From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 11:32:12 -0800 (PST)
To: snow <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: More on digital postage
Message-ID: <199702151932.LAA02327@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:40 AM -0600 2/15/97, snow wrote:
>Mr. Bell wrote:

>> However, you connect that fax machine to a phone line, when you know full
>> well that should it be enabled to do so, it will automatically pick up the
>> phone when it "hears" a ring, and will print out a fax based on information
>> provided.  It isn't clear why sending a fax is any "wronger" than mailing
>> junk mail, or making a (voice) phone call to somebody.
>
>	That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected
>to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone
>to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my
>home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to
>a beer out of my fridge?

The proper parallel is to _knocking on the door_. Talking about "unwanted
phone calls" or "unwanted faxes" as being equivalent to entering a house
and wandering around is incorrect.

Consider a door with a doorbell or knocker. It is set up (by millenia of
tradition in our society) as a means of contacting the residents and
keeping them from entering.

Similarly, a listed phone number, or a phone number gotten through various
means, is a means of contacting those owning the number. Anyone is free to
call anyone--no permission is needed.

Our society fairly reasonably allows tort relief for, say, having one's
doorbell rung frequently or at odd hours. On the fax issue, similar tort
relief could be obtained if a person or business was truly "under attack."

(Purists, like me, would probably prefer technological solutions even in
these cases. Leave a phone on answering machine mode, only switch on the
fax mode when a fax is expected, etc.)

These tort actions are a far cry from proposals that anyone whose knock on
the door, or phonecall, or e-mail, or fax is subject to criminal
prosecution under proposed new laws.

(I think the courts are already clogged enough, and I have faith that no
court in the land will accept a case where no real harm was done. A friend
of mine got mailbombed with 25,000 e-mail messages in one day, shutting
down his account until the mess could be cleaned up, and it's not even
likely he'll ever get any relief.)

What CompuServe did was quite different, as CompuServe decided that some
e-mail would not be delivered. This is essentially comparable to the Postal
Service deciding that mail from the National Rifle Association is, to them,
"junk," or to the phone company deciding that phone calls from Libya or
Iraq or some other unfavored nation will be fed to a dead number.

Getting the courts and the regulators involved in deciding what speech is
junk and what is not junk is unconstitutional, which was my earlier point.

--Tim May


On the f

Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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