Spam Blackhole Lists Redux

tsu doh nimh writes "Are spam blackhole lists good, bad or indifferent? That appears to be the question they're tackling in this Washington Post story. It has some interesting back and forth between supporters of the lists and those who claim they condone censorship." J adds: Brad Templeton recently offered some comments on the most extreme pro-blacklist position.

Comments

Counter to the spirit of the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

It just depresses me that everybody thinks it's OK to drop undesirable segments of the Internet. Doesn't seem to run well with the spirit of Free Speech, and really if you think about it it just makes things like DRM and various recording industry proposals to kill P2P seem reasonable.

And they're not. They go against the spirit of the Internet. What makes it great is that everybody HAS a voice, and when we start talking about who should have a voice and who shouldn't we start to sound a lot like fascists. Doesn't matter that it's speech we don't agree with, because it's just a matter of time before the whole thing is so watered down that nobody in their right mind will bother to use it (like amateur radio nowadays...)

Re:Counter to the spirit of the Internet

[An Onerous Coward]

I can see where you're coming from in a "theoretically, Communism should work" sort of way. But from a practical standpoint, free speech only works if people have the ability to tune out some messages and concentrate on others.

Imagine that you're having a lively conversation at a dinner party. There are a dozen different groups of chatters in the room. The spammer mentality recognizes the opportunity here: If I just brought in a megaphone, then everyone would be able to hear what I have to say.

The problem is twofold: Everyone has a message that they want others to hear, and thanks to the marvels of the Internet, everyone with a broadband connection has a huge megaphone. At some point, it becomes difficult to pick out the messages that are important to an individual, and the medium as a whole suffers. The solution here is to silence the proverbial megaphones.

The difference between Spamhaus and the RIAA is that Spamhaus is interfering with "speech" that interferes with more constructive speech, and the RIAA is trying to interfere with speech that interferes with their monopoly on certain messages.

Re:Counter to the spirit of the Internet

[Monoman]

Since when does someone else's freedom of speech *require* me to listen?

In the case of spam, it is on my dime too!

bit bucket

[TheSHAD0W]

I think black hole lists are a great thing, but I will admit, they are certainly censorship, and the customers of an ISP using such a list may disagree with some or all of it.

Perhaps the solution is to design a standard format for a black hole list, and add that functionality to email applications? If the end users had such access for themselves, then they could decide whether they wanted someone else to censor their mail (and whether they wanted to bypass that censorship for certain specific people or networks).

And yes, I know there is software that does this, but it's all proprietary. Is anyone interested in adding a generic functionality to, say, Mozilla? Perhaps the ability to import an XML list of bans from one or more specified URLs, run by volunteer blackhole list sponsors?

Yes and NO

[d3ut3r0n]

Yes it is a form of censorship, but NO this is not about free speech - SPAM is not free in the cost sense. It costs money to move it around - if you don't believe me, then you have no idea how the internet works.

Sure, if you get SPAM at work, you personally don't absorb the cost... and sure, if you have uncapped internet access, sure you don't absorb the cost. BUT SOMEONE DOES. I don't get SPAM at work but do on some personal email addresses and I, like many other people outside the united states, DO NOT have unlimited download limits.

So those who want the right to speak freely about their latest porn sites, sex products, can pay, albeit a tiny amount of money, per email we receive.

Another thing about free speech, it doesn't mean you can talk as loudly as you want in the middle of the street at 3am - no, you WILL be approached by authorities for disturbing the peace - just try it. SPAM is not really all that much different - you don't have the option of not hearing it, the same way as you don't have the option of not hearing someone blaring music or screaming at 3am while trying to sleep. While the remedy might sound easier to delete a SPAM message than bother the local police for noise complaints, you don't have the noise every day, and hundreds of times.

Free speech might mean not being censored, but it doesn't mean you can do it at other people's expense of inconvenience.

Free Speech

[Detritus]

If you live in the USA, the Bill of Rights enumerates your right of free speech. That does not make it an absolute right. Try exercising your right to free speech on my property and I will have you arrested for trespassing.