Re: Principles of Spam-abatement

[Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb at guppylake.com>]

On Mar 10, 2004, at 5:10 AM, Dean Anderson wrote:

> Joe Abley, you should be aware that your company is using a revenge 
> list
> for spam blocking. You might want to consider using a different email
> address.  But it makes an interesting end to this discussion, I think.

Without necessarily agreeing with everything else in Dean's message, 
this does indeed point to the most interesting question I see here:  
Whose job is it to enforce penalties for anti-social behavior?

Historically, one can argue that the beginning of civilization can be 
found in legal codes and mechanisms that seek to punish antisocial 
behavior in a fair and consistent manner.  Through painful experience, 
virtually every society in the world has concluded that if you want to 
punish people for bad behavior, you need clear laws and attention to 
due process and the rights of the accused.  When modern governments 
flagrantly flaunt these rules, they have a tendency to become pariah 
states over time.  (Note that I'm not saying all the processes are fair 
or *right*, but even in Iran you have to be convicted by an Islamic 
court before they punish you; a significant part of the total breakdown 
of Afghanistan was that even *that* level of due process disappeared, 
so that virtually any member of the Taliban could mete out "instant 
justice" at will.  It's not surprising that Osama found a home in 
Afghanistan, rather than Iran; Al Qaeda is the ultimate example of 
vigilante justice.)

I see only two things that are different about spam:

1.  The international nature of the antisocial act, combined with the 
general lack of law and precedent, makes it easy to be skeptical about 
timely action.

2.  In the US, at least, we have an unsual number of people, especially 
on the Internet, whose ideology or beliefs include a profound 
skepticism about the ability of governments to do *anything*.

These make the problem harder, but they really don't invalidate the 
hard-won experience of the last few thousand years of human experience. 
 When each ISP makes its own rules and metes out its own 
vigilante-style punishment, that's not civilization, it's anarchy.  And 
I find it considerably scarier than the underlying offense of spam 
itself.  -- Nathaniel