FC: John Gilmore's proposed principle for anti-spam action

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I agree with John. --Declan]

---

To: declan () well com, gnu () toad com
cc: politech () politechbot com
Subject: Re: FC: SpamCop's Julian Haight replies to Politech, and other 
defenses
In-reply-to: <5.1.1.6.0.20021104213920.02a3cd10 () mail well com>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 09:49:11 -0800
From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>

Declan, aren't you comforted by knowing that your online email
newspaper is being censored not because of what it says, not because
of its own subscription policies, but because of the policies of its
neighbors in a rack in some windowless room?

EFF's first principle of antispam is "Any measure for stopping spam
must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended
recipients."  Even if you would prefer a watered-down version like,
"No non-spam message should be INTENTIONALLY blocked", SpamCop's
policy clearly violates that:

  Since complaints from their spam-victims don't seem to have any
  effect, perhaps complaints from their paying users will!

SpamCop is making a deliberate attempt to use YOUR subscribers and
YOU, against your will, to pressure third parties into doing what
SpamCop orders them to do.  Many other anti-spam organizations,
frustrated at their lack of actual power to order people to do things,
have used the same tactic.  Perhaps it was Paul Vixie's MAPS that
originated the tactic, blacklisting entire ISPs until they followed
his orders.

Furthermore, the third party involved is not even a spammer, and has
probably never sent a single spam in their life!  They merely run a
server that forwards email to its destination.  (Every router on the
Internet also forwards email to its destination.)

Congratulations again on being censored in order to apply pressure to
such evil gnomes as these.

        John Gilmore




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