Re: [dvd-discuss] EFF opposes blacklisting spammers

[Bryan Taylor <bryan_w_taylor(at)yahoo.com>]

--- Jeme A Brelin <jeme@brelin.net> wrote:

> A decision was made (behind closed doors and with many a greased palm) to
> privatize the publicly developed entity known as the internet.

Curiously, this occured just before the enormous explosion of the internet, and
is almost uniformly agreed to be a good thing. There is rather healthy
competition between the telcos and backbone bandwidth has grown at a pace that
is truly staggering. The idea that the government should have kept the internet
socialized is completely out of synch with the wishes of the public. 
 
> In privatization, the interexchanges and backbone channels were placed in
> the hands of the few.  And those few were given the power to silence the
> many in a formerly public forum.

Are you saying that the blacklisting occurs at the telco level? Isn't it done
at the ISP level? I think the backbones avoid content based screening to
preserve their legal status as a carrier. The privatization of the internet
lead immediately to a proliferation of ISPs including many, many small ISP's.
You should start one if you are really worried about the problem. Until then,
you have no right to set ISP policy other than to pick which ISP you want to do
business with.

> The freedom of the few must be sacrificed for the greater freedom of the
> many.

Freedom of "the few" is not at odds with freedom of the many. You have a
screwed up definition of freedom, it appears. Your world where some elite body
sits in judgement over whose freedom is most important will inevitably lead to
less freedom overall, since it depends on decision making that isn't grounded
in any process that legitimizes its decisions. I imagine what would happen if
this ever got started is a replay of the American Revolution -- the King, or
Uber-Court, or whoever you pick to broker freedom, would slowly take freedom
away from different groups until enough of them were ready to use force to
overthrow it. The biggest threat to freedom is overreach by government.
 
> With the GPL, the few who distribute modified software lose the right to
> distribute programs without source code but everyone gains the right to
> receive source code for all of their programs.

I don't get your GPL analogy at all. The GPL only grants things. It does not
take anything away. There is no right to distribute a derivitive work.
 
> The few who control networks give up your right to block the email of
> others in exchange for gaining the right of all to have their email
> properly delivered.

Your picture of this kind of rights brokering can only exist with the kind of
"greased palm" deal making that the government has no place being involved in. 

If I want to filter somebody's email or contract with an email provider that
does it for me, then I have that right and I'll do it over your objection,
thank you very much.

The only situation where this could get out of hand is if antitrust concerns
arise because of collusions between all email providers. That possibility
appears absurdly remote. So long as the consumer has a real choice of what
filtering scheme to employ (including no filtering), regulation is extremely
improper.


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