FC: More on Democrats kvetching about "cyberlibertarians" and spam

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Background:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02106.html
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=spam
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From: "Dave McClure" <dmcclure () usiia org>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: RE: Democrats kvetch about "cyberlibertarian" opposition to spam laws
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 16:14:43 -0400

Declan:

USIIA also has opposed HR 718, and we're hardly libertarian either.  It is,
quite simply, a badly composed bill.

Dave McClure
USIIA

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In-Reply-To: <20010605153409.B12372 () cluebot com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 19:32:31 -0400
To: declan () well com
From: Alan Davidson <abd () cdt org>
Subject: Re: FC: Democrats kvetch about "cyberlibertarian" opposition to
 spam laws

Hi, Declan,

The harm in PPI's proposal stems from their defense, "It would apply to all 
spam, but to spam only." PPI's argument about spam is a lot like Potter 
Stewart's argument about pornography: They know it when they see it. But in 
fact most legislative proposals on spam have a sweeping definition of 
"commercial" that could include email from non-profit or political sites 
that offer items for sale or seek donations. For that reason we need to 
tread very carefully when imposing mandatory labelling requirements that 
may prevent this content from being seen.

For example, I've received postal mail from Amnesty International that 
includes detailed descriptions of human rights abuses. I suspect that some 
of those depictions could even be considered "harmful to minors" in some 
jurisdictions - though they are lawful and constitutionally-protected 
speech for adults. Since Amnesty's website includes such "commercial 
purposes" as selling publications and soliciting donations, it could easily 
fall under the ambit of these spam restrictions. Should political speakers 
like this be forced to put a "porn" or "adv" label on their email calls for 
support - and risk being blocked by most ISPs? Such a requirement does hurt 
speech online, and is likely to tie this legislation up in the courts like 
every other Net content regulation law before it.

The anti-spoofing proposals put forward, while imperfect, seem to be a far 
more appropriate remedy. They give readers the ability to talk back - 
perhaps in strong terms - to those who send unsolicited email. I suspect we 
might find that anti-spoofing requirements for unsolicited commercial email 
are a very powerful remedy that puts the onus on the senders of unsolicited 
email to be polite and show restraint - or suffer the backlash of a 
thousand mailbombs.

Best,

Alan


Alan Davidson, Associate Director            202.637.9800 (v)
Center for Democracy and Technology          202.637.0968 (f)
1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 1100                  <abd () cdt org>
Washington, DC 20006                         http://www.cdt.org

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