[extropy-chat] Spam

[Samantha Atkins]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 14:49:16 +1100
"Brett Paatsch" <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> Spike wrote:
> 
> > As a thought experiment, ignore the means and list those
> > who would have the motive to mess up the internet, or whose
> > lives may have been better off without it:
> > 
> > Bricks'n'mortar merchants
> > 

Why?  It is cheaper to put something on the web and sale it perhaps with drop shipment than run showroom floors.  

> > Anyone who sells primarily information, such as
> > Ministers

Many ministers are flocking to the net to reach a larger flock.

> > Publishers

Being found by search engines on the net perhaps with excerpts is darn cheap advertising.  There are ways to sale published information on the net with minimum risk of being ripped off.  And again, at lower costs.

Now some middlemen publishers do stand to be obsoleted by the net. 


> > Real estate professionals

Web ads are a boom to their business, so why would the care?

> > Teachers (some of them)

What for?  Any teacher interested in teaching would send her students all over the internet for educational purposes.  

> > Stock and investment advisers (why pay for that which is free?)
> 

Just because it is on the internet or accessible by the internet does not mean it is free or cannot successfully be charged for and collected. 

> > Others?
> 
> I've wondered about this too. What about government and major
> media outlets which are the means by which most people decide
> how to vote or perhaps even what to buy or ask their stock broker
> about.
> 

You have a reasonable point that those forces that wish to restrict information, knowledge and choice by the people will see the internet as a threat.  This means they will seek to manipulate matters so that they can control it.  Its destruction is no longer a remotely rational goal even for these forces as too much is built upon it.
  
> I'm pretty sure I read that there was an internet warfare section
> that was active in the Iraq war. *If* the internet was a potent source
> of non-manipulated media perhaps government (or agencies of it)
> would want to act in accordance with the national interest (or 
> rather how the national interest is perceived) by agencies - which
> might in fact by the interests of the government of the day.
>

Yes.  I think it not unlikely that the government will work hard to change the internet in such a way as to control it and to stifle many of its revolutionary potentials.  I believe this is a sufficient threat that some underground alternate networking infrastructure and methods should be designed and deployed. Our combined intelligence and influence depends on the means of communciation remaining open. 
 
I am not worried about spam destroying the net as we know it except and unless it is used by as yet another excuse for full[er] government control of the net down to the level of deep changes of the underlying code making free, open and/or anonymous internet resources extremely difficult to impossible.


- samantha