[governance] IGP Alert: "Net Neutrality as Global Principle for Internet Governance"

[Norbert Bollow]

Taran Rampersad <cnd at knowprose.com> wrote:

> Norbert Bollow wrote:
> > Taran Rampersad <cnd at knowprose.com> wrote:
> >
> >   
> >>> For example, with many spam filter systems, email messages containing
> >>> Christian religious words have a much higher probability of being
> >>> falsely classified as spam.  That is a violation of net neutrality
> >>> with regard to freedom of religion.
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >> I could take that a step further and state that I find all Christian
> >> email messages that demand I surrender my heathen Buddhist soul to be
> >> spam; that their freedom of speech and religious self expression trods
> >> on my own personal freedoms just as ringing my doorbell to 'share their
> >> word' with me is a disturbance of my peace - an unwelcome intrusion on
> >> the sanctity of my privacy so that they can shove their beliefs down my
> >> throat.
> >>     
> >
> > I was thinking of situtions where the intended recipient of the
> > message has no objections to its religious content but where the
> > religious content nevertheless causes the message to be misclassified
> > as spam.
> >   
> Statistically speaking, Christianity is not the majority of the world -
> so the majority of the world may consider these to be spam.

Whether the "majority of the world" would consider a given email to
be spam should be considered totally irrelevant if the only thing
that triggers the spam filter is religious content which the actual
addressee of the email message has no objection to.

For example, I'm hosting a mailing list with a couple thousand
subscribers who have explicitly requested to receive write-up of
the sermons of a certain pastor which are emailed out every three
weeks.

Since I'm not emailing this stuff to arbitrary people, but only to
people who have explicitly requested to be subscribers of that
mailing list, these mailings clearly are not spam regardless of
what all the non-subscribers of that mailing list (clearly the
majority of the world) would think if I'd spam them (which I've never
done, and don't intend to ever do.)

However since there has been a lot of religious "Nigerian" spam and
a lot of sex-related spam, there is now a significant degree of
discrimination in the email system against totally-legitimate
communications of pastors, especially those pastors who consider it a
main goal of their ministry to try to help postitutes and drug addicts.

> > I would suggest that it is a good strategy to focus anti-spam
> > activities on trying to solve the problem that there is too much
> > unsolicited bulk email, even if other categories of rude email also
> > exist which can perhaps also be considered "spam".
> >   
> The common phrase for any unsolicited email is spam - bulk or no. 'Why
> are you spamming me?' is a phrase used commonly.
> 
> In my mind, separating the two simply reinforces a lack of cultural
> awareness. Despite the technological focus on internet governance, I
> must offer that the governance itself is about people more than
> technology. One cannot solve one problem without solving the other.
> Making the problem simpler to solve does not make the real problem go
> away. The real problem is the abuse of technology by a minority to
> affect the majority.

IMO it's equally objectionable if the majority (non-Christians) makes
choices which result in making it needlessly difficult for a minority
(Christians) to communicate with each other about topics that they
consider important.

If a way can be found for changing the overall email system so that
unsolicited bulk email will no longer occur in significant quantities
(without side-effects that significant reduce the overall usefulness
of the email system or its "net neutrality" properties), that will IMO
be from everyone's perspective at the very least be a significant
reduction of the spam problem, regardless of what definition of "spam"
they use.

I believe that it is possible to desire to first address a clearly-
defined and very significant subproblem (which has a definition that
is independent of cultural factors) without being guilty of "lack
of cultural awareness."

However, when trying to address the spam problem, by any definition of
"spam", care should be taken to avoid as much as possible side-effects
of discrimination against the ability of any company or cultural group
to use the internet in ways not involving spam.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
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