Previous Politech message: "Charles Platt: 'A cautionary tale about spam'" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04784.html --- To: declanat_private, politechat_private, gnuat_private Subject: Re: FC: Charles Platt's nonobvious conclusion In-reply-to: <5.2.1.1.0.20030528112840.048a4090at_private> Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 17:36:34 -0700 From: John Gilmore <gnuat_private> > My autoreply from panix.com now sends a message telling people my phone > number and asking them to call me to get my new email address. This seems > a safe strategy because of course phone calls actually cost money (unlike > email which is virtually free), and consequently telephone spam is much > less of a problem. > > The conclusion is obvious. > > --CP Perhaps I'm dense. The conclusion is that we should not continue to reduce the cost of communicating? Or that we shouldn't be teaching computers to handle audio easily? Nor teaching them to speak and understand speech? AT&T just called me up today (unsolicited bulk calling) to let me know that I could get nationwide local and long distance service from them for a flat monthly rate of $48.95. I declined because I already have such a service from MCI. Should we keep phone service on a per-minute basis? Should we prevent phone companies from lowering that monthly rate to $30, to $20, to $10, to $2? The conclusion is obvious? I can see it now -- college students all over the country will get software that lets them make $1000 a week by dialing out to random phone numbers and offering various amazing promotions. Be the first in your area code, and we'll throw in free email for life! (If the post office wasn't run by a government monopoly, postal costs would also be dropping rather than rising. The price and speed of moving freight and express packages has been dropping for centuries. And nanotech assemblers will cause the price of duplication of physical objects to drop like the price of duplication of data, in a decade or two.) The conclusion is not obvious. The obvious conclusion is that communication costs are going to continue to drop -- as are the costs of physical transportation of objects -- and that this is a GOOD thing. But that doesn't tell society how to handle unwanted letters, unwanted calls, unwanted emails, unwanted magazines, unwanted communications, unwanted packages, unwanted medicines, unwanted free clothing, cars, and furniture, all arriving at your door or phone or mailbox. And any policy that purports to tell you how to handle such "unwanted" things will burden the "wanted" emails, phone calls, magazines, and medicines. If Bill Gates made 6 billion doses of AIDS vaccine and mailed one dose to every person on earth, should we tell him he's not allowed to? If Richard Stallman made 6 billion copies of a totally free and cool operating system and emailed one to every person on earth, should we tell him that treating your brother as you yourself would like to be treated is a crime? If Ted Fang could make more money selling ads than it takes him to print and distribute his newspaper, what cop sworn to uphold the First Amendment will haul him off to jail if he delivers a free copy to every door? If Rev. Jerry Falwell discovered the ten-word magic prayer that really, truly, does cure cancer, who among us will cast the first stone if he phones it to every cancer patient in the country? If George Bush the Tenth wants to be President because nine generations of his forefathers were all president too, can he not send every voter a chicken in every pot? George W Bush actually *did* call every Republican or independent voter in Nevada shortly before the Nov 2002 election. He merely asked them all to get out and vote. His recorded voice, and some computers somewhere on the telephone network, encouraged enough Republicans to vote, so that the Nevada marijuana legaliation initiative got a stinging defeat. (Republicans tended to oppose it, Democrats tended to favor it.) Shouldn't he be able to suggest that people vote Republican? Even if the cost of those calls is low or free? John ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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