I won't belabor the free speech issues since they tend towards the religious
and I can't respond in a short discussion. Protocol and code can constrict
us and Lessig does indeed warn us against the danger of accepting the
implicit restrictions and policies built into such mechanisms. This is a
case in point.
What I will respond to is your statement that I am somehow going through a
lot of extra work to sneak past my ISP. That is offensive and utterly wrong.
My ISP is whimsical and changes the email addresses of its millions of
subscribers whenever it decides to -- continental cablevision ==> Mediaone
==> JoesDryCleaningAndInternetService => ATTBI => Comcast. They also have
problematic policies when I want to send email other than via their approved
wires and I accidentally connect via my neighbor's access point or through
the wrong path on my Dual WAN they just won't deal with me. The whole point
of the Internet is to avoid being at the mercy of benevolence of those that
demand to do me good.
If it is illegal to implement my own services then the Internet is a
criminal activity. So be it.
If AOL chooses to fight the Internet then I feel I have a responsibility to
limit the damage they do. If you choose to make it hard for me to send mail
to you and you want mail from me then it's in your interest for me have the
incentive to cater to your rules.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kee Hinckley [mailto:nazgul(_at_)somewhere(_dot_)com]
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:38
To: asrg(_at_)bobf(_dot_)frankston(_dot_)com
Subject: RE: [Asrg] AOL vs the Internet -- Are they opting out?
At 6:43 PM -0400 7/26/03, <asrg(_at_)bobf(_dot_)frankston(_dot_)com> wrote:
I do want to emphasize that it is a free speech issue. Arguing that if I
were diligent enough I could work around such impediments is not the
The fact of the matter is that you did extra work to *not* use your
ISP's mail server. And you probably do extra work to run a server in
a dynamic IP environment (and the very act of running such server may
well violate your ISP's terms of service).
AOL also requires that incoming mail not look like spam and not
contain words that they consider spam-related. Presumably you've
avoided doing that, despite the fact that it violates your speech.
Some ISPs require that your IP address resolve to something before
they accept your email. That requires you to do extra work as well.
As Lessig has pointed out quite well, protocol defines law on the
internet. The current protocol, with no "added" restrictions, also
restricts your ability of free speech. AOL's "new" restriction is no
different than any other SMTP check of the sender. *Any* change to a
protocol can be seen as a restriction of speech, because by
definition a protocol defines how you may speak.
So in a sense, I agree. The internet restricts your speech, and
anti-spam measures do so more. Then the question becomes whether a
particular protocol change is particularly restrictive. I think the
answer in this case is clear. AOL's restriction does not keep anyone
from communicating with AOL users, nor does it require users to do
anything additional to communicate with AOL users. All it requires
is that some people who *did* do something additional, now need to
undo it or find a different ISP.
provide their customers with access to the Internet and they are not. AOL
does not own its users but because the .Com disaster their users are not
really mobile.
They are perfectly mobile, there are plenty of other ISPs. What
there aren't (and have been before, during or since the .com peak) or
other ISPs who will hold their hand as thoroughly as AOL. Their own
reluctance or inability to learn to use their machines keeps them in
AOL's gated community. There are lots of users like that (yesterday
we lost a potential customer because they could figure out how to
follow instructions on changing two fields in their Outlook
configuration to use our service... we see lots of them).
AOL users are users who have specifically decided to give up freedoms
in exchange for security. What's scary is that there are so many
people who believe that's a good trade-off.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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