Judge Kozinski Responds

[E. Allen Smith]

From:	IN%"liberty at gate.net"  "Jim Ray" 17-SEP-1996 02:14:28.24
To:	IN%"cypherpunks at toad.com"
CC:	
Subj:	Judge Kozinski Responds

>The statement about anonymous remailers was largely
>accurate.  I'm not sure that the fact that you (or some of
>your associates) are willing to block people from getting
>anonymous mail is a sufficient safeguard.  Some may not be,
>and it only takes one or two who do not adhere to the code
>to make life miserable for the rest of us.
>
>We agree about the need for privacy, but I'm not at all sure
>why the right to send messages anonymously trumps the
>recipient's right to know who's addressing him.  Getting an
>anonymous message--even one that is not harassing or
>threatening--is an invasion of my privacy.  As for

	The essential problem with this viewpoint is that the right the
receiver has is to ignore the message. If he doesn't want to receive
anonymous messages, he should set up a mail filtration program that will
do a good enough job of filtering them out. Spammed messages can be countered
with Internet charging (neccessary anyway for the long-term health of the Net),
as can mailbombing. That leaves individual messages that may be offensive
(including, apparantly in his case, offensive by virtue of being anonymous),
but if offensiveness meant someone should have the right to stop the emission
of speech, that would mean the Christian Coalition would have the right to stop
speech on evolution, the PC types would have the right to stop speech on
genetic differences in intelligence (see Stephen Jay Gould for them on this
issue - even leaving aside racial questions which are separate from the
individual ones), etcetera.
	-Allen