-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Thu, 4 Dec 1997, Jukka Marin wrote:

> There are people who have to pay extra for all foreign data transfers,
> including mail.  The more spam is sent to your domain from the US (that's
> where most spam originates, anyway), the more you have to PAY.  I really
> think this is theft - sending mail at someone else's expense - without
> their permission.

This type of billing scheme is obscene.  If you are in a position where
the more mail you receive the more you pay, and you have no way to
filter incoming mail before you get billed for it, I think you need to
have a long look at whether your access provider or spam is the root
problem here...  (On the other hand, it says that much more for your
(already demonstrated) dedication to NetBSD that you are on
current-users even though you are paying by the message...

> > If you don't want to receive mail, take down SMTP.
> 
> You know this isn't a real solution.

No, of course not.  The point, however, is that mail service is a
tradeoff.  In order to receive mail, you put your machine(s) on an
international distributed network, an action which has advantages and
disadvantages.  One of the disadvantages is that your machine is
available for incoming mail from all over the world.  One of the main
advantages is that your machine is available for incoming mail from all
over the world.

> This is one reason why I hate spam.  I would hate it even if I didn't
> have to pay - here we can put a label on our mailboxes (the real ones)
> and tell we don't want to receive ads and other free material - and it
> works.  On Internet, you can't do that and that's a problem.  Our law
> even says the companies sending ads must say where they got your
> address from and you can tell them to stop and/or remove your address
> from that list.  So, these spams are kind of illegal here.

I hate spam, too.  I would love to take down my procmail filters and
know that my inbox will not be obese by day's end.  I would love to
regain the time I spend updating my spam filters.  What I would not love
is to see the precedent established that local governments have the
right to regulate what content can be exchanged over an international
distributed medium.

- --
				Jim Wise
				jim.wise@turner.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use
Charset: noconv

iQEVAwUBNIZNYBg+dMhCouwfAQFgsAf/Vesdn1hZRlUUk9K5Re85Qo+TQsOHzczt
rCIPfZNKi7lb6fYrHw3MDtXtiCP+VN/qdEPyxnZB951vQKzuc8kGpUxzcRJ78Fzk
hQ7IDLpo91WiNi/+8SZ0cZXX753tgj0zg9jdbWNe8JfKIEjF3ATxdu/cb6bqKg8A
7/EdNDVuj+RpR7+WxMjunJi/LrbIcvWVdr5Zud4gwgA22Q3+Reg1JWf+ewqhRiFg
/kWFHsok2XtnkotPMOgZOX7hWcAsvUB+62H5Io0BkAPXdyeUNbgZk7ydTyysegu9
XgiJSBQY/hYRsp58brgkLPg6mnGUWsMPnybs+I/Oc9JIHkP0XhOnMA==
=dUPG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----