Re: Spam IS Free Speech

On or About 14 May 97 at 3:46, lucifer Anonymous Remailer wrote:

> Ross Wright wrote:
> > 
> > You can not retaliate against free
> > speech, Rick.  That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and
> > white.
> 
>   Crock of shit, Ross.

No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a 
few bits.  Really, there's no call for that.  It's wrong. 

>   It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free"
> bullshit?

What?  Like 80 cents per gig?  Please a bit here and a byte there 
isn't going to break anyone.  Could someone do the math?

> > Free speech is a right.  You have the right to make some snotty
> > reply, but no right to intentionally harm. 
> 
>   Spammers neither know nor care if they are causing harm to the
> finances or mental well-being of others.

One message in your in box is no excuse for terror tactics.  Mail 
bombs, arp atacks, calls for regulations: aren't you over reacting?  
Just a little?  I think your mental well being is in question anyway.

>   If a spammer declares their right to cause me financial loss and
> denial of service for the time it takes me to rid myself of their
> unwanted intrusion

What, like 5 seconds a week?  Less?  Please.  It just isn't as bad as 
you make it seem.

Shit I love this, the spammers love this.  There is no such thing as
*bad* publicity.  The more you screem the better it is for the "bad
spammers".

> then they can have no expectation that I, in
> turn, will not declare what level of financial loss and denial of
> service I will cause them.

You have no right to deny them more than the few seconds of service 
that you lost.  Any more than that is terror tactics, and a waste of 
time.  You should be working on better projects than "Let's fuck over 
the spammers".  Wow, that's productive.  Shit, man write some useful 
code.
 
> > You, nor anyone else, has a right to lash out at
> > someone for something they say or some ad they send you.
> 
>   So spammers have no right to lash out at my sending them a
> gigabyte of email regarding the evils of spamming. 

A gig for a few bytes.  Why?  That's so lame.  Such a watse of 
talented code writing.  And why are you escalating this?
 
> > > It makes
> > > *me* feel better.
> > 
> > Ahhh, at last the point.  Are you a self centred ass, who's
> > personal feelings are more important that the Constitution? 
> 
>   Ross has failed to explain just how the Constitution promotes the
> spammer's right to intrude upon the spammer's life and cause them
> financial loss while denying that right to the spammee.

Well I've tried to describe that you lose about a dime per year.

>   Ross' personal feelings seem to be important enough to him to cast
> slurs on those who disagree with his black-and-white opinions
> regarding his right to spam others without them having a
> corresponding right to reply in kind.

You can feel free to send me twice as many bytes as I send to you, 
OK?  Feel beter?  No!  You must fuck me over because I sent you my 
latest MLM scam.  Yeah that's so mature!  Come out from behind your 
remailer and state your opinions, wrong as they are.

 >   Gander. Goose.

Right.  If I send you a gig, you send me a gig.  If I send you a meg 
you send me a meg.  A few bytes for a few bytes.  Are you following 
what has upset me about this issue, yet?  Like for Like, Goose, 
Gander.  You said it, but you don't mean it. 

Right?  You are saying if I send you one message, you have the right 
to mail bomb me?  There's no parity there.  

It's very distressing how much of a hot button this issue is.

 >TruthMonger

 Lier. 

Ross

=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ross Wright
King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services
http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia
Voice: (408) 259-2795

> > > You can not retaliate against free
> > > speech, Rick.  That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and
> > > white.

Retaliation by force against speech is wrong, more speech is not 
unethical. It might be unpleasant, but not wrong.

> No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a 
> few bits.  Really, there's no call for that.  It's wrong. 

To make a brief analogy: Say you are a market researcher, and you 
approach me in the street and ask for some time to answer your questions, 
I do not commit any ethical wrongdoing if I stand there and scream at you 
for several minutes. If I physically attack you I commit a crime. 

All internet traffic is speech, including syn-ack flood attacks and any 
other denial of service attempt. This is plain and simple, we have to 
find technological means of thwarting these attacks, they are not 
unethical, unpleasant yes, immoral no. 

> >   It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free"
> > bullshit?
> 
> What?  Like 80 cents per gig?  Please a bit here and a byte there 
> isn't going to break anyone.  Could someone do the math?

I won`t do the math but the point is it "costs" you energy to listen to 
someone speaking in the street, sure, it is a very small amount, but it 
does cost energy from a strict biological point of view.
This does not lead me to believe any crime is commited by someone 
speaking to, or at me.

I shaln`t repeat myself any further, no speech is a crime.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

At 05:51 PM 5/15/97 +0000, Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> > > You can not retaliate against free
>> > > speech, Rick.  That's a bad thing, plain and simple, black and
>> > > white.
>
>Retaliation by force against speech is wrong, more speech is not 
>unethical. It might be unpleasant, but not wrong.
>
>> No shit, you just can't send 10,000 megs of info in retaliation for a 
>> few bits.  Really, there's no call for that.  It's wrong. 
>
>To make a brief analogy: Say you are a market researcher, and you 
>approach me in the street and ask for some time to answer your questions, 
>I do not commit any ethical wrongdoing if I stand there and scream at you 
>for several minutes. If I physically attack you I commit a crime. 
>
>All internet traffic is speech, including syn-ack flood attacks and any 
>other denial of service attempt. This is plain and simple, we have to 
>find technological means of thwarting these attacks, they are not 
>unethical, unpleasant yes, immoral no. 

In the case of shrieking at the researcher, the researcher can simply walk
away.  In the case of a network connection, the ISP cannot simply unplug.

>> >   It costs me money to download unwanted spam. What's this "free"
>> > bullshit?
>> 
>> What?  Like 80 cents per gig?  Please a bit here and a byte there 
>> isn't going to break anyone.  Could someone do the math?
>
>I won`t do the math but the point is it "costs" you energy to listen to 
>someone speaking in the street, sure, it is a very small amount, but it 
>does cost energy from a strict biological point of view.
>This does not lead me to believe any crime is commited by someone 
>speaking to, or at me.

No, spam DOES cost the victim.  I'm not saying that the victim is the spam
recipient.  Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's
CyberPromotions.  Yes, victims.  Their entire businesses consist of keeping
wires from one side of routers connected to the internet while the wires on
the other side attach to modems and a handful of host computers to serve
mail, news, etc.  When Spamford sends out his 15000 messages, he is denying
the ISPs the bandwidth, CPU and disk storage they are paying for.  By
filling the ISP's drives, he is also denying every customer of those ISPs
from receiving incoming email.

Here's Spamford's M.O., to those of you unfamiliar with how CyberPromo
Makes Money Fast:

1.  Advertise to people that they can send out bulk e-mail for a fixed cost.

2.  Ethically-challenged persons who dream of Making Money Fast draft their
Ponzi schemes, and send them, along with a certain amount of very
non-refundable money, to CyberPromo.

3.  CyberPromo sends out the spam by routing it through sendmail demons
running on other peoples' (the victims') machines.

4.  The complaints and threats of lawsuits land squarely on the shoulders
of the persons unfortunate enough to be running the sendmails.  It is,
after all, their machine which is the origin of the spam.  Just look in the
headers.

5.  The original ethically-challenged persons never see responses to their
original paid-for spam; CyberPromo knows this from the get-go but certainly
won't inform the spammers of this.

6.  When confronted with evidence of the Ponzi schemes by the sendmail
operator, Mr. Wallace replies: "Shame on those nasty users, I'll terminate
their accounts."

7.  Spamford continues to route other spam through the hapless sendmail
operators -- his dozens of registered domains make it extremely tough to
prevent source blocking.

8.  The FBI comes to visit the victimized sendmail operator, investigating
*them* for running pyramid scams.

This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the
last couple of months.

Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for
running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they
can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of
Spamford's "right to free speech"?  Spamford's speech (or that of his
"customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers.
 The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a
megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really
don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)

It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.  

What Spamford has done is to see me walking down the sidewalk carrying a
megaphone, and grab me and tell me that I must stand there and hold my
megaphone in front of some spammer's mouth while the spammer shouts at a
crowd of people who don't want to hear him.  All the while, you stand there
next to Spamford and claim that I must continue to hold my megaphone for
the spammer because it's his "right to free speech", and the only way to
avoid it is to turn my megaphone off, denying me the ability to allow
anyone else to use my megaphone.

The icing on this cake is that if the spammer starts announcing "Make Money
Fast" over my megaphone, the FBI will come and investigate ME because I'm
the one holding the megaphone!

Free speech is NOT the subject here.  My right to walk down the street with
my (lawfully registered) megaphone has been usurped by a thug.  You're
telling me that every megaphone owner has a *duty* to hold it in front of
every spammer's
mouth.  Remember, these are finite megaphones.  They have batteries that
need replacing, and the owners are stuck standing there holding them while
the spammers speak as long as they want.  Sorry, but those megaphone owners
may have other things to do with their megaphones and their time.  You're
confusing "the right to free speech" with "the right to kidnap megaphone
owners".

In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution:
install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail.  ISPs and
corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep
the spammers away.  Restricting the speech they carry.  Turning off the
megaphones.

Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's)
ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally damaging
way.  It's also restricting the traffic he can carry to only that speech
originating from
his domain.  His right to carry YOUR speech has been restricted by his
technical solution to keep his machine alive.

What is ultimately likely to happen, however, is that Mr. Wallace will be
prosecuted under existing laws for swindling the original MMF spammers.
He's profiting by charging them to steal resources from ISPs.  He *might*
be able to avoid prosecution by putting a "warning sticker" on his
advertising saying something to the effect that, "if you send a Make Money
Fast scam out, the jack-booted thugs will come and haul you away faster
than I can send out your e-mails."  But then he'd have no business at all!

I'm not trying to claim that Mr. Wallace does or does not have the right to
speak to us.  I simply want to point out that there is real monetary loss
to the real victims of his spamming.

John
--
J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code.  Think
          of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'."
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> Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for
> running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they
> can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of
> Spamford's "right to free speech"?  Spamford's speech (or that of his
> "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers.
>  The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a
> megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really
> don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)

You have argued my point for me, if operators took more security 
precautions like authentication protocols this sort of abuse of mail 
servers would not occur. If spamford had to send the spam from his own 
domains with his address on them he would get the retaliation.
Technology is the way to protect against actions like this, not ethical 
arguments.

> It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.  

To some extent I agree, but it isn`t really the same in the first place, 
it was just a vaguely similar situation, in that the market researcher 
cannot pretend to come from somewhere else so I will not shout at a 
innocent bystander. 

> What Spamford has done is to see me walking down the sidewalk carrying a
> megaphone, and grab me and tell me that I must stand there and hold my
> megaphone in front of some spammer's mouth while the spammer shouts at a
> crowd of people who don't want to hear him.  

Exactly, solution? - refuse the megaphone. Protect your mail servers.

> All the while, you stand there
> next to Spamford and claim that I must continue to hold my megaphone for
> the spammer because it's his "right to free speech", and the only way to
> avoid it is to turn my megaphone off, denying me the ability to allow
> anyone else to use my megaphone.

Spamford has a right to send whatever traffic he wants to your servers, 
if that includes false routed spam mails so be it, you have to protect 
yourself. I don`t claim that anyone has to leave their servers insecure 
so spamford can speak through them, but if you leave them open he does 
have a right to route through them. If you don`t want this, secure them.

> The icing on this cake is that if the spammer starts announcing "Make Money
> Fast" over my megaphone, the FBI will come and investigate ME because I'm
> the one holding the megaphone!

This is a fault of the FBI and not of the spammer.

> Free speech is NOT the subject here.  My right to walk down the street with
> my (lawfully registered) megaphone has been usurped by a thug.  You're
> telling me that every megaphone owner has a *duty* to hold it in front of
> every spammer's mouth.  

No, I`m saying if he holds it in front of their mouth he has to expect 
them to speak.

> Remember, these are finite megaphones.  They have batteries that
> need replacing, and the owners are stuck standing there holding them while
> the spammers speak as long as they want.  Sorry, but those megaphone owners
> may have other things to do with their megaphones and their time.  You're
> confusing "the right to free speech" with "the right to kidnap megaphone
> owners".

You are forgetting the 998348934th ammendment of the US constitution:

Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to kidnap 
megaphone owners...

Seriously though, you make the comment earlier that listening to speech 
costs nothing because you can walk away, the internet is the same. If you 
don`t like getting mail from someone, killfile them, tell them to stop, 
change your address, get off the internet. You have a number of options, 
it may seem that your percieved "right" to have someone not send you mail 
is being infringed and you are being forced to get off the internet or 
change addresses, but this is really not necessary if you can handle a 
killfile. This is like when people talk about their percieved "right" to 
walk down the street without being mugged, they have no such right, it is 
simply that the default case is for them to not be mugged, and if they 
are mugged this constitutes a violation of their property rights.

> In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution:
> install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail.  ISPs and
> corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep
> the spammers away.  Restricting the speech they carry.  Turning off the
> megaphones.
> 
> Spam is interfering with the *real* victim's (the sendmail operator's)
> ability to provide customer service; in a very real and fiscally damaging
> way.  It's also restricting the traffic he can carry to only that speech
> originating from
> his domain.  His right to carry YOUR speech has been restricted by his
> technical solution to keep his machine alive.

This is not really a restriction, they have the choice: carry the spam or 
kill the other mail altogether. No-one is forcing them to take either 
course of action, sure it`s a sad case of affairs when we have to take 
technological action against people for using others equipment in 
unpleasant ways, but it`s simply the way things are.

> What is ultimately likely to happen, however, is that Mr. Wallace will be
> prosecuted under existing laws for swindling the original MMF spammers.
> He's profiting by charging them to steal resources from ISPs.  He *might*
> be able to avoid prosecution by putting a "warning sticker" on his
> advertising saying something to the effect that, "if you send a Make Money
> Fast scam out, the jack-booted thugs will come and haul you away faster
> than I can send out your e-mails."  But then he'd have no business at all!

Wallace may be prosecuted, I think it would be wrong if he was. Even if 
you believe that Wallace does something that is unethical you must admit 
that if he were succesfully prosecuted it would send the message that a 
form of speech can be legislated against and prosecuted in court.

> I'm not trying to claim that Mr. Wallace does or does not have the right to
> speak to us.  I simply want to point out that there is real monetary loss
> to the real victims of his spamming.

Yes, but they can prevent this monetary loss. To give another flawed but 
illustrative paradigm you might come up to me in the street and say "give 
me your money", if I refuse and you hit me and take my money you have mugged 
me, if I refuse and continue walking, and you take no violent action against
me, you have done nothing wrong.

I admit what Wallace does is unpleasant, but it is not immoral or 
unethical from my point of view. If you could not prevent the monetary 
loss caused by his speech then I would think differently, but you can, 
and that is the bottom line.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In list.cypherpunks, paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk writes:

> You are forgetting the 998348934th ammendment of the US constitution:
>
> Congress shall make no law infringing the right of the people to kidnap 
> megaphone owners...

The 1st one begins with "Congress shall make no law", and that's quite
enough.  The US government is forbidden to interfere in matters of
speech. (yah, I know this doesn't seem to slow 'em down much) You're
right that a sendmail (or other process vulnerable to subversion) should
protect itself.  My fear is that our benevolent protectorate will
_require_ such precautions, because that concedes the duty to provide
other precautions as the law might require.
- -- 
           Roy M. Silvernail     [ ]     roy@scytale.com
DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division
PGP Public Key fingerprint =  31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54  13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6
                 Key available from pubkey@scytale.com
            I charge to process unsolicited commercial email

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John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com> writes:
> No, spam DOES cost the victim.  I'm not saying that the victim is the spam
> recipient.  Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's
> CyberPromotions.  Yes, victims.  [...]
>
> This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the
> last couple of months.
> 
> Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for
> running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they
> can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of
> Spamford's "right to free speech"?  Spamford's speech (or that of his
> "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers.
>  The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a
> megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really
> don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)
> 
> It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.  
> 
> [your unmetered rented mega phone analogy]

The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage
volume.  You are also allowing completely free use of your account as
a recipient, and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub
service.

If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.

If I offered to supply a completely unmetered water supply, and there
were no clause in the legal agreement prohibiting it, I could use the
water supply to drive a mini-turbine and draw free electricity from
it, just pouring the water back down the drain.

If you have a cell-phone where it costs you to receive calls, and
people call you lots with junk marketing calls, I'd argue that it was
your problem.  You'd need to switch to a cell phone provider which
puts all the call metering charges on the caller.  (Cell phone
tarriffs are structured this way in the UK, I understand some/most
cell phones in the US, the receiver pays part or all of the call, this
seems a dumb arrangement).  If it's still economical for junk callers
to call you put a tariff on your line for non-designated callers.

It's a mean world, not every one plays nicely, if you offer free
services where the user gets some value, it _will_ get abused.  The
quicker crypto technology is used to fix this on the internet the
better, otherwise we get dumb government laws governing email usage
instead.

See:
	http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/

for some thoughts on a short term solution to metering.  Long term
solution use ecash.

> In this particular case, of course, there was a technical solution:
> install a sendmail to prevent routing of incoming mail.  ISPs and
> corporations around the globe will need this new hardened sendmail to keep
> the spammers away.  Restricting the speech they carry.  Turning off the
> megaphones.

Long term solution charge for your IP packets per packet.  If you get
lots of "business" use the proceeds to buy more bandwidth, or put up
your prices.

Of course I sympathise with your plight on the recieving end of this
crap in the meantime.  

Try if you can to think of it this way: spam is a good thing because
it draws our attention to underlying vulnerabilities in internet mail
transport protocols.  It's better that we are incentivized to fix
these problems (and Spamford/cyberpromo is doing us a service by
providing this incentive), than it is to leave it to governments to
"fix" the problems by dragging laws into it, which will likely result
in "Internet drivers licenses" and other undesirable effects.

Cypherpunks, I think should be involved in providing crypto solutions
to allow metering for services, using anonymous ecash.  If we don't do
it, someone else will, and it won't be anonymous.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

At 09:13 AM 5/22/97 -0500, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <199705221337.OAA00948@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 
>   at 07:37 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
>
>>The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
>>renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. 
>>You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient,
>>and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
>
>>If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
>>postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.


>Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
>is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a
>"right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my
>permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no
>contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much
>as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.

I certainly agree with the cypherpunk theory of Strength Through
Mathematics instead of PseudoStrength-via-threats-of-imprisonment Through
Legislation.

Adam's "Tragedy of the Unmetered Commons" certainly provides a solution.
Metering and charging e$ for mail-routing services would allow it to occur
while stopping the freeloaders.

Blocking sites also provides a solution, although it proved too tough for
my ISP to keep up with the Chameleon that is Spamford.  To be honest, not
all the spam that struck my ISP's site was proven to be CyberPromo's fault.
 I recently saw in alt.2600 a "fan" program for spewing spam.  It runs
under Windows, and I imagine "3133t hack3rz" have been having a field day
running someone else's program to do what Spamford had to write on his own.
 They seem to be trading the addresses of unprotected sendmail demons
running on the net that they can abuse.

For now, preventing forwarding seems to be the only currently available
solution, until e$ makes its way into the protocol stack.  (Hurry up,
Robert!)  Of course, I'm not thrilled to think that every router on the
internet is going to start charging me for packet delivery, nor do I want
to spend .001 cents for visiting really.cool.foobar.com.  I'm also scared
to death of what my bill would be if I was charged a dime for every
AltaVista query.  The "bonus services", however, such as e-mail routing, or
ftp proxying, certainly could be provided for a nominal cost.

>Just because one has the right of free speech does not mean that we have
>to be forced to listen.

That's not ever been my point.  Again, the spammers are not even trying to
get this ISP or their customers to listen, they're just (mis)using their
computer facilities to blow spam about the earth.  Free speech is not the
issue.  It's "abusive overuse" of what used to be a publically available
resource.

John
--
J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code.  Think
          of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'."
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

At 10:13 am -0400 on 5/22/97, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:


> Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
> is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites.

As someone who has something on the order of 15 Eudora filters just for
Spamford himself (go take a look at whois for cyberpromo to see how domains
he has registered), this is easier said than done. I've taken to killing
his ip blocks, but that gets a lot of sites, TidBITS among them, in the
crossfire. You end up filtering *in* people who you want to see mail from,
which is an interesting logical conundrum...

I'm in favor of creating digital bearer certificate postage stamps, myself.
Don't care who sends me unsolicited e-mail, as long as they have to pay,
preferrably through the nose, for the privilege...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <v03020934afaa29712cbc@[139.167.130.248]>, on 05/22/97 
   at 10:53 AM, Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> said:

>At 10:13 am -0400 on 5/22/97, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:


>> Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
>> is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites.

>As someone who has something on the order of 15 Eudora filters just for
>Spamford himself (go take a look at whois for cyberpromo to see how
>domains he has registered), this is easier said than done. I've taken to
>killing his ip blocks, but that gets a lot of sites, TidBITS among them,
>in the crossfire. You end up filtering *in* people who you want to see
>mail from, which is an interesting logical conundrum...

I actually do this for all aol, compuserver, prodigy accounts. I only
filter in the few accounts that I wish to correspond with and the rest go
into the bit bucket.

>I'm in favor of creating digital bearer certificate postage stamps,
>myself. Don't care who sends me unsolicited e-mail, as long as they have
>to pay, preferrably through the nose, for the privilege...

My biggest concern with the pay as you go approach is 2 fold:

1. It woun't stop Spamford and his ilk as they are the ones who have the
$$$ to spend.

2. Once the jennie is out of the bottle you will see everyone's cost go up
as everyone will see this as a way to get a peice of the action. If the
INet goes mettered rate the only ones who can afford to spend any time on
it will be the corporations who have the money to spend. I remember when I
had a compu$erver account years ago and how fast the tab ran up as
everything had a charge on it. It was cheaper to stick with BBS's & FIDO
and pay the long distance charges when needed.

If given the choice between 2 evils of receiving Spamford Cyber-momo's
crap or going to a mettered rate INet I chose Spamford as the second will
not get rid of him.

- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: What I like about MS is its loyalty to customers!

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In <199705221337.OAA00948@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 
   at 07:37 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:


>John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com> writes:
>> No, spam DOES cost the victim.  I'm not saying that the victim is the spam
>> recipient.  Think of the ISPs that are the victims of Spamford's
>> CyberPromotions.  Yes, victims.  [...]
>>
>> This situation is the exact situation that has entangled my ISP for the
>> last couple of months.
>> 
>> Are you telling me that being subjected to a jack-boot investigation for
>> running pyramid schemes *and* having your customers leave because they
>> can't get mail services is a reasonable expense to bear because of
>> Spamford's "right to free speech"?  Spamford's speech (or that of his
>> "customers") isn't even directed at the sendmail operator or his customers.
>>  The sendmail operator above is merely being used by Spamford as a
>> megaphone to broadcast the message of spam to other people (who really
>> don't want it, either, but that's beside the point.)
>> 
>> It's no longer the same as shouting down the marketing researcher.  
>> 
>> [your unmetered rented mega phone analogy]

>The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
>renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. 
>You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient,
>and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.

>If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
>postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.

Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a
"right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my
permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no
contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much
as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.

I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a
bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does
not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a
word.

Just because one has the right of free speech does not mean that we have
to be forced to listen.

- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: To whom the gods destroy, they first teach Windows...

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William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
> >The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
> >renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. 
> >You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient,
> >and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
> 
> >If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
> >postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
> 
> Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
> is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a
> "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my
> permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no
> contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much
> as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.

So why are you leaving your machine configured so that he clearly can
use your bandwidth?

Courts are uneconomical solutions.  It's as if I had said the fact
that you left a $100 bill sat on your doorstep might have something to
do with the fact that you are now $100 worse off, and as if I had
suggested to you that a solution might be to be more careful about
leaving money/resources in easily accessible places, and perhaps it
would be better to store your money in a wallet and it is then as if
you had replied:

William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
: Bullshit! No wallets are required.  All that needs to be done is for a
: court injunction made stopping this particular thief from picking up
: my money.  He nor anyone else has a "right" to take my money.  If
: Joe Thief picks up my money without my permission he can be charged
: with theft.  I am under no contract with Joe Thief and am under no
: obligation to keep my money in a wallet.

I hope you see the similarity in argument.

Clearly you can only issue injunctions against people you can
identify.  If not you don't get your property back.

Your solution is to require legislation, or court intervention ("he
can be charged with criminal trespass").  So how are you going to get
a reasonable prosecution rate on this one?  Perhaps replace cash with
a traceable form, so that you can trace who it was that took your
money?  Perhaps escrow peoples positions so that the government can
trace the thief.  Perhaps have the government put video cameras up at
intervals of 100m in residential areas?

The costs and unattractiveness of government intervention are even
worse on the net.  

Do you want legislation stating that you can sue people who send more
than a certain number of posts via your sendmail hub?  Consider the
logical consequences... you must be able to identify people to sue
them, therefore:

	- Internet Drivers licenses must be required
	- Remailers will be outlawed
	- Every SMTP session must be authenticated with your True Name

Are you in favour of these?  Realise that these provisions will be in
the 1998 anti-SPAM bill put before congress, and the congress critters
will say that the regulation of anonymity on the net was as a result
of public demand.  In this case, they will probably be right about the
demand.

Note that I did not say Spamford had a _right_ to spam you, just that
with government "solutions" to this problem the "cure" is worse than
the problem, at least from a pro-privacy perspective.

> I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a
> bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does
> not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a
> word.

Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was
setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts
were agreed to before hand.

You might perhaps with some justification argue that there is an
implicit contract to act reasonably, well ok, this is largely the way
the internet used to work 10 years ago, but the problem is still how
are you going to catch him.  What about sendmail forgeries, what about
public access terminals, what about remailers, what about free AOL
disks, etc, etc.  You've got to admit it's worse than hopeless.  The
government "solution" to the problem would attempt to make the net
fully traceable.

By arguing for the use of litigation for spam, you are hastening the
outlawing of remailers.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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In <199705221633.RAA01999@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 
   at 10:33 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:


>William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
>> >The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
>> >renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. 
>> >You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient,
>> >and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
>> 
>> >If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
>> >postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.
>> 
>> Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
>> is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a
>> "right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my
>> permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no
>> contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much
>> as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.

>So why are you leaving your machine configured so that he clearly can use
>your bandwidth?

>Courts are uneconomical solutions.  It's as if I had said the fact that
>you left a $100 bill sat on your doorstep might have something to do with
>the fact that you are now $100 worse off, and as if I had suggested to
>you that a solution might be to be more careful about leaving
>money/resources in easily accessible places, and perhaps it would be
>better to store your money in a wallet and it is then as if you had
>replied:

Oh I don't know if they are that uneconomical. I think a class action
lawsuit filed by a few 100 ISP's against Spamford would shut him down.

>William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
>: Bullshit! No wallets are required.  All that needs to be done is for a
>: court injunction made stopping this particular thief from picking up
>: my money.  He nor anyone else has a "right" to take my money.  If
>: Joe Thief picks up my money without my permission he can be charged
>: with theft.  I am under no contract with Joe Thief and am under no
>: obligation to keep my money in a wallet.

>I hope you see the similarity in argument.

Yes unfortunatly I nolonger have that thread. If you could give me a date
that was posted I will look at the archives.

>Clearly you can only issue injunctions against people you can identify. 
>If not you don't get your property back.

>Your solution is to require legislation, or court intervention ("he can
>be charged with criminal trespass").  So how are you going to get a
>reasonable prosecution rate on this one?  Perhaps replace cash with a
>traceable form, so that you can trace who it was that took your money? 
>Perhaps escrow peoples positions so that the government can trace the
>thief.  Perhaps have the government put video cameras up at intervals of
>100m in residential areas?

Perhaps criminal trespass was a little extreme on my part though no new
laws would be required for such a prosecuition.

>The costs and unattractiveness of government intervention are even worse
>on the net.  

>Do you want legislation stating that you can sue people who send more
>than a certain number of posts via your sendmail hub?  Consider the
>logical consequences... you must be able to identify people to sue them,
>therefore:

>	- Internet Drivers licenses must be required
>	- Remailers will be outlawed
>	- Every SMTP session must be authenticated with your True Name

>Are you in favour of these?  Realise that these provisions will be in the
>1998 anti-SPAM bill put before congress, and the congress critters will
>say that the regulation of anonymity on the net was as a result of public
>demand.  In this case, they will probably be right about the demand.

>Note that I did not say Spamford had a _right_ to spam you, just that
>with government "solutions" to this problem the "cure" is worse than the
>problem, at least from a pro-privacy perspective.

I am not looking for the governmental intrusions that you have listed
above. They are not needed to take care of Spamford. I as the owner of
certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such
equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who
can enter my house and who can not. If I inform Spamford that he is not
welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some
recource to stop him.

IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers
where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite
simple to do without the above measure. Even if Spamford uses tricks to
cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in
their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are
known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of
his customers in the lawsuit.

>> I have no problem with Spamford's free speech rights. He can go out buy a
>> bullhorn stand on a street corner and shout to his harts content. He does
>> not have the right to kick in my door stand on my coffee table and say a
>> word.

>Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was
>setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts
>were agreed to before hand.

No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that
anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to
lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to
drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house
does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents
of your house?

>You might perhaps with some justification argue that there is an implicit
>contract to act reasonably, well ok, this is largely the way the internet
>used to work 10 years ago, but the problem is still how are you going to
>catch him.  What about sendmail forgeries, what about public access
>terminals, what about remailers, what about free AOL disks, etc, etc. 
>You've got to admit it's worse than hopeless.  The government "solution"
>to the problem would attempt to make the net fully traceable.

>By arguing for the use of litigation for spam, you are hastening the
>outlawing of remailers.

I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I
just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this
pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose
of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know
where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used
effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current
structure of the internet.

The whole spam issue could be handled in a non hostile manner. Spamford et
al. could sign a contract with me to allow x amount of messages/day onto
my system for y $'s. I then could use these funds to compensate my users
with lower rates, better equipment, ...ect. Other ISP's could chose not to
allow spam on their systems and use this as a marketing tool. Some users
would like the lower rates and tolerate the spam others would opt to go
with a no-spam ISP. Either way everyone comes out a winner. Unfortunatly
Cyberpromo and other such companies have decided that they can have a free
lunch at others expence.


- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: Windows: A View to be Killed.

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On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 03:07:14PM -0500, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
[...]
>I as the owner of
>certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such
>equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who
>can enter my house and who can not.

Your analogy is flawed in many ways.  1) The entities entering your 
house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer 
equipment is just bits, which have no identity.  Spamfords bits are 
no different than anyone elses.  2) By the very act of connecting to 
the network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically 
routed to you.

>If I inform Spamford that he is not
>welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some
>recource to stop him.

You are perfectly free to disconnect your computer from the net.  You
are free to try to find a provider that guarantees not to pass any
spam on to you.  But unless you have some contract with your provider
that specifies special rights, when you sign up you implicitly agree
to accept the bits aimed at you -- otherwise you couldn't receive any
email at all.  What you get on the wire is a function of explicit and
implicit contractual obligations.  This is true whether you are UUNET
peering with ANS or whether you are a PC on a dialup line.

>
>IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers
>where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite
>simple to do without the above measure.

Identification isn't the problem at all.  The problem is that you 
have no grounds on which to base a suit.  Just as you can't sue me for 
sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own 
free will.

 Even if Spamford uses tricks to
>cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in
>their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are
>known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of
>his customers in the lawsuit.
>
>>Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was
>>setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts
>>were agreed to before hand.
>
>No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that
>anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to
>lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to
>drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house
>does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents
>of your house?

All flawed analogies.  You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact, 
that is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not* 
place any restrictions on that connection.  Furthermore, you can't -- 
no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they 
will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you.

[...]

>I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I
>just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this
>pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose
>of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know
>where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used
>effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current
>structure of the internet.

I don't see any legal basis for it. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <19970522144701.16280@bywater.songbird.com>, on 05/22/97 
   at 03:47 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:

>On Thu, May 22, 1997 at 03:07:14PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>[...]
>>I as the owner of
>>certain computer equipment have the right to determin who uses such
>>equipment and how. It should be no different that my right to determin who
>>can enter my house and who can not.

>Your analogy is flawed in many ways.  1) The entities entering your 
>house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer 
>equipment is just bits, which have no identity.  Spamfords bits are  no
>different than anyone elses.  2) By the very act of connecting to  the
>network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically  routed to
>you.

No not at all. Just because I am connected to the network I am under no
obligation to accept a single bit. I don't have to ever download any mail
or I can download all or I can pick and choose what I accept or what I
don't.

>>If I inform Spamford that he is not
>>welcome in my house and he still insists on comming in I should have some
>>recource to stop him.

>You are perfectly free to disconnect your computer from the net.  You are
>free to try to find a provider that guarantees not to pass any spam on to
>you.  But unless you have some contract with your provider that specifies
>special rights, when you sign up you implicitly agree to accept the bits
>aimed at you -- otherwise you couldn't receive any email at all.  What
>you get on the wire is a function of explicit and implicit contractual
>obligations.  This is true whether you are UUNET peering with ANS or
>whether you are a PC on a dialup line.

Obviously you have not ever entered into contract agreements with an
accesses provider. There is no obligation on my part to receive a single
bit. If I never run a sendmail daemon then I will never receive a single
e-mail message regardless of how many are aimed at my servers. This is the
same with any TCP/IP service. The only obligation I have with my upstream
provider is to pay my bill. If I choose to bounce everything that is
routed from Spamford it is my right to do so as it is *MY* equipment. 

>>
>>IMHO this can be taking care of through civil courts hitting the spamers
>>where it counts in the wallet. As far as identification this is quite
>>simple to do without the above measure.

>Identification isn't the problem at all.  The problem is that you  have
>no grounds on which to base a suit.  Just as you can't sue me for 
>sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own  free
>will.

For the occasional spam then a lawsuit would be pointless. If you decided
to dump 10,000 messages a day and deny the use of my equipment by myself
and my clients then I would have a very strong case for litigation. You
seem to forget that this is MY equipment and it is you who have no rights
regarding the use of it. I have the final say so as to who uses it and
how.

> Even if Spamford uses tricks to
>>cover his tracks his clients are known as they tell you who they are in
>>their spam. Traceing back to Cyber-Momo is trivial once his clients are
>>known. IMHO when Compu$erve suied Spamford thay should have listed all of
>>his customers in the lawsuit.
>>
>>>Yeah but he didn't kick anything in, he just used something which was
>>>setup to be used for free, in an unmetered fashion, where no contracts
>>>were agreed to before hand.
>>
>>No it was not. Just because you leave a door unlocked does not mean that
>>anyone has the right to enter. If you run into the store and forget to
>>lock the doors on your car does that mean that anyone has the right to
>>drive off in your car? If you leave the front door unlocked on your house
>>does that mean that anyone can walk in and help themselfs to the contents
>>of your house?

>All flawed analogies.  You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact,  that
>is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not*  place
>any restrictions on that connection.  Furthermore, you can't -- 
>no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they 
>will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you.

Once again it is you who have it wrong. I have agreed to nothing other than to pay my bill for my connection. If Cyberpromo starts filling my clients mailboxes with spam and tieing up bandwidth I am under an obligation to my client to stop him from doing so. My obligation is to my clients to provide the services they have paid for. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed such actions to continue both to my contractual obligations to my clients but also my feudatory responsibilities to the stockholders of my corporation.

You do not have a right to send mail to my system I have an obligation to my clients to allow them to receive mail. This is a important distinction that needs to be made. You have no rights regarding the use of my equipment. Furthermore if your actions deprive the use of my equipment by myself and my clients you can find yourself both financially and criminally liable.

>[...]

>>I never have argued for more legislation of the internet for any reason. I
>>just think that creative use of current laws can put an end to this
>>pestilance. I don't see remailers being hurt in this as the whole purpose
>>of spam is to be non-anonymous (you can't sell anything if they don't know
>>where to send the money to). I do think that litigation can be used
>>effectivly to put an end to Spamford without changing the current
>>structure of the internet.

>I don't see any legal basis for it. 



- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
- -----------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: Windows: The CP/M of the future!

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Tag-O-Matic: He who laughs last uses OS/2.

On Fri, May 23, 1997 at 08:29:59AM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <19970522144701.16280@bywater.songbird.com>, on 05/22/97 
>   at 03:47 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:
[...]
>>Your analogy is flawed in many ways.  1) The entities entering your 
>>house have an identity; what is actually entering your computer 
>>equipment is just bits, which have no identity.  Spamfords bits are  no
>>different than anyone elses.  2) By the very act of connecting to  the
>>network you agree to recieve any bits that are automatically  routed to
>>you.

Note the "automatically routed" clause.

>No not at all. Just because I am connected to the network I am under no
>obligation to accept a single bit.

The only way you can really accomplish that is to disconnect.  The 
interface/modem/whatever in your computer blindly receives the bits that 
are sent to it.  There isn't a thing you can do about it except 
disconnect.  (I consider turning your machine off as disconnecting.)

[...]
>Obviously you have not ever entered into contract agreements with an
>accesses provider.

Jeez.  I *am*, in my small way, an access provider.  And, of course, 
I have a contract with my upstream.

>There is no obligation on my part to receive a single
>bit.

You don't read very well, do you?  I said "automatically routed 
bits".  You can't stop receiveing those bits unless you turn your 
machine off.

>If I never run a sendmail daemon then I will never receive a single
>e-mail message regardless of how many are aimed at my servers. This is the
>same with any TCP/IP service.

Yes, because the network layer negotiation doesn't complete the 
connection, and the other side agrees to stop sending.  Basically, you 
have convinced the other side to stop sending.  You still receive any bits 
on the wire, and the only way you can stop that is by disconnecting.

>The only obligation I have with my upstream
>provider is to pay my bill. If I choose to bounce everything that is
>routed from Spamford it is my right to do so as it is *MY* equipment.

Good, though trivial, point.  Not what I was talking about, though.

[...]

>>Identification isn't the problem at all.  The problem is that you  have
>>no grounds on which to base a suit.  Just as you can't sue me for 
>>sending this mail -- it's an exchange you entered into of your own  free
>>will.
>
>For the occasional spam then a lawsuit would be pointless. If you decided
>to dump 10,000 messages a day and deny the use of my equipment by myself
>and my clients then I would have a very strong case for litigation. You
>seem to forget that this is MY equipment and it is you who have no rights
>regarding the use of it. I have the final say so as to who uses it and
>how.

[...]

>>All flawed analogies.  You *did* agree to recieve mail -- in fact,  that
>>is one of the primary uses of your computer -- and you did *not*  place
>>any restrictions on that connection.  Furthermore, you can't -- 
>>no one will sell you an internet connection at any level where they 
>>will accept a contractual obligation to keep spam from getting to you.
>
>Once again it is you who have it wrong. I have agreed to nothing other than to >pay my bill for my connection. If Cyberpromo starts filling my clients mailboxe>s with spam and tieing up bandwidth I am under an obligation to my client to st>op him from doing so. My obligation is to my clients to provide the services th>ey have paid for. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed such actions to c>ontinue both to my contractual obligations to my clients but also my feudatory 

You mean "fiduciary", I presume.  But "feudatory" is cute.

>responsibilities to the stockholders of my corporation.

Recall that -- what is it? CyberPromo -- sued AOL, and forced them to 
not block their spam...though I guess AOL was able to give their 
customers the ability to block, and there was an appeal -- I don't 
remember the details anymore...

>You do not have a right to send mail to my system I have an obligation to my cl>ients to allow them to receive mail. This is a important distinction that needs> to be made. You have no rights regarding the use of my equipment. Furthermore >if your actions deprive the use of my equipment by myself and my clients you ca>n find yourself both financially and criminally liable.

I agree that if I flood your box with the intent of denying service I 
would be liable.  That's not the normal mode of spammers, though.  
As an individual you only receive one or a very few copies of a 
particular message.  It's just that there are a great many messages.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

At 12:40 pm -0400 on 5/22/97, John Deters wrote:


> Adam's "Tragedy of the Unmetered Commons" certainly provides a solution.
> Metering and charging e$ for mail-routing services would allow it to occur
> while stopping the freeloaders.

The tragedy of the commons, of course, is that nobody owns it. :-).

Eric Hughes and his penny-roll experiments to the contrary...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/