ORBS
Ray Dillinger
bear at sonic.net
Tue Jun 12 16:01:58 PDT 2001
You know what? If Alice puts up a list of all the sites
she's blocking mail from, there is no problem with that.
She is not coercing anyone. She can block any site for any
reason she wants -- maybe she has intestinal gas, or maybe
she just doesn't like somebody. Tough toenails.
If Bob reads this list and copies it, there is no problem
with that either -- Bob's not coercing anyone.
Bob winds up blocking the people Alice blocked, even if she
blocked them for no good reason. But Bob is evidently okay
with that, or at least unable to find a better source of
information.
If Alice were in a competitive business, and people paid for
better or more well-founded recommendations about blocking
lists, she'd probably be driven out of business. But whatever;
nobody else got into the business, so there's no competition.
Alice has a money-losing monopoly that provides marginal
service.
The only problem arises because Alice started using scans and
listings as weapons. That's not wrong per se, as it's not
stealing or coercion -- it's just rude. But scans themselves
are perfectly acceptable and necessary as the only reliable
means of providing this service.
I think ORBS was exactly the kind of "reputation service" most
folks here argue in favor of, and while some of us may have
despised it, that's not sufficient reason to interfere with
someone else's ability to publish whatever the hell they want
to publish.
Or, I'll even go further. It was an example of "private law",
where the "law merchant" publishes a list of people who break
the laws they sell and then lets the market punish or not as
they choose. However flawed the list, and however obnoxious
the merchant was about the testing to create it, isn't that
exactly what many of you have been arguing for the right to do?
Bear
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