Re: Virus authors produce open spam relays

On Sat, Feb 21, 2004 at 10:24:32AM -0500, Alan DeKok wrote:
>   e.g. Multiple conversations I've had with U.S. libertarians about
> spam.  They say "Spam is free speech".


Yeah, I heard this argument very often. Especially in the first 
months of the ASRG mailing list I was harshly blamed by many people
for trying to violate their freedom of speech. Because of that, I 
went to a large bookstore in San Francisco at the IETF conference, 
and asked for a book about the US constitution, it's details, court
decisions, juristical comments, to learn about the "freedom of
speech". Astonishingly, you can't just go into a book shop and buy 
a book about this. The sales people were quite surprised that someone
came to ask for such a book. I finally got one about the constitution, 
but not very detailled or professional, and I don't have it here at
the moment.

As far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong), the "freedom of
speech" is a right given in the first amendment to the US
constitution (from the Bill of Rights), which says

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
    religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging
    the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
    peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a
    redress of grievances.

So to violate this "Freedom of speech" you'd need to be the Congress 
and make a law.

And if someone claims that "spam is free speech", you can argue that
we are not making laws against spam, but mechanisms against forgery. 
Ask those people whether "freedom of speech" includes stealing someone
else's identity or abusing someone else's domain. Or whether it would
include breaking into someone else's house and start talking in order
to force him to listen.



BTW, the german constitution also contains a right like "freedom of
speech", but the german constitution is protecting people against the 
state/government, not against other people. So someone can't violate
the german flavour of freedom of speech by not listening to
you. Furthermore, german constitution is more precise in that. It says 
that everybody has the right to express or publish his _opinion_ . 
So this explicitely does not cover fraudulent messages or forging the
sender address. And it does not include forcing others to listen to it
or to pay for it.

regards
Hadmut