Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?

[Bill Stewart]

At 05:52 PM 08/02/2003 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>You seem to miss the fundamental point of what
>'law' is for in a democracy.

No, Jim, he understands exactly what law is for in a democracy,
which is enforcing anything 51% of the people want
until something else gets its 15 minutes of public attention,
and that includes "doing something" about spam,
or about people with the wrong skin color or nationality wanting to
live in your neighborhood, or making sure that people with the
wrong combinations of number or gender can't be married,
or providing landing zones for visitors from other planets.

What law is for in a free society is an entirely different question -
I think you're saying that laws that define spam as a tort
are wrong as well as not useful, and I think agree with you.
But democracy is only compatible with a free society when
everybody remembers to bash politicians who interfere with freedom.

Laws _could_ help by defining use of nuclear weapons on spammers
to be justifiable homicide (or litterin' an' creatin' a disturbance.)