Etiquette for E-mail lists: the Freedom of Speech issue

Introduction/Disclaimer

Introduction:

• Conflicting rights: there are few absolute rights; most rights, if applied too broadly, impinge on other rights.
  Well-known statements of principle:
  • The right of free speech does not protect yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
  • One person's rights end where the next person's nose begins.
  The right of free speech does not entail the right to compel people to listen (to compel an audience). The typical freedom-of-speech case revolves around establishing an appropriate balancing point between someone's desire to present their position and the desire of others to not be forced to listen.
• Terminology: Protected/unprotected speech is a common way of referring to situations that are/aren't covered (protected) by the right of free speech.
• Use of analogies: Issues of freedom on speech are typically argued by using analogies to situations that have already be decided and widely accepted. Typically multiple analogies are used to bracket the new situation between ones that have been decided.
  I will present a series of analogies to iteratively narrow in on where I see our e-mail list fitting in.

Basic Differentiation

• "Man on soap box in public park": This is the basic case of protected speech.
  • Minimal imposition on people passing by: they can choose to not listen, or even give him a wide berth.
  • However, he cannot pursue them:
    This distinction can be seen in decisions that simple panhandling is protected speech, but activities commonly labeled "aggressive panhandling" are not.
  • Consider, does his right to speak extend to his climbing onto a table being used for a family picnic in that same park, or does it extend to usurping home plate during a softball game as his platform.
• Pornography: part of the definition of pornography is that it is material that the general community finds offensive. Hence, the purveyors of porn must operate under the default assumption that people do not want to see/hear it, and it can be displayed only where it will be seen by people who have made an explicit decision to see it. Example:
  • Adult Bookshop, but not general bookshop.
  • Display racks inside Adult Bookstore, but not where it would be seen (inadvertently) by a passerby outside (for example, the rack cannot be placed in a window facing a public street).

Junk FAX

• Background: Junk FAX is a variant of junk mail: someone sends unsolicited materials (typically advertisements) to a FAX machine. Minor problem if you receive an occasional unsolicited item, but some FAX machines were receiving so much junk FAX that the recipients had problems sending and receiving legitimate messages.
• Unprotected speech: judged to impose too much burden on owner of FAX machine
  • Consumption of resources: paper, but especially connect time
  • The analogue of walking away from "the man on a soapbox" was also too burdensome:
    • The typical FAX machine runs in unattended or semi-attended mode: someone picks up (and distributes) messages after they have arrived, often after a significant delay.
    • To screen out unwanted FAXes, the FAX's owner would have to have a full-time operator who would read FAXes as they arrived in order to decide whether to receive them in full or cut them off (hang up the connection).
    • Explicitly refusing a FAX would be ineffective. The sending FAX machine would not be able to tell that you chose not to receive its transmission: it would see your breaking the connection as a normal transmission error and would automatically resend the FAX (after a preprogrammed interval).
      Aside: Automatic resending of unwanted materials is akin to "aggressive panhandling."

Telemarketers

• stop what you are doing,
• go to the phone, and
• listen to enough of the spiel to know that you don't want to hear more

Meetings: Agendas and Procedures

• People who come to the meeting may well not be interested in all items on the agenda, but the agenda allows them to make a prior, informed decision on whether or not to attend. In choosing to attend, they agree to sit through those items on the agenda that are not of interest to them.
  However, if people are allowed to speak on any item they chose, then they would have a captive audience: people who had not bargained to listen to those topics, but who cannot leave the meeting without sacrificing the opportunity to participate in the items they are interested in.
• Agendas and procedural rules allow the group to decide on what are suitable topics, formats for discussions, time limits on topics and speakers, and other limits on speakers (for example, whether they may speak more than once).
  If an item is not on the agenda, the assumption should be that the audience does not consent to listen to it (analogous to the situation for pornography).
• Public bodies often have an agenda slot for members of the public to speak on any item not on the agenda. Typically there is a time limit on each speaker and a total time for all speakers.
  On the agenda of Palo Alto City Council, this is called Oral Communications.

E-mail Lists (circa 2002, needs updating)

• Basic problem with using analogies for e-mail lists: people use e-mail in very different ways and in very different settings. An analogy that is a good match for one person's situation may be totally irrelevant to another's.
• Some e-mail lists can be viewed as virtual meetings:
  • Selected topic matter of the list is analogous to a meeting agenda.
  • Rules of Etiquette (explicit or implicit) is analogous to procedural rules.
  • List membership is analogous to meeting attendance:
    • Joining and leaving a list often involves non-trivial effort on part of participant.
    • Leaving a list in order to avoid others' off-topic (non-agenda) items involves sacrifice: one may lose best/only means of participating in the on-topic (agenda) items.
• Analogy to junk FAX
  • The occasional off-topic message is minor irritant, but many such messages can be a major imposition. Small delays inherent in dealing with each message add up.
  • Comparison to tying up a phone: depends on your network connection
    • Dial-up
    • Broadband (DSL, cable, ...): negligible impact for simple messages
  • Disk space and CPU usage: comparable in some situations to expending recipient's supply of FAX paper.
  • Invisible rejects: comparable
    • If you delete a message without reading it, the sender gets no indication.
    • It is too much of an imposition for you to have to send note to sender of message saying that you are not interested in receiving subsequent messages on that or related topics.
    • The technology behind mailing lists does not readily support a sender being sensitive to what individual members of that list have said that they were not interested in receiving: A message goes to everyone of the list, or it goes to no one.
• Analogy to telemarketing
  • Significant number of people use e-mail in way analogous to telephone.
  • Unwanted e-mail interrupts other activities.

Civility

Parting advice - Editorial

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