At 10:36 AM 8/19/2002 -0700, Dan Wing wrote:
Doug,
Do you feel the FCC's existing rule against unsolicited faxes
(title 47, chapter 5, subchapter II, section 227) censors or
limits freedom of communication or expression, and should be
repealed?
Ladies and Gentlemen I'm rather dismayed that I have not heard any rational
response to the suggestion by my distinguished colleague Mr. Wing that the
elements of Title 47 aka the junk fax laws could not be made applicable to
unsolicited SMTP traffic. Many European Countries have similar laws.
Several of the US States have enacted decent laws banning SPAM, California
in particular, but a national policy ..not under the control of the DMA
could be modestly effective. Many of us who have had experience in
fax protocol development and deployment have first hand knowledge of this.
BTW there is a national effort underway in the US to stop unsolicited phone
calls, just as if not more annoying than SPAM .... and yes even in an
Republican administration here in the US.
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html
Is there no faith at all in the power of rational laws enacted by rational
people?
Has this bizarre libertarian streak in some completely blinded folks from
the possibilities of government acting rationally?
Do you all think your vote or voice has no value in the public realm? Do
you believe the process in the US and elsewhere is so totally corrupted by
money there is no hope for competent technical views to reach elected
decision makers?
Yes we can develop and deploy better filtering technology ..but that is not
a panacea for the abuse we all must suffer through.
There is power in collective political action, after all who funded the
development and deployment of TCP/IP in the first place...
-d
Doug wrote:
>
> Hey Eliot Lear,
>
> NO NO NO and HELL NO. I despise Spam to the utmost degree and I regularly
> refuse to buy items from people that advertise to me using Spam. On the
> other hand I do not want someone telling me what I can and cannot
receive in
> my email or what I can and cannot send for that matter. I feel no need to
> call my local congress man or woman over the contents of my inbox and
really
> hope that others do not as well because if we as a nation complain about
> Spam enough and god forbid that we somehow get them to listen to us and do
> something about it then we will be not only submitting to censorship and
> oppression of things most of us agree are undesirable but also to the
things
> that the elite of the government find offensive. These things could include
> anything that is counter to the mainstream religious beliefs and practices
> and indeed anything that meets the least strict interpretation of
> subversive. The censorship will not stop there indeed it will only grow
> because by asking congress in one unanimous voice to censor our email we
> will have admitted to the government that we are unable to handle the
> information available to us on the internet and they will begin maneuvering
> into a position to censor the information available to us on the
internet as
> well. The government already gathers information about what we look at and
> what we put on the Internet let's not give them a reason or the ability to
> take our right to know away from us. Instead I suggest we spend a little
> more time and effort to developing new routines to filter out the Spam for
> ourselves and boycotting the products and services whose providers
choose to
> use Spam to advertise to us.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Doug