Spam and Freedoms
On Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Listening, and Respect
Spam embodies the epitome of a bitter argument, and analysis beyond pure teeth-gritting and curses mkaes for some interesting thoughts. Most people hate spam, and would love it to be "stopped" - indeed instinctively, I am one of these people. I realise the sheer quantity of the stuff, and the consequences it has on networked society. However, some argue that to ban e-mail advertising is effectively censorship, that even though it contains no opinion, no use to the recipient. And this is right. Technical issues, such as the classification and definition of spam, blacklists, whitelists, inappropriate blocking et al aside, I believe that the right (i.e. ungoverned by law) to produce whatever material you like is more important than personal aggrievance. A solution should be reached that combines technical choice with the formation of a society that respects other people and their property, rather than being enforced.
However, idealist musings apart, this theory often gets embroiled in twisted to-and-froing, with freedom of spam being at odds with private respect. However, I find the best way to look at it is as a central "bulletin board"-style affair. By this I mean that...
- everyone has the right to post into public space whatever they like.
- everyone also has the right to only read what they want to read.
Freedom of speech must be combined with a desire for freedom of listening, and both must be accountable to each other. For instance, I may claim that painting "ANTI_WAR" in 6-foot high letters on a wall is some kind of freedom of speech, but if it is unavoidably displayed, then that is effectively a denial of freedom of listening.
The web is a great example of this - anyone may post anything they like, but there is nothing that says such material must infringe upon other people's attention, time or resources. In order to see something, one must choose to see it. In this way, invasory methods such as pop-up windows and interstitial advertising screens are as intrusive to people's freedom of listening as spam.
In terms of e-mail, things are quite different though. There is no "public space" as such - mail goes from private mailbox to private mailbox. Perhaps it is necessary to separate the discussion out, and move it away from the idea of an virtual inbox. Instead, we should study the problem in terms of contact address and the availability thereof, in the same way that one discusses availability of a house address, rather than the house itself. This may seem obvious, but it is an important difference in terms of the attitude used to filter content that finally arrives in an inbox. To think of it as just a source and a destination restricts countermeasures, both legal and technical, to source and destination filtering issues, such as restricting who can send mail, or what they can send, and what you can receive. This is good, but incomplete - to realise the importance of freedoms at play here, one must consider what information is in the public domain, i.e. the contact information.
For the moment, I will completely ignore issues such as domain catch-alls et al, and concentrate on a more simplistic, specific subdomain of the matter. An e-mail address is typically the only piece of information that links the public domain with a private inbox, and as such, its publication is effectively an invite for people to contact the owner. If the owner doesn't want anyone with access to this public knowledge, then it is easier to not place it there. (Note that in reality, "owner" is often not the e-mail reader, for example in the cases of webmail accounts owned by a particular provider. For this reason, private ownership of e-mail is desirable on a universal basis, if a universal elimination of spam is desired.) This doesn't close off all avenues of publicity, but does cut the problem drastically. This illustrates one instance, albeit a possibly restrictive, impractical one, of freedom of listening, the choice of whether or not to publish an e-mail address.
(See also: Spam Filtering Spam And Legality )
