Political spam, censorship, laws and John Gilmore

[Russell Turpin]

Gojomo:
>It may never be completely eradicated -- but that's
>an unrealistic goal. We control everything from crime to
>contagious diseases not with all-or-nothing solutions, but
>by containing/ameliorating/domesticating the problematic
>agents.

I'm not as optimistic as you that a significant improvement
lies right around the corner. The evolutionary battle has
proceeded for several years now, and as far as I can tell,
the nuisance of spam has generally increased. I don't think
it will increase out of control, because it is each
additional increment in nuisance that motivates people to
implement the next generation of counter-measures. But the
spammers then respond with new tactics, since that is,
after all, their business. As noted in this discussion,
each round adds some permanent friction to the medium. We
now have multiple email addresses, we no longer put our
"real" email addresses on public posts, we have to learn
about counter-measures, and how to deal with those our
desired respondents implement, etc.

Let's be clear that this is not a benign state. You may
be right that spam will become a semi-permanent, partially
controlled background problem, like crime and infectious
disease. Both of those are large problems, whose economic
damage is measured in the billions of dollars annually.
Partly we get used to it. Partly we continue the battle.
But sometimes, we figure out how to make a quantum leap
in solving such problem. Public sanitation made a
permanent and large improvement in the damage from a large
number of infectious diseases.

Gilmore's point seems to be that we shouldn't have a law
against spam. I don't understand his argument, in this
regard. Is it that we can fight spam without a law? Well,
yes, but we could also fight burglary without a law. But
why should we? Is it that spammers are doing no wrong? If
so, I think his moral compass is off. Spammers cause
economic damage multiple orders of magnitude beyond any
benefit they bring. The damage is to others, and the
benefit is mostly to themselves. Why should they be any
more immune from law than burglars or conmen?

In my view, the strongest argument against a law is that
we don't know enough to make a good law, and we should
be very reluctant to make bad law. And I still believe
that is the case with regard to spam. So in that sense,
I'm partly on Gilmore's side.




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