Re: How far is to far?

[fen@genmagic.com (Fen Labalme) (by way of fen@genmagic (Fen Labalme))]

[mark@coombs.anu.edu.au writes:]

>Maybe it's not in the spirit of this mailing group but what of the question
>of purposeful abuse of the anon mailers/newsposters? Say for instance some
>person posts either a sh*tload of garbage to every known group, flooding
>the USENET or a more personal attack whereby they send out anonymously 
>information that was so fundamentally personal to someone they could
>possibly react very badly....

I see two answers: one is public censure, which has appeared to work to a
large extent in at least one newsgroup whose users make habitual use of an
anonymous remailer (alt.sex.bondage) .

Another is broadcatch, a favorite topic of mine, which is concerned with
the filtering of information.  (Note:  where "broadcast" is a
one-source-to-many
subscriber system, "broadcatch" scans many sources for information relevant
to one subscriber.  The end result is less quantity and higher quality.) 
With broadcatch, you could turn off threads of conversation you were not
interested in, block out flamers, and IGNORE ANONYMOUS EMAIL in general. 
Of course, pseudonyms may come to be trusted and thus not filtered out,
though they, too, are cryptographically anonymous.  (Another common
mechanism of broadcatch filters is to allow through articles with mentions
of the subscriber's name.)

Also, in the long run, when networks are made up of smarter, cooperating
machines, neighboring machines to a flamer that is generating mass ammounts
of email will begin to choose not to listen as often at that address.

In sum, I think that it is someone's right to say anything they want, as
long as I don't have to listen.

Fen
~~~
~~~
Fen Labalme               General Magic              We Are Everywhere
40 Carl Street #4         2465 Latham Street        -------------------
San Francisco CA 94117    Mountain View CA 94040    The US Constitution
415/731-1174 (home)       415/966-6273 (my desk)    may not be perfect,
<fen@netcom.com>          415/965-9424 (fax)        but it's better than
<fen@well.sf.ca.us>       <fen@genmagic.com>        what we've got now.