Slashdot Mirror
Tweaking the CAN-SPAM Act
rbochan writes "The Register is reporting that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is consulting on proposed changes to the CAN-SPAM Act. Changes would include clarifying the definitions of the terms person and sender, and altering the time allowed for a sender to to honor an opt-out request. The FTC proposal is available as a PDF on the official FTC site." From the article: "Critics have accused the Act of being narrow and weak, accusations that may be hard to deny given that the US sends more spam than any other, according to a recent report by anti-virus firm Sophos."
That probably depends upon the libertarian. In the context of the libertarian there seem to be three basic types.
Type one are the classic libertarians, who are pro individial civic rights. They tend to oppose censorship and government snooping, and to promote open standards. Generally they have a sense of proportion. They either think harassment should be illegal, or failing that, that they should have a right to shoot you if you harass them.
Type two are the Reganite/Thacherite libertarians, who tend to believe that large corporations have the right to do whatever they damn well please, and that the rest of us have the right to like it. Anyone who disagrees with this gets called a "communist". They think that harrassment should be legal, as long as it's them doing it.
Type three libertarians are your basic anarchists, who belive that they have they right to host kiddie pr0n, own your machine, and how are you going to stop them, l@m3r?
The sad thing is that although type one seems to have all the good ideas, type twos have all the funding and type threes get all the publicity. Any discussion of why this might be will require tin foil helmets/.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!