pay the long distance charges when needed. If given the choice between 2 evils of receiving Spamford Cyber-momo's crap or going to a mettered rate INet I chose Spamford as the second will not get rid of him. - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: What I like about MS is its loyalty to customers! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM4SjnI9Co1n+aLhhAQGvfwP9FK+mu1krs1at7ZHx/QUmkXbGrsUs246+ sVOUqe/NAv8a0pIc0HGvMOjXVu7EB70hjR7SZSAjXFooqnjgUzoDHsZKSlyAdnDm 1PbRODsolLyX6hMY9ZqbtL9H2Qnn4BZV1SV7nL/XtHyHwFGgyHJ1Pc5FBBa+ymcc H12OL1h1yaw= =DvAa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of Spamford's "right to free speech"? Spamford's speech (or that of his "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers. The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)
You have argued my point for me, if operators took more security precautions like authentication protocols this sort of abuse of mail servers would not occur. If spamford had to send the spam from his own domains with his address on them he would get the retaliation. Technology is the way to protect against actions like this, not ethical arguments.
It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.
To some extent I agree, but it isn`t really the same in the first place, it was just a vaguely similar situation, in that the market researcher cannot pretend to come from somewhere else so I will not shout at a innocent bystander.
What Spamford has done is to see me walking down the sidewalk carrying a megaphone, and grab me and tell me that I must stand there and hold my megaphone in front of some spammer's mouth while the spammer shouts at a crowd of people who don't want to hear him.
Exactly, solution? - refuse the megaphone. Protect your mail servers.
All the while, you stand there next to Spamford and claim that I must continue to hold my megaphone for the spammer because it's his "right to free speech", and the only way to avoid it is to turn my megaphone off, denying me the ability to allow anyone else to use my megaphone.
Spamford has a right to send whatever traffic he wants to your servers, if that includes false routed spam mails so be it, you have to protect yourself. I don`t claim that anyone has to leave their servers insecure so spamford can speak through them, but if you leave them open he does have a right to route through them. If you don`t want this, secure them.
The icing on this cake is that if the spammer starts announcing "Make Money Fast" over my megaphone, the FBI will come and investigate ME because I'm the one holding the megaphone!
This is a fault of the FBI and not of the spammer.
Free speech is NOT the subject here. My right to walk down the street with my (lawfully registered) megaphone has been usurped by a thug. You're telling me that every megaphone owner has a *duty* to hold it in front of every spammer's mouth.
No, I`m saying if he holds it in front of their mouth he has to expect them to speak.
Remember, these are finite megaphones. They have batteries that need replacing, and the owners are stuck standing there holding them while the spammers speak as long as they want. Sorry, but those megaphone owners may have other things to do with their megaphones and their time. You're confusing "the right to free speech" with "the right to kidnap megaphone owners".
You are forgetting the 998348934th ammendment of the US constitution: Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to kidnap megaphone owners... Seriously though, you make the comment earlier that listening to speech costs nothing because you can walk away, the internet is the same. If you don`t like getting mail from someone, killfile them, tell them to stop, change your address, get off the internet. You have a number of options, it may seem that your percieved "right" to have someone not send you mail is being infringed and you are being forced to get off the internet or change addresses, but this is really not necessary if you can handle a killfile. This is like when people talk about their percieved "right" to walk down the street without being mugged, they have no such right, it is simply that the default case is for them to not be mugged, and if they are mugged this constitutes a violation of their property rights.
In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution: install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail. ISPs and corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep the spammers away. Restricting the speech they carry. Turning off the megaphones.
Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's) ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally damaging way. It's also restricting the traffic he can carry to only that speech originating from his domain. His right to carry YOUR speech has been restricted by his technical solution to keep his machine alive.
This is not really a restriction, they have the choice: carry the spam or kill the other mail altogether. No-one is forcing them to take either course of action, sure it`s a sad case of affairs when we have to take technological action against people for using others equipment in unpleasant ways, but it`s simply the way things are.
What is ultimately likely to happen, however, is that Mr. Wallace will be prosecuted under existing laws for swindling the original MMF spammers. He's profiting by charging them to steal resources from ISPs. He *might* be able to avoid prosecution by putting a "warning sticker" on his advertising saying something to the effect that, "if you send a Make Money Fast scam out, the jack-booted thugs will come and haul you away faster than I can send out your e-mails." But then he'd have no business at all!
Wallace may be prosecuted, I think it would be wrong if he was. Even if you believe that Wallace does something that is unethical you must admit that if he were succesfully prosecuted it would send the message that a form of speech can be legislated against and prosecuted in court.
I'm not trying to claim that Mr. Wallace does or does not have the right to speak to us. I simply want to point out that there is real monetary loss to the real victims of his spamming.
Yes, but they can prevent this monetary loss. To give another flawed but illustrative paradigm you might come up to me in the street and say "give me your money", if I refuse and you hit me and take my money you have mugged me, if I refuse and continue walking, and you take no violent action against me, you have done nothing wrong. I admit what Wallace does is unpleasant, but it is not immoral or unethical from my point of view. If you could not prevent the monetary loss caused by his speech then I would think differently, but you can, and that is the bottom line. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In list.cypherpunks, paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk writes:
You are forgetting the 998348934th ammendment of the US constitution:
Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to kidnap megaphone owners...
The 1st one begins with "Congress shall make no law", and that's quite enough. The US government is forbidden to interfere in matters of speech. (yah, I know this doesn't seem to slow 'em down much) You're right that a sendmail (or other process vulnerable to subversion) should protect itself. My fear is that our benevolent protectorate will _require_ such precautions, because that concedes the duty to provide other precautions as the law might require. - -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy@scytale.com DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division PGP Public Key fingerprint = 31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54 13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6 Key available from pubkey@scytale.com I charge to process unsolicited commercial email -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBM4puNBvikii9febJAQF8jAP/RmVg8Nh3o1xEnDl1VVchpgT9JEWCsr0p rM9jIOBjyI2i5H07+6AhwZ2oKWQBz2KKRN+/RhCbRTmEBfAJO5SngyNzMmFi+ov3 BX2yYxz5hyduoQXgW+Wwq57oZSEyZ8A68OgzTvcKwvWwW+7vfO/appfEfoKeCDll mlMY3wxpl1I= =2RLx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (9)
-
Adam Back -
John Deters -
Kent Crispin -
Paul Bradley -
Robert Hettinga -
Ross Wright -
roy＠sendai.scytale.com -
Willaim H. Geiger III -
William H. Geiger III