Bernie Cosell wrote:
> What's "unfair" -- if you misbehave and for whatever reason piss
> off/irritate enough of the other listmembers, how is dropping you off
> the list acting arbitrarily?
If the irritation is being relayed through the list, then by all
means, it's quite fair to drop someone. But how is it fair to drop
someone off of a list for their activities off of that list?
Granted, the reply the autoresponder sent was in response to list
traffic; But since the auto-response didn't go through the list server, it
doesn't involve the list. Therefore the list owner has no business
getting involved; If people have complaints, they should go to the ISP the
auto-responder is running on, not the list-owner.
When you sign up for something online, how much authority are you
granting the person who runs that service? From the majority of the
opinions on this issue, the answer seems to be "total authority over
everything I send or say".
But turn the problem around: If you sign up for a mailing list, or
sign up with an ISP, or subscribe to a funny-picture-of-the-day
service...how much authority do the owners of those services have over
your activities that do not travel through those services? If I sign up
with, say, Earthlink, but also buy DSL connectivity from Qwest, does
Earthlink have any right to tell me what I can send through Qwest, that
does not travel across Earthlink's portion of the internet? How about if
I'm discussing something that was on an Earthlink chatroom with someone
who was also in that chatroom, but not using Earthlink to do it?
If I use my AT&T local phone line to dial in to Earthlink, and do
something that isn't against the TOS at Earthlink (that does not involve
Qwest's network at all) but IS against Qwest's TOS, does Qwest have any
right to terminate my broadband account for what I did on Earthlink?
The answer is no. And the same thing applies to a list-owner,
when someone does something they dislike off-list. The list-owner has
authority over the list, and authority over the subscribers for their
activities on that list...but that authority ends very sharply where the
list ends.
If you choose to exercise authority you do not have anyway, that
is arbitrary and unfair.
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