OT - 3 Free Gmail invites

Thu Aug 19 18:18:07 UTC 2004

> From owner-nanog at merit.edu  Thu Aug 19 12:43:05 2004
> Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:39:43 -0700
> From: Lou Katz <lou at metron.com>
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: OT - 3 Free Gmail invites
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:13:29PM -0700, Jonathan Nichols wrote:
> > 
> > Joshua Brady wrote:
> > 
> > >I've got 2 Gmail invites up for grabs for the first 2 to email me offlist.
> > >
> > 
> > You know, I'm having trouble finding people that *don't* have gmail.com 
> > accounts already. :P
>
> Because G-mail scans INCOMING mail without the sender's consent, we will NEVER
> have a G-mail account and have considered blocking them. 

Are you seriously considering blocking _everybody's_ mail?  In today's world
practically *everybody* scans incoming mail.   Spam, viruses, scams, bogus
bounce messages, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

> have a G-mail account and have considered blocking them. We actively discourage
> our clients from using this service.

Do you similarly discourage the use of  ATT WorldNet, MSN, Yahoo, Earthlink,
Hotmail, AOL, Earthlink, Panix, Flashnet, Netscape.net, RCN, Corecomm, 
Comcast, Cogent, RoadRunner, Cox, Adelphia, etc. ?   *EVERY*ONE* of those
providers also scans all INCOMING mail. *Without* the sender's consent.

Do you do any anti-spam and/or anti-virus scanning of *your* incoming mail?

Why does it seem like the description 'two-faced' applies to your attitude?

>                                      If you want to let a service scan YOUR mail,
> it is your perogative, but you cannot give them permission to scan MY mail to you.
>

And, just BTW, legally, _yes_ I *can* give a third-party permission to scan
any/all of my incoming mail, including yours. And you, the sender, do =not= 
have anything to say about the matter.

LEGAL FACT:
I can hire _anybody_ to read my mail, on my behalf, 'annotate' it for me,
and provide me with the 'marked up' copy, *without* violating any of your
'intellectual property rights' (e.g., "copyright").  You have absolutely
no say in the matter, whatsoever.  And it doesn't matter whether the 'mail'
in question is postal mail, or 'e-mail'.  The law is _exactly_ the same.

*ANYTHING* that _I_ can legally do with/to my incoming mail, I can hire an 
'agent' (someone acting 'at my direction', and 'on my behalf') to do.

Now, if that person I hired were to give copies of my incoming mail to
_someone_else_ (other than myself), *then*and*only*then* would you have
a cause for action against "someone".  If that person distributed those
copies _at_my_direction_, they would be immune; your 'cause for action'
would be against _me_.  OTOH, if they did it *without* my permission, then
and =only= then, would you have cause for action against _them_.

Of course, if _I_ were to do that self-same thing -- give copies of incoming
mail to 'someone else', then *I* would be liable to the sender for those
acts.