>HipCrime is pleased to announce that a shareware version of
>its ActiveAgent web-spider is now available for downloading
>via anonymous FTP.
>...
>ActiveAgent does NOT skim newsgroups, databases, and/or subscriber
>lists. It locates addresses on published, accessible WWWeb-pages,
>and sends only a single message to each recipient. ActiveAgent will
>contact those people who have invited this comment by displaying their
>Email coordinates in a "please-mail-to-me" context (i.e. a MAILTO
>button on a public page).
Such a novel spin. Aaron Nabil's comment is worth repeating:
>I think someone needs to set up a phone robot to call you
>about 10,000 times a day. After all, you do have a "please call me"
>button on a public page (the phone directory).
You have an ethical responsibility to your users to inform them of the
potential liabilities from using a product that encourages spamming.
First, the best they can hope to accomplish is to wind up on the
Advertiser's Blacklist; the worst is that they will be mail-bombed into
oblivion, and if that doesn't shut them down the flood of complaints to
their ISP will. After all, a few well-chosen words was all it took for
Sprint to pull the plug on CyberPromo, due for discontinuation of
service on Nov. 15. Sprint's new policy forbids such activity on any of
its leased lines, all the way down to the Ma and Pa ISPs. MCI is
considering a similar policy, as are other backbone providers. The tide
is rising against such business that prey on consumers.
But it doesn't stop there: Remember the anti-fax law from the 1980's? It
protects consumers from advertising through faxes because the cost of the
messages is incurred by the recipient. The same principle governs
unsolicited bulk email, and a movement is underway to push our elected
representatives to extend the interpretation of this law to be less
device-specific, to apply to any medium in which the recipient incurrs
unwanted costs. In short, by mid-1997 your users will likely run the
risk of being in violation of federal law.
In the meantime, they will be the least popular people on the Internet.
You can drop the artsy-craftsy posturing: Crime is not hip. True
anarchists understand that anarchy is not synonymous with terrorism, in
spite of what a few misguided books might have suggested in another age.
If your software does not include a discussion of the context in which
its use takes place, it is the ethical equivalent of a virus: a cutie-pie
hack that may have arcane technical merit but is otherwise without any
real value.
This is your contribution to the world?
- Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Software Tools for SuperCard, Director, HyperCard, OMO, and more....
Mail: Ambassador@FourthWorld.com
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