[12006] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Green Card Incident
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Templeton)
Sat Apr 30 05:25:27 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.07.9404271039.C2319-a100000@cap.gwu.edu>
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 94 1:22:34 PDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
You are mostly on-track. The truth is that it's a combination.
There have been many ads before, some without complaint, some with.
There have been a few "mass postings" before, all of which received
massive complaints, but all of which were dealt with quickly and
harshly -- the person doing it usually lost all access to the net, was
repentant and never heard from again. Ie. they suffered the death penalty
in net terms. Canter was one -- he did this on a smaller scale before
and lost some access over it, but came back in another place.
The icing on the cake is that he is recalcitrant, claims it was a
positive experience and wants to do it again. This is the last straw.
He won't recognize that what he did flies in the face of all that makes
the net work, and the fact that instead of acting punished he is acting
encouraged really makes people angry. He's like the criminal who breaks
the law, gets a suspended sentence and tells everybody he made a million
selling the movie rights, and is filing an action against his victims.
Even though he didn't make that million on the movie rights, it bothers
people that he pretends he did. The e-mail he's suing to get is actually
valueless. There really aren't enough client leads in there to make this
worth his while.
And yes, there are people on the net who have an ideological opposition to
advertising, even if it's good advertising in the right place. And the
fact that it's advertising makes people a little bit angrier at it than
they are at the previous cases (chain letters and religious messages are
recent examples)
And what he did was annoying, not quite as much as people say, but still
annoying. Imagine coming to your fax machine and finding 20 faxes from
an immigration lawyer, each one with a cover page saying, "Here's a note
on XXX" where XXX is something you actually are interested in. It
would cost you a small amount of money, but really only a few pennies, so
that's not the big concern. And once you spotted it you would throw away
the remaining copies quickly enough. But it would annoy you that it was
done, and that the person doing it was proud and wanted to do it again and
tell everybody else how to do it again.
All the above are things that the lay person can understand. To truly
understand it you now have to understand the net is an animal unlike any
other. It's an anarchy. The truth of it is there is no security at all,
it has a million participants and yet it *works*. By and large, everybody
follows the rules. Those who stray are turned aside quickly. It's like
not having to lock your car or your house the way you can in a small town.
But this is no small town. And yet it works. There's a code of honour,
and people follow it, and they like living in a community without locks,
where honour rules.
But men like Canter ruin that image. They break the code of honour, and
instead of being shunned for it, they claim it was a pleasant experience.
They claim they will do it again. They claim they will teach others
to do it. They're interviewed on TV because of all the publicity, and
many press don't understand the issue and think it's all opposition to
advertising.
It isn't. There is lots worse stuff than advertising on the net, and people
tolerate it. There's holocaust denial, and vitriolic debate over the most
contentious of issues. There's obscenity and hatred, but it's all tolerated,
not in the sense of agreed with, but in the sense of being allowed so long
as it is posted following the rules.
That's what Canter did, and perhaps still doesn't realize he did. Though he
is actually much more informed about the net than most such perpetrators,
so who is to know?
