[11804] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NYTimes 'green card' article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Willis Marti)
Wed Apr 20 19:40:01 1994
From: Willis Marti <willis@cs.tamu.edu>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 1994 13:15:12 -0500
To: blarrib@netcom.com, com-priv@psi.com, finn@mcs.com
>At 07:03 PM 4/19/94, the finn wrote:
>> You might want to check out this mornings edition of the New York
>>Times. It has an article in section C about the 'Green Card' Ad, with full
>>b&w photo of the offending lawyer and his wife. From what I read, he doesn't
>>sound terribly repentant. In fact, he wants to write a book about how to
>>"advertise on the internet." I just can't shake the feeling that the article
>>is overly sympathetic towards his side of the story. Frightening.
>>
>What does this guy have to be repentant about. He got tremendous exposure,
>including his picture in the New York Times for a minimal investment. He
And the job or duty of those of us who believe that such activity should be
discouraged is to reduce his benefit or increase his costs. 'EMailbombing' and
autodialers to inbound 800 numbers are not illegal (just annoying or
anti-social). We are not required to tolerate his activity.
>probably got a number of querys from people wanting Green Cards. What he
>did was a pain in the neck, but it wasn't illegal.
>
>Now that it has hit the mainstream the Internet is going to be exploited by
>people for their own purposes --- that is the what commercialism is all
>about. Some of these people will be "good citizens", others will not. This
>comes as part of the fruits of our success.
And part of discussion on this list is to figure out how to make those
exploiters 'pay' the 'cost' -- that too is what commercialism is all about.
