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controlling your own data

2002-09-12 12:59:44
Robin Lynn Frank wrote,

| Oddly enough, this change of heart was inspired by David Tamkin.  After
| reading his post, I found myself just a bit annoyed that anyone would
| complain about a computer's owner controlling what data when in to or out of
| that computer.

Ms. Frank misunderstood me.  Of course people have every right to such
control.  That's the only reason we on this list use procmail (even those of
us for whom the control is not based around spam rejection: throwing mail into
folders is still exercise of control).  The person who /dev/nulls anything
from me may piss me off but is within her rights.  She's also within her
rights if she has an autoresponder that tells me that she deletes mail from me
unread.  I blacklist some addresses in my own .procmailrc (without
autoresponding to them; these are, after all, people whom I had asked to leave
me alone), and if any of them ever sends me something vital, I'll miss out.

But people who use such controls also have the responsibility to carry them
out; they are out of line when they dump the work onto someone else.  A
whitelister with a PYLM setup, especially if I'm replying to her message or
her post, expects me to implement her selected controls for her and to do her
filtering work for her.  That is what frosts me about them.

Ms. Frank says that people have the right to control their own data; I agree,
but I add that the right carries the responsibility.  Ever hear the
expression, "If you want to call the tune, you have to pay the piper"?  PYLM
says, "you pay the piper to play my tune," and most PYLM texts add insult to
injury by taking the stand that the sender is a damnable spammer.

| If someone
| wants to use an autoresponder to control incoming mail, that is their right.

Some people think that generalizing the other person's stand into nonsense
scores a victory.  I never objected to all autoresponders as a class, as Ms.
Frank is implying.  There are some very good uses for them, and I have two
running right now.  (Neither, of course, is a PYLM.)  Don't confuse the vessel
with the content.  I didn't.





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