Re: anti-spam collateral damage

Dave Harding wrote:
> Even though my contact points are filtered I can (and do) receive
> contacts that I didn't pre-authorized.

but only because the filter is imperfect.  In the case of the 
receptionist, you are counting on her/him to have some discriminating 
ability to allow non pre-authorized contacts through.  But they're not 
omniscient.  Contact you may have made at a conference will be rejected 
because they're unknown parties, and very convincing salespeople will be 
let through because they know how to work the system.

The point remains that public interfaces are by the very nature part of 
the Commons we use every day.

I think what we're really arguing about is not whether or not the public 
interfaces are your property or not but the protocols for crossing that 
public interface.  If there is a public interface, anyone has a right to 
come to the interface, present some form of publicly agreed on 
credential and their permission to cross that public interface is based 
on how you interpret that credential.  But the important thing is that 
the evaluation process should be public and nondiscriminatory as much as 
possible.  I do realize that every form of filtering involves some kind 
of discrimination but I'm thinking of the kind of discrimination and 
chilling effect that identity systems brings.


> If your ISP filters email you want, complain. If they don't listen, get
> a new ISP. Don't institute an email 'Bill of Rights', until there is no
> other way to avoid abuses.

and pardon me for saying so but this is yet another illusion.  Most 
people have no choice in ISP for in 60 percent of the United States, 
it's Comcast and nobody else.  Around here, you have Comcast and Verizon 
unless you look really really hard to find some garage level DSL 
reseller.  The only reason I have speakeasy is because I'm grandfathered 
from another DSL ISP bankruptcy.  If it wasn't for them, I'd probably be 
sitting on Comcast with a consume only Internet connection and spending 
a fortune for virtual hosting to do the things I want to do instead of 
running servers out of my basement.

of course, I could always go back to dial-up and leave my telephone 
connection nailed up 24 by 7 like I had the past but that's not really 
an option for modern Internet life.

so is a Bill of Rights needed?  As long as we have an effective duopoly 
for last mile service at high speed, I would say yes and for more than 
e-mail.  the EFF proposal is close but not perfect.  We should also 
build as many of those rights as we need in the form of good anti-spam 
technology of e-mail without building in censorship.  After all, if you 
can censor a spammer, you can censor anybody.  And I think that's the 
core point of the EFF argument.

---eric


-- 
Question: What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
Answer: George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.