SC - Re: Aoife's Complaint

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    Um. A few points. When I saw the original post, I recognized it, having
seen it before elsewhere. I just hit 'Delete' and went to the next post, and
never gave it another thought. We haven't gotten anything else from this
fellow, just a single posting in poor taste. That's a post, not spam. He
wasn't selling anything. And if he was trolling, he's been spectacularly
successful, I might add.
    If you want to bitch him out, all you have to do is right click on the
message header in your Inbox, click Properties, and then click Details. His
e-mail addy is right there, along with the path his message took to get to
the list. That's how I know he was in Boston.
    Also, if you want to make sure you never, ever, get anything from this
fellow again, click Tools on the menu bar, Message Rules, Blocked Senders
List, and put his name there. From that point on, any message he sends will
automatically go into your Deleted Items folder. So if he DID send you
several e-mail messages a day for a year, you probably wouldn't even notice
it.
    This is a micro-issue, and I don't understand why it's being flogged the
way it is. I'm much more concerned about viruses in my mail, invitations to
make $10,000 my first month, or porno come-ons than somebody's idea of a
really bad joke. And I'm going to scream if I get one more "Save Elian from
being sent to Castro's hellhole!" post.
    And BTW, how come nobody got all haired up over the 'Peerage Cookbook'
that was posted a few months back? Exactly the same subject matter, but I
didn't hear a word said . . .

    Sieggy


> Really? I find that difficult to accept. We are guaranteed the right of
> free speech (here in the US, and it is far from universal) and this
> fellow has had his say on his organization's Web pages. It does not
> entitle him to spam this list in violation of the stated groundrules,
> particularly when he isn't even a subscriber to the list himself, so
> obviously he is denying us our right to free speech by not gamely
> listening to our complaints. Horrors.
>
> As for there being no guarantees that we don't have to hear the speech
> or read the writing, suppose somebody forwarded the post to your
> mailboxes at AOL, say, several times a day for, say, a year. Would you
> not complain to AOL, and wouldn't AOL act to stop it? Or would you be a
> good sport and chalk it up to free speech? Or how about if a lot of
> people come over to your place to watch Pat Robertson on TV, with the
> sound turned way up, because Robertson is protected by the first
> amendment? Sound insane? Sound like an imposition? You bet it is.
>
> I agree that information is _never_ without value, but this information
> is available for those who want it, and those who find it offensive
> should not be forced to allow it to subvert the purpose of the internet
> service they pay for, any more than any other unsolicited junk mail.
>