(none)

[Brian Beattie]

On Wed, 18 Jan 1995, Eric Hughes wrote:

>    From: Brian Beattie <beattie at CSOS.ORST.EDU>
> 
>    I disagree, one can use e-mail to steal.  E-mail consumes resources,
>    resources for which the sender may have no right to use.  
> 
> It's not theft if there's no direct benefit to the actor.  It does

I must assume that the actor who spams me or sends me unsolicited
email or any email for that matter derives some benifit from this 
activity or they would not do it.

> consume resources, there's no argument about that.  Note, however,
> that the scope of any such resource use is with the message as a bit
> sequence; no meaning or interpretation of the content is even
> relevant.  That is, the resource use does not relate to the email as
> communication, merely as a technical operation.

If I make it clear that I do not wish to receive email from an individual
or group and that individual or group continues to send email then I contend
that they are using my resources in a way that I have not authorized.

> 
> The question remains whether such resource use can ever be considered
> unauthorized.  Certainly it's impolite; that's not at issue.
> 
> I argue that if you hook your machine up to the Internet, you've
> implicitly authorized people to send you packets -- as many as they
> want and of whatever nature as they want.

clearly I disagree.

Brian Beattie         | [From an MIT job ad] "Applicants must also have
                      | extensive knowledge of UNIX, although they should
beattie at csos.orst.edu | have sufficently good programming taste to not
Fax (503)754-3406     | consider this an achievement."