Re: Rotenberg as the Uber Enemy

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)]

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> Any laws forbidding spam generation in the U.S. will simply (or already)
> move the spam-originating sites offshore. Then what happens? Is my ISP
> supposed to screen international messages for me? Do we get the
> U.N./OECD/Interpol/Illuminati to "regularize" anti-spam laws in all 197
> recognized nations?

Of course, the "anti-spamming" laws will also be used to suppress the
"politically incorrect" speech.  Recall that Jim Bell has already been
accused of "spamming", in addition to other crimes.

Those who follow the Usenet newsgroup alt.conspiracy may have observed
a recent trend: someone posts an anti-Clinton rant.  An unknown "rogue
retromoderator" forges a cancel for it. (Given how quickly forged "spam"
gets tracked down, it's amazing how no one ever catches these pesky "rogue
cancellers".) The author reposts the original rant. This repeats a few
times, after which Chris Lewis of BNA/Nortel kicks in and starts
issuing cancels for the rant, and any articler quoting the rant,
because it's been reposted too many times already, making it "spam".

Compare this with the CBS 60 minutes story about a month ago, about
how bad people are allowed to tell lies about the U.S. government on
the Internet, and how there ought to be a law against it.

> The "500 messages a day" problem will be solved through other means.  It
> has to be. Laws are insufficient, and wrong-headed, solutions for speech
> issues.

A promiscous e-mail box that assumes that strangers have something interesting
to say is quickly becoming obsolete.

A possible solution is to set up a procmail recipet that would dump all
incoming e-mail from unrecognized correspondents into a separate folder, which
one could examine at leasure once a week.

---

<a href="mailto:dlv@bwalk.dm.com">Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM</a>
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps