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spam control again



On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Derek Martin wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 09:45:36AM -0400, josephc at etards.net wrote:
> > > > Disseminating child pornography, bribary, slander, and extortion are
> > > > all illegal acts regardless of whether they are done over the Internet
> > > > or in the "real world". Anti-spam laws would be laws specifically
> > > > applied to the Internet and are in a different class.
> > > Not true. They are only illegal acts when some government makes them
> > > illegal. There may be some countries that allow child pornography.
> > > Bribery is also not illegal in many parts of the world, and in some
> > > places, expected.
> > 
> > Sorry, I lacked a qualifying statement. Those activities are illegal
> > in the US, regardless of the medium they are perpetrated over.
> 
> So?  Pass an anti-spam law, and it'll be illegal in the US too.  We
> already have similar laws for unwanted communications via other media.
> There are the national and state do-not-call lists, and for mail you
> can complain at the post office about receiving commercial bulk mail.
> These laws already exist; there just isn't one which covers the
> Internet.
> 
> Banning the disemmination of child pornography is no less censorship
> than banning spam.

I don't understand your point. Of course if the US were to pass a law 
making something illegal it would prohibit that activity within it's 
borders. Isn't that redundant?

The recently passed telemarketting laws and no-call lists are the perfect 
example of acting w/o thinking about the consequences. People were annoyed 
being called during dinner, so what do we do? Put 1000's of people out of 
work in an already piss poor economy. I'm pretty sure we could have come 
up with a more amlicable solution.

Correct, banning child porn IS censorship. You NEED a certain level of 
censorship in order to protect the commonwealth. But censorship done w/o 
protection in mind needs to be prevented, especially on the Internet.

I understand people are upset over SPAM, and the majority of SPAM 
prevention 
should not be done on the last mile. But people need to complain to their 
ISP, 
not their congressman.

-joe





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