[eff-austin] Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?

[mindfuq at comcast.net]

* John Kozubik <john at kozubik.com> [2003-08-02 19:27]:
> 
> That is incorrect.  AOL owns their network, and they can respond to your
> arbitrary communications on their network in any way they see fit.

Unfortunately, you're correct.

> Maybe they will deliver your email to your AOL subscribing friend.
> Maybe they will block that email.  Maybe they will translate the
> email into French and reverse the word-order and then send it to
> your friend.  Maybe they will print it out and mail it back to you
> for no reason.  All of these responses are perfectly legitimate, and
> represent a private entity using their property in whatever way they
> see fit,

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.  

However, if the communication passes through Mallory's back yard, we
can let the attack happen because it's on Mallory's property.  At the
same time, if I sabotage the city water line that passes through my
property, I can be held accountable.  And rightly so.  Mallory should
also be held accountable for blocking communications.  This is what
needs to change.

> It amazes me how many people on this list only respect private property
> when it is convenient for them to do so.  (For reference, see the "Tim May
> argues (correctly) that people can't protest in his house" and, more
> recently, the "Gilmore thinks airlines can't refuse him travel for any
> reason they see fit"  threads)

There's a balance of rights, and obviously private property rights
aren't going to always get priority.  While they're high on my list in
*some* cases, they don't top human rights.  Some rights are a little
more fundamental and important than private property rights.  And when
someone abuses their property to damage someone else, I have zero
respect for their private property rights.  So I'm not at all
surprized that someone would perceive an inconsistency on this issue,
because there are so many more important rights that have a greater
bearing on peoples happiness.  

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.

In my particular case, AOL is blocking me from talking to friends and
family.  I suppose I could argue that the packets I create and send
are created with my private property and resources, so those packets
are my property, and AOL is vandalizing my property by destroying
these packets.  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.  This is clearly an abusive use of property, and I have
no tolarance for it.  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.