jj (12/20/82)
As the recent recipient of ~20 kBytes of deliberately harassing mail from various sites over the last 3 days (while I was on vacation), I have the following legal question: Given that the mail was harassing, and that it was certainly trans- mitted over phone lines, albeit as data, rather than voice, can I contact the local authorities and complain about telephone harassment? While I am not sure of the exact statement of the laws, it very well could cover the use of a phone for data transmission, as it may (or may not) refer to messages, information, or whatever, in the law. Most laws state "in any way, shape, or form". If such is the case, then more than 20 people have committed federal offenses. I further note that one individual, John Gilmore, from Sun Microsystems, recently espoused the act of sending me (personally) messages that were intended specifically to harass. It occurs to me that such actions could constitute enticement to commit a federal offense. While I currently intend to seek no legal action against anyone, I do believe that legal research into the possibility would be advisable to (among other things) prevent an outbreak of criminal and civil cases which would eliminate the net. I would also appreciate it if Mr. Gilmore would send me contact information so that I can discover what long articles that he is objecting to, as rabbit!jj has posted either 3 or 4 (excepting this) articles to the net since the first week in November, and these articles have been either discussions of newsgroup expiration, cave rescue information, or a response to a rumour posted about rabbit!jj in a humorous vein. I must point out to those individuals who have taken time to send responses (of a mostly humorous nature) about the "rabbit!jj" project, that I do NOT regard those messages as harassment. I am actually rather amused by the idea, although I am discouraged that the idea of becoming an AI project has now become popular. I do object to the transmission of long (900 byte) form letters that are identical except for the header information, from 10 or 20 individuals, or to mail that wishes to state insult, accuse me of <fill in the blank>, or any similar intent. I have recently received mail from an individual (in another state, another site, another organization, etc.) with an enclosed message, warning me of "defamatory" material that had been mailed him about me from an obviously phony sitename and sender. I would appreciate being IMMEDIATELY notified of any such messages that readers of this article may received/have received. James David Johnston Bell Labs- Acoustics Research 2C534 - 600 Mountain Avenue Murray Hill, NJ, 07974
bstempleton (12/21/82)
I don't think electronic mail can be considered a form of harrassment the same way the phone is. Especially considering that in the future electronic mail addresses should be verifiable. I heavily object to telephone soliciting because it can not be ignored without ignoring the chance that somebody important is calling. If you, like most people, answer the telephone almost always, then it forces you to stop what you are doing. Not so with mail, and even more not so with electronic mail. You read that only when you desire to. I don't even have objection to electronic junk mail, for you can easily require that all direct mailings be clearly marked with a "Direct Mail" flag. This way you can tell your mailer to ignore all the stuff, and companies will soon realize that it's not worth the money. I don't think you can be considered getting telephone harrassment if you are not answering the phone and in fact no human is.
markb (01/24/83)
In light of this, is posting a dirty joke to net.jokes making a obscene phone call? If it is, I doubt that rotating it makes any difference as it is common knowledge on the net how to read rotated jokes. If it does make a difference, could we prosecute those who do not rotate their dirty jokes? Mark Biggar ...!decvax!trw-unix!sdcvax!markb