From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Wed Feb 03 1999 - 18:23:10 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> I cannot see any possible benefit of legislating netiquette that
> outweighs the near-certain disaster. Information must flow freely or it
> will not flow at all. That includes spam, and adult sites, and abortion
> death threats, and child pornography, because outlawing these things
> would accomplish nothing; no more than outlawing drugs has decreased the
> number of drug users, or outlawing encryption will prevent terrorists
> from typing in the source code from "Applied Cryptography".
>
> What it would accomplish is to increase transaction costs and prevent
> information from flowing freely. It would have the same effect as a tax
> on downloading Web pages. It would make every ISP liable for not
> keeping up in the technological arms race that is certain to begin.
>
> If spam technology becomes a serious annoyance, users will result to
> serious filter technology to keep it out. Legislation would be futile
> and ineffective, except in the "effect" of creating laws or transaction
> costs that would cripple legal technological advancement.
>
> This is a classic case of Yudkowsky's Third Threat:
> "Attempting to suppress a technology only inflicts more damage."
> --
There is a big difference between supressing technology and making technology
pay for its externalizations. Spam is specifically designed to be almost total
externalized cost, which is why it is such a threat. Using legal mechanisms or
market pressure to make technologies pay their externalized costs will not
supress the rate of technological advancement in the long term (i.e. more than a
few years), since the bandwidth waste that spam causes is as bad as smog, toxic
waste, or other types of pollution. They are evidence of a technology which
wastes resources, is inefficient. Maximizing technological growth depends on
minimizing the utility costs of productive work in an economic system. Spam is
none of these.--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
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