on 5/26/2003 2:18 PM Bob Braden wrote:
So, what happens when the FTC, which is today very business-friendly,
decides to place no restriction at all on "real Commercial" spam?
Given the current politics in Washington, that seems like a likely
scenario.
This is why principles are strategically important. It's not enough to say
"spam is annoying" and expect action. You have to give the parties
something that is more important ideologically than their default
positions. Property-rights are a fundamental tenet of the US economic and
judicial systems, and that argument can easily trump the pro-business
default position if victory is defined in those terms. Suboridinate
effects like releasing capital and facilitating competition appeal to
other factions which are still relatively close to the center. There are
still going to be a couple of camps who will be against it, but they will
be opposed to the principle (folks who oppose any strenghthening of any
private property laws on ideological grounds, in this example). Those
factions are the minority wing of the minority party right now, though.
In other words, this is a good time to attack from the right.
--
Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/