Those of us with some perspective may wonder, "Gee, haven't these people heard of the delete key on their computer?" It sure is ironic that many of the people who signed the site are computer professionals, clearly capable of deleting or filtering any unwanted message from their mailbox. You'd think that these folks would understand that the Internet is supposed to be a free and unrestricted global communications medium.
Just what are they missing?
First of all, you have to understand the mind of someone who is a religious zealot. I'm not just talking about your average rabid christian, or jihadic islamic, there's a more abstract notion of the human being who has a good dose of righteousness and a cause to go with it.
Ever try to ask an EMACS user why they hate VI? How about asking a pro-choice person to explain themselves to a pro-lifer? Talked to a feminist about men's rights? If you have you probably spent the next hour wishing you hadn't said a word, but this annoying experience can actually teach you something. Remember that look of spiritual joy they had on their face as they were explaining their cause to you? (This is not the same as the utterly serious look that accompanied their explanation of the evil, anti-cause, stuff.) When anyone enjoys something that much, you can damn well believe that they aren't going to stop what they are doing anytime soon.
Yes, folks. The religious zealot gets a large jolt of severe righteous pleasure each and every time they explain their cause to the unenlightened. This is not unlike the rat who dies of exhaustion pressing a button that connects to the pleasure center of it's brain. In this case, the rat and the zealot have much in common, neither will stop for any reason...not even death.
This should help to explain why groups of people seem to galvanize over a particularly religious topic. Imagine two over-eager keepers of the faith who are on opposing sides of this topic. Now you have two rats pushing buttons. Do you think these people will stop of their own accord? No! Until forcibly pried from each other, they will continue to argue while ignoring essentials like eating, hygene, and eventually sleep.
Quite honestly, I feel sorry for people who are like this, almost as sorry as I feel for someone addicted to crack cocaine or heroin. I feel addictive drugs are slightly worse because we haven't yet seen the effects of withdrawal on a population of religious zealots. The closest I've ever seen to possible zealotry withdrawal symptoms appeared with my advocacy of the notion that we should not spend so much effort fighting unwanted mail since people are able to control their own reading themselves.
It was almost as if I became the evil thing they spoke of.
So. Now it's time for my jolt of righteous pleasure. The Anti-Spammers claim many things in the estrus of rationalizing their cause to believers. Here's a few of their myths explained with classic Freedom-Knight zealotry.
The problem with this argument rests in the implications to a free communications medium. Arguing that a specific instance of communication is expensive and therefore should be abolished sets a dangerous precedent for restriction of other, more politically volatile, communications.
In point of fact, the Net needs to be structured so that spam does not cost appreciably more money than regular use. That way, free communication is incentivized.
But everyone isn't going to spam. And even if they did, don't you think a reliable network should be able to handle anything you throw at it? What if a million people all decide to send email at once?
As we saw previously, the Net also needs to be configured to handle random traffic peaks of huge proportions. For example, if a million people suddenly decide to send email at once, can the net handle it? I claim that the spammers help us to test the net with these traffic peaks. I should think that more ISPs would welcome this services.
In America, at least, the law states "innocent until proven guilty". Many on usenet would cry "slander" or "libel" if called a crook with no conclusive evidence of without proper due process. Why is this any different?