From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 02:14:56 +0800
To: Ross Wright <rwright@adnetsol.com>
Subject: Re: Spam IS Free Speech
In-Reply-To: <199705150640.XAA07531@adnetsol.adnetsol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970515174628.3017B-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> > > 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"