Spammers vs Free Speech

Spammers are destroying the public email system. I'm going to use that phrase here. Almost all of the servers, routers, optical fibers, and other equipment that carry email are private property. But the cultural system that says you can send email to your friends and strangers in the reasonable expectation that they will welcome it, and be willing to pay the cost of receiving it, is in the public domain. And so are the languages, or protocols, that computers speak to each other to move email across the network.

There's been too much focus on spam as a property rights issue. It's true: unsolicited broadcast email is theft of service, trespass to chattel, and illegal conversion of assets. Spammers use our equipment without our permission.

That's your PC. Nobody gave Leo Kuvayev permission to put his counterfeit mail order pills advertisement on your screen. It's like he'd barged into your yard and nailed a sign on your tree. That's trespassing. A big chunk of the cost of your Internet service goes into trying to block and filter the spam addressed to you. Spammers are stealing that money and throwing it in a bonfire. The total profits from spamming are less than 0.1% of spamming's cost to the economy. It's like blowing up a liquor store to steal a can of beer.

But spam is also a human rights issue. Spammers compel other people to do work, for no compensation. They steal our time and life energy. Where I come from, that's called SLAVERY. And it's a civil rights issue. The public email system is a venue of free speech. Spammers have made using email so difficult that people are actually giving up on it. When you drown out a speaker, or bulldoze his theater, or spray feces on the people waiting in line for tickets to his talk so they give up and go home, that's CENSORSHIP.

That's what this weblog is going to be about. Civil and human rights issues around spamming. The email system can be technical, but you won't have to be technical to understand anything here.