Re: [wg-review] A Reply to Miles B. Whitener... Re: The owners of "the Internet" must manage it for their own benefit

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 04:24:02AM -0500, Sotiropoulos wrote:
> 1/14/01 12:13:00 AM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> wrote:
> 
> >Indeed, your ISP wants to do business with you, but you have no right to
> >FORCE it to do business with you.  Moreover, if your ISP doesn't like
> >what you put on your website (say you are a spammer), it can boot you
> >off (*).  
> 
> You sing a silly song Kent.  It gets sillier all the time. 

As the old saw goes, I really shouldn't engage in a battle of wits with 
an unarmed opponent, but anyway... :-)

> Are you
> telling us, that if laws *weren't* passed (by the USG) against spamming
> and other activities on the Web, that people like you (or just ISPs
> and Hosting in general) would refuse to take a customer's money because
> they were providing porn?

Of course...

From the AUP at Songbird: 

    "While we at Songbird are all in favor of adult behavior, for
    various reasons Songbird will not host sites with what is
    euphemistically referred to as "adult" content."

> or being party to spamming?

Naturally...

From my upstream's AUP:

    AboveNet's tolerance for spam originating from our customers, or
    from our customers' customers, or for spam advertising web sites of
    our customers or our customers' customers, is zero. 
        -- http://above.net/anti-spam.html

Also check http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/

> Wow! Morality from
> a "capitalist"? You're no capitalist Kent.  If you were, you'd agree
> that judging from the amount of that stuff that *still* goes on in
> cyberspace, I'd say there are plenty of people exercising the *free
> market* PROVIDED *right* to free speech.

If you in fact have a right, then you have a legal redress -- you can go
to court to enforce your right.  But you can't go to court to force the
market to provide you with something it doesn't want to give you.  If
there are no restaurants in your town that serve pork, you can't sue
them to make them serve you bacon -- doesn't matter how much you like
bacon.  (Well you could sue, but you would lose).  On the other hand, in
the US at least you have a real right to non-discriminatory practices on
the part of the restaurant -- if you are black, and they refuse to serve
you because of it, you *can* sue. 

The mail-abuse url provided above is an interesting example of how the
market can completely trump your imagined "rights".  As a matter of
current *fact* (as contrasted to your raving overheated fantasies), ISPs
do make heavy use of the MAPS, and if you are so unlucky as to caught in
a subnet "blackholed" by MAPS, your mail will simply not be delivered,
and you have no real legal recourse.  That is, while for the most part
the market does provide great freedom, on occasion the market really
does arrange for restrictions on freedom of speech, and there is no 
legal recourse.

> You see Kent, I
> think it's time for a History lesson again.  Know Thyself Kent.

[rest of childish flame deleted]

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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