Regarding a service from the Phone company to try to discourage solicitations. I called a gentleman last week out of the classifieds. The first thing that happened was that the line was picked up and a said something like "This is a recording requested by the telephone subscriber you are trying to reach. If you are a telemarketer or solicitor, please place this number on your do not call list and hang up now. Any other callers please press 1 to connect." I thought it was the coolest thing. Unfortunately I did not figure out from the gentleman how/who had put the feature on his line. I can tell you that he had a number in the 507 area code and the US West was most likely his phone company! Good luck.
While I understand your point and wish that it were true that "posessing" a virus or some other piece of code would be or become legal I don't think the precedents will support it. After all, regardless of what you want to do with them, it illegal to posess biohazards such as bacteria or virus strains without gobs of approval, etc. I think the same standard will apply to code and we won't really get anything out of it... software can still be labelled "too dangerous for general consumption" while the big research labs still get to pick it all apart and make that determination.
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Regarding a service from the Phone company to try to discourage solicitations. I called a gentleman last week out of the classifieds. The first thing that happened was that the line was picked up and a said something like "This is a recording requested by the telephone subscriber you are trying to reach. If you are a telemarketer or solicitor, please place this number on your do not call list and hang up now. Any other callers please press 1 to connect." I thought it was the coolest thing. Unfortunately I did not figure out from the gentleman how/who had put the feature on his line. I can tell you that he had a number in the 507 area code and the US West was most likely his phone company! Good luck.
While I understand your point and wish that it were true that "posessing" a virus or some other piece of code would be or become legal I don't think the precedents will support it. After all, regardless of what you want to do with them, it illegal to posess biohazards such as bacteria or virus strains without gobs of approval, etc. I think the same standard will apply to code and we won't really get anything out of it... software can still be labelled "too dangerous for general consumption" while the big research labs still get to pick it all apart and make that determination.