OFF: Bill of Rights sent to Whitehouse

Paul Mather paul at CSGRAD.CS.VT.EDU
Wed Feb 28 11:26:02 EST 1996


Captain Cloud writes:

>        Some of you may be aware that recent legislation has been enacted
>        in the USA to enforce censorship on the Internet.  Fewer of you may
>        be aware that a group of US citizens are planning to SPAM the White
>        House on February 29th with copies of the Bill of Rights, as a
>        simultaneous protest and show of solidarity(?).
>
>        The gist is, all volunteer participants send a single Email
>        containing a brief introduction, followed by the Bill of Rights.
>        Only one msg, very simple contents.  It is unclear if anything
>        other than crashing Bill Clinton's Mail server will come from this.
>        However, this is a possibly painless way of showing civil
>        disobedience.

Technically this is not a SPAM.  It's a (variant of) mailbombing.  It
would be a SPAM each person sent his or her mailing to dozens of
different people.

I can only presume the likely outcome of this "protest" will be for
the White House to remove themselves from e-mail contact with the
general public; maybe permanently.  It's a pity, actually.  It'll
result in less communication between government and the people instead
of more.  But I guess it would demonstrate that Internet users can be
knee-jerk morons just like everyone else, though (except more high-tech).

IMHO, I think it's better for the large corporations and civil
liberties groups that've decided to fight this through the courts to
vigorously do so.  (Use their own system against them.)  Either that
or determine if your elected representative voted for this bill, and
if so, show your disapproval through the ballot box (not that I can do
that in my case, of course).

Gee, what smart idea will they have next---all of us burning our
modems in protest?  I think the idea of voicing concern is a good one,
but I think mailbombing is a particularly lame method to choose as an
implementation.  (It's not debate; it's the e-mail way of shouting
someone down.)

Followups to various appropriate newsgroups and forums...

Cheers,

Paul (erstwhile TA for a computer ethics class, who had to wade through
numerous undergraduate term papers on Internet censorship, etc.)

obCD: Frank Zappa, _You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2_

e-mail: paul at csgrad.cs.vt.edu                    A stranger in a strange land.



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