I dont have a problem with an individual right to send anyone anything; free speech. My problem is getting spammed by corporations, which are not persons with human rights, but THINGS, often as here, invading rights, like the right to be let alone. If a machine was making an annoying noise, I'd think about how to turn it off. Not a moral issue. You dont have a moral obligation to a thing, only to other living beings. I know of a commune of 60 or so in MO, which has a local network. when their server detects large numbers of users getting email from the same source, it's deleted. they never see it. While they suffer some from a lack of privacy in such a small isolated community, they dont share such privacy as they have with the world at large. when they order something, the organization does it for them, and their individual names never appear in a customer database to be sold to other advertising outfits and spammers. Generations ago, corporations were declared 'persons' who could go into court to sue, or be sued. That definition has been extended to include the rights of free speech. I guess were lucky that they cant vote, although they certainly buy enough votes. I would repeal the corporate right to free speech. Now, if you have a business and wanna send out spam, fine, but then I will know who to go gunning for. As John noted, there are those who are responsible or contributing to the problem, but they are using the corporate identity to hide behind. I'd abolish that as well. Every piece of mail on the net should have someone's name attached to it, who authorized it being sent in the first place. Then, we could spam them back. There is one other possible tool. back in the 60's I read a sci fi tale of a future time, like now, where the whole world was one vast global market, and corporations bombarded everyone with ads from all forms of media which they owned. But as we see with the internet, people were in communication with each other. As a protest, they all agreed, that on a certain day, they'd all quit buying a certain brand of soap. Then, the next week a certain brand of softdrink. Whatever it was that took up the most ad space got hit whenever everyone agreed on it. It disrupted all the careful calculations of profit. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
