The leftist pro-spam meme
: There’s a strange meme aborning: Leftists coming out against do-not-call lists and spam protection because they are a form of so-called censorship.
Here [via Richard Bennett] is John Gillmore (the EFF nut with the hijacker button):
The default should be that
sending emails — commercial, charitable, governmental or otherwise —
should and must be legal. Just as sending verbal messages in person,
that is, approaching someone to speak, should and must be legal….
Citizens want cheap communication… They want to be able
to send any message they want, to any people they want. They just
don’t want to receive all the messages that the other six billion
people want to send THEM. “Free speech for me, not for thee” is
what’s going on here. The entire idea of regulating the sending
of email should be dropped.
And then here’s Douglas Rushkoff:
So what I’m wondering is how the expansion of do-not-call registries may curtail the crosstalk required for democracy to take place. As I noted in a post last year, do not call and online ‘protection’ programs already tend to censor traffic dealing with environmentalism, feminism, anti-war demonstrations, and pretty much any progressive agenda. Might do-not-call registries, and do-not-spam laws to follow, have a debilitating effect on our ability to send messages to one another about things much more important and controversial than the mainstream media is willing to report?
The email carrying a link to the Observer article alerting me to Arnold’s pre-candidacy meetings with Republicans for the reduction of Enron fines (see link above) was duly filtered by my ISP’s spam program.
I hope it’s just the flu-like disorientation, but I fear a legislator I don’t agree with someday defining spam in the same way they used to define porn: I know it when I see it.
Jeesh. These guys can make anything — even penis enlargers — PC.
Listen, guys, I want — no, I demand — a way to keep from getting disturbed on my phone in the privacy of my home on the line I paid for by phone calls I do not want. They are invading my home and privacy. Don’t you guys fight for privacy? Fight for mine.
I demand the ability to stop people from sending me mails the clog my computer and the communications lines I pay for kill the usefulness of email for legitimate personal and business purposes. They are stealing my resources. And they are invading my privacy by grabbing my private email address that I did not give them. Don’t you want to fight for my rights?
Most of all, I demand the right to stop these slime from sending sexual, violent, disgusting email to my children. Don’t you want to protect children from horrible, demeaning pornography that is abusive to women? Or would you rather save whales?
Instead, you envision a world in which any nut, huckster, criminal, crook, pornographer, or stinking slime is free to approach me on the street or in the privacy of my home or my business just to protect against what you call censorship. This isn’t censorship. Censorship is when the government decides what can and can’t be published. I don’t want the government to decide. I want to decide. And my rule is simple: If I didn’t give you my email address, don’t send me your spam. If I didn’t give you my phone number, don’t bother me with your calls. And if you do walk up to me on the street, I will ignore you and keep walking, as is my right (and training as a New Yorker).
We, the people are demanding a stop to these calls and emails. If you were truly populists, you’d be listening to what the people are saying.
