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

[mindfuq at comcast.net]

* Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> [2003-08-07 20:09]:
> Peter Harkins wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 07:06:46PM -0700, mindfuq at comcast.net wrote:
> >> The state must protect my freedom of speech.  So when I make a claim
> >> against AOL for conducting a DoS attack against me, the state must
> >> rule in my favor, or else they are failing to protect my free speech
> >> rights.  
> > 
> > OK, for anyone who wasn't sure, it's time to stop feeding the trolls.
> > 
> 
> Troll or not, if AOL censored email in the UK* it would be illegal
> interception. 2 years for every interception.

Nice!  I've been thinking I should move there for a while.  I also
heard that by 2006 London and all the major cities will have seemless
wifi coverage.  The reason Europe is on the ball with this is the EU
just passed five laws to deregulate emerging telecom companies so they
can compete with the monopolists.  

In the U.S., the monopolistic heavyweights are eating our lunch.
Telecom policy in the U.S. is warped by huge campaign contributions.
Consumers are getting butt reamed on high broadband costs, and
censorship is becoming a problem.

> IMO, that's the only good thing to come from the RIP Act (the one with
> not-(yet)-implemented GAK).
> 
> Freedom to do your own thing is great, but what if the baby bells refused to
> connect you to another baby bell? The benefits of a unified 'phone service
> are such that legislation prevents baby bells doing that, and most of us
> would agree with that legislation. IMO, email should be similar.

With this republican absolute "free market" philosophy, the U.S. is
going to end up eating it.  As soon as Europe is fully wired (and
unwired) I'll have one way plane ticket in hand.

> But it don't solve the spam problem :-(

That's okay- the antispammers are a bigger problem, and this needs to
be attacked first.  Europe is already a step ahead of the U.S. on
that.  I've got spamassassin to control spam.