Re: Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt?

[Paul A Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

i'd written:

> > well, be careful with your acl's, because if you accidently disrupt
> > nonabusive traffic as a side effect of protecting your network from
> > abuse, you'll shortly be hearing complaints from EFF about how you've
> > disenfranchised said nonabusers.

someone answered:

> You've got to be kidding me.

no i am not.  in http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect14.31.html#II we see:

| The focus of efforts to stop spam should include protecting end users and
| should not only consider stopping spammers at all costs. Specifically, any
| measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach
| their intended recipients. Proposed solutions that do not fulfill these
| minimal goals are themselves a form of Internet abuse and are a direct
| assault on the health, growth, openness and liberty of the Internet.

| Email is protected speech. There is a fundamental free speech right to be
| able to send and receive messages, regardless of medium. Unless that right
| is being abused by a particular individual, that individual must not be
| restricted. It is unacceptable, then, for anti-spam policies to limit
| legitimate rights to send or receive email. To the extent that an anti-spam
| proposal, whether legal or technical, results in such casualties, that
| proposal is unacceptable.

i never thought i'd feel a need to lecture shari or john on the nature of the
protection in "protected speech", so, i have not even tried.