Many "Internet people" (users, designers, academics) have an almost religious belief that the Internet should provide unlimited, anonymous, any-to-any communication. I think we are living through example after example of why this model is broken. Even the simplest Internet application needs to be able to identify its clients and expected client behavior (and enforce them!) or else become vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks and other misuse, including spam.
So, I don't hold much hope for the efficacy of additional laws unless there is a change in the services provided by the network architecture. A stronger notion of identity, greater network monitoring of client and server behavior, and "middleboxes" which mediate wide-area transactions are all helpful, but all three ideas are anathema to the currently popular conception of what the Internet is and should be.
The Internet's great success is the ability to deploy new applications. Unfortunately, experience has proved that some of the most popular applications are denial-of-service attacks and spam.
Shane: one of the negatives with your idea is that any response whatsoever can be used to validate that the email reached a valid destination. (In the simplest case, imagine that one of the links in the email is a 'subscribe me'.)
I would be very worried about the potential as a platform for attacks, too, as you mention.
All this reminds me of this article, which reports that while the market has earned about 12% per year over the past 20 years, individual mutual fund investors earned about 4%, and 401(k) holders earned about 6%.
Individuals just aren't particularly good investors. A good quote from the article: "... individual investors seem to understand that they don't invest well. They actually don't want the responsibility for their investments... But consider this: The company's managers --- the people who determine its plan design --- tend to be in the small minority that wants personal control of retirement investments."
These numbers don't bode particularly well for privitization schemes, or even those of us who hope to retire--- or at least stop working--- on our own.
While I think this lawsuit, its overblown rhetoric, and many of its arguments (particularly the original demand that AOL hand over the power to cancel posts at will) are completely bogus, I have to say that it sounds like AOL completely dropped the ball here. The "safe harbor" provisions are not ideal, but at least provide some sort of compromise.
Unfortunately, few ISPs seem to be willing to live up to the entire deal--- including the ability to file a counter-notice and have your materials restored should the complaining party fail to file a lawsuit. But it is perhaps not surprising, given that policing copyright is simply not scalable. The amount of copyrighted material, the uncertain status of any given instance (legally released sample chapter? 'pirated' excerpt?), and the fuzzy boundaries of fair use render it impossible to police violations in the middle. The best we can hope for from our middleboxes (including operators) is that they provide clear responsibility for who has done what--- and even that seems more research task than engineering.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 4 |
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