Wednesday - December 24, 2003

Category Image I Hate Spam, But . . .


Spam is an annoying intrusion in my life. I seem to spend a lot of time and energy deleting it, screening it, and avoiding it. I wish spammers would all rot in hell. But getting spam is worse than the alternative.

I've predicted since 1996 that the internet, far from being the tool for enabling freedom throughout the world like it currently is, will soon be used as a tool to oppress the whole world universally. It's inevitable if we're not careful. But the bogeyman of spam and other perceived ills of the internet are being used as excuses to regulate and control us and our new freedom.

The Instapundit has an article discussing this, and I'm relieved that such a reputable man is starting to hint at our danger. The danger of the internet is that it will foster a uniform, international standard for internet behavior, and that this standard will likely not reflect the freedoms that we now take for granted in the United States and currently enjoy on the internet.

There are entrenched powers in this world, centered on nations, the media, and corporations. As Thucydides wrote, "Of men we know and of the gods we suspect that they will rule wherever they can." This is as true today as it was 2430 years ago. Now the internet is freeing us from relying on the media from supplying us with their monopolistic and regulated source of information. Now the internet is allowing us to do business with each other across borders and across the country without regard for big businesses or government taxing authority. Businesses are threatened because the more complete the form of capitalism and freedom, the more small businesses thrive. Big business, big media and big government are threatened by our freedom and the internet.

So like the gods that rule wherever they can, big business, big media, and big government will do whatever it takes to retain their power and they're using any bugaboo they can think of to scare us into losing our newfound freedom. The bugaboo of the day is spam.

Now, spam is no different from those unwanted pieces of mail that the post office gives you everyday. I get lots of it and it's all unwanted, but I can't stop it from coming. The sender paid the post office to deliver it, and deliver it they will. That's the beauty of the postal system, you get a mailbox so that anonymous people can correspond with you even if they don't know you. It's a wonderful service, and you can send mail to businesses and others too.

So why is it suddenly so different with email as opposed to real, or snail mail? There are two differences: There is no postal fee, and the subject matter can often be quite obscene and vulgar. This is unfortunate, and like most, I wish there were a way to shield myself from these rude intrusions. There are ways, they take time and effort and money to keep ahead of the game, but in general I'd much rather deal with spam than not get email.

And that's the trick to having freedom. You have to take the responsibility of dealing with the bad along with the advantages of the good.

But many people don't see it that way. They see an annoyance and they want it gone, they don't care how.

Enter the villian. Or villians. Those losing their power and some who simply want power are using this annoyance to convince us to give up our freedom, and their success at this argument is amazingly successful despite its absurdity.

There are two directions the internet can go in now. Either they can expand our freedom so that everyone's computer is autonomous or they can make it so that no one's is.

Let me explain that in a bit more detail. Right now when you access the internet, unless you are a professional, you go through someone else's server. They control your access for what is usually a nominal fee. These servers are generally privately owned, so this is a good solution. But with these gateways there is a means to control us yet. Using these gateways the internet can be structured to identify us, to tax us, and control us. Why do we have these gateways? Because it has required careful application of skilled technology to safely connect to the backbone of the internet. Most don't have these skills, so they pay their internet service provider to simplify it for them.

Alternatively, as computer technology improves it is reasonable to predict that these skills won't be as necessary anymore. There will be fewer and fewer reasons to need to use other people's servers and we should be able to make our personal computers behave like the servers we rely on today. Frankly it's always been easily possible, but we've just not been trusted to do it.

And why weren't we trusted? For several reasons, not the least of which is that most people use microsoft operating systems which are notoriously leaky, ill-behaved, and difficult to work with. Microsoft operating systems use Intel and x86 processors.

And who is pushing the new controls that will rob us of internet freedom? Government who wants better control over taxing us. Businesses who are tired of spam and viruses (which are largely the result of bad microsoft software), and Microsoft, Intel, and AMD who make the processors and the software that use them.

Read Glenn Reynolds article for details of this cabal of power seekers. For now, just concentrate on the small excuse being used to justify what could end up being the dismantling of our newfound freedom: Spam. How petty. It's an annoyance and nothing more. Yet for the hope, and an unrealizable hope it is, of getting rid of spam we just might be allowing Microsoft, Intel and AMD to put an equivalent of V-chips on our computers. These chips won't just hope to get rid of spam (and at that it will fail), they will allow our governments to tax us more efficiently and more widely. They will allow foreign governments to track us and our stifle our voices. They will allow businesses to track our purchases and target us for advertisements, which of course won't be called spam.

The internet, after spurring a brief flowering of freedom throughout the world, will end up enslaving us. I'm fighting like heck to avoid using a Lord of the Rings analogy, but I can't resist. The internet will become like the one ring to rule us all. Once they put controls on our computers and thus limit our access, we will have lost any hope of escaping from the entrenched powers. Instead of empowering us, it will ensure that we are more thoroughly controlled and enslaved than anyone could have predicted in any Orwellian vision.

Let's hope that the internet has already freed us enough to voice our objections loudly enough. Let's hope that our voices can be heard and this danger be understood. The word will not come through if we rely on the traditional media and the government to inform us. We must use the internet to defeat those who wish to destroy our newfound freedom.

I'm doing my part. I hope others jump in too.

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