Re: More on digital postage

[Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net>]

Timothy C. May writes:

 > "Spam" has rapidly become one of those overused, overloaded, 
 > meaningless words. Everything bad on the Net these days is labelled
 > "spam."

The term "spam" has its origins in the well-known Monty Python
Viking sketch, where a diner has breakfast menu offerings such as

          Spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam. 

This sequence of one repeated thing, with an occasional something 
else, reminds us of how our news spool looks after spam has happened. 

> For the phone example in Canada, just what is "spam"?

> -- Is it the semi-traditional definition of "spam," i.e., a phone call made
> to thousands of sites? (At the same time? Sequentially? How?)

> -- Is it a robo-dialer, with no human at the other end?

Calling one person a thousand times is certainly spam.  Calling
a thousand different people is probably "Excessive Multiple Calling",
or some such acronym. 

> -- Or is it merely an "unwanted phone call"?

This is definitely not spam. 

> As I see it, the danger of criminalizing "unwanted phone calls" is obvious.
> (Though obviously the courts and prisons are not about to be filled up with
> people who committed the heinous crime of making an unrequested phone call.)

If someone is calling me every day, and I ask them nicely to stop, 
continued calling should be illegal harrassment.  If I've never heard
from them before, then a couple unwanted calls aren't a big deal. 

The same principle should apply if someone decides they have a
Constitutional right to bang on my front door at 6 am each and every
morning.

> The danger of all "junk mail" and "junk phone call" laws is that they give
> power to the government to decide on what is junk and what is not.

> Not something we should support.

I wouldn't mind laws against "repeated unwanted communication."  That
way I decide what is and is not junk, and the perpetrator is on notice
that further waste of my time, fax paper, phone line, or mailbox
space will not be viewed benevolently. 

--
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"