Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt?

Sun Oct 28 20:28:47 UTC 2001

> Philosophically I think the EFF is right.  Blocking a single
> legitimate e-mail is very bad, and should be avoided at all costs.

Bad for whom?  Only for the sender?  Does this sender have rights
which should supercede the property rights of recipients and of
infrastructure owners?  If so then who gets to decide whether mail
is legitimate or not?  The sender again?  If so then why should
anyone ever be allowed to filter out "spam", either as a recipient,
or as an infrastructure owner?

That way lies madness.  Senders have no such rights, and the 
determination of a message's legitimacy lies with recipients (and
perhaps infrastructure owners) NOT senders.  A sender's rights are
determined by their contract with their ISP, and an ISP's rights
are determined by their contracts with their peers and transit
providers.

> Practically I think that the tactics of MAPS and ORBS and other
> blacklists are necessary right now.  I'd like nothing better than
> to see them go away because better technology has come along.

Agreed.  (And note that I no longer have an operational role at MAPS.)

> Legally (eg, if congress were going to pass a new law) I'm very
> much on the side of the EFF, because the law must be pure and true,
> because anything less impinges on our civil liberties.

I also want the law to be pure and true, but there is no civil liberty
involving the transmission of e-mail or any other traffic whose cost
of delivery is paid in any way by anyone other than that sender.