Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail

An Metet anmetet at freedom.gmsociety.org
Tue Apr 13 14:28:51 PDT 2004


> Really, what's the difference between scanning the message in order to,
> say, render HTML tags it may contain, and scanning it in order to
> generate targetted advertising based on keywords it contains?

That's irrelevant.  These arguments that Gmail is just like other services
are nothing but red herrings.

Surely cypherpunks should understand that the recipient of a message
can do whatever he wants with it.  He can save it to disk, he can
share it with his friends, or he can contract with Gmail to add targeted
advertising.  It's contrary to everything cypherpunks stand for to suggest
that the sender of a message should have some power or authority over
what happens to it once it is in the receiver's hands.

Even if Gmail were completely new and nothing like it had ever existed in
the world before, it would be perfectly acceptable for mail recipients
to use the service.  That follows from their inherent freedom to use
the information under their control.

Please save these tired arguments by analogy for another forum.
Cypherpunks agree on the basic desirability of individual freedom,
and that is enough to settle the question.





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