Those people who got afflicted with this Melissa macro (I won't call it a virus, viruses are cool and take skill) are at fault for using insecure communication methods, but that doesn't mean that they in any way consented to a denial of service or any other invasion of and atack upon rights. The foremost experts in virus software happen to make it.
People assume too much from this tacit agreement stuff, and shifting the topic, informed consumerism is a difficult thing to achieve. These predatory, for example, phone companies, will take your words out of context to defraud your money. Also, they will mislead you to the extent they can to try and get you to agree to services never used and further steal your money. Many predatory as opposed to competitive organizations exist, for now.
Whenever you have fees that are incorrect, request that they be waived. Always get itemized fee lists from your service providers, because if one doesn't take a very accurate examination of these things, and anyways, one will find that one is being billed for unused services and other things. These companies are defrauding you, and when they take your money and don't return it, that is theft pure and simple.
There are a lot of two-bit crooks and incompetents in this world who get along by defrauding people. They will find the future much less conducive to their thieveries.
This leads us to the topic of jurisprudence in a digital age, and the future ability for many people to be much more protected against these vultures that screw little old ladies.
I believe some things we shall soon see are jurimetrics and semi-automated class actions. In the future, as soon as someone starts defrauding anyone or a group, they will quickly be denied and their punishment will be decreed by empirical analysis, besides mitigating factors. As one consumer is defrauded, they can inform all the others. The ability for consumers and providers to educate each other over the free speech space of the Internet will prevail.
In real estate transactions, written agreements are necessary for legal validity.
An agreement that is not put forth in good faith for completion is invalid and unethical.
Randall Randall wrote:
> I've lately thought that on Tue, 06 Apr 1999, Peter C. McCluskey wrote:
> >spike66@ibm.net (Spike Jones) writes:
>
> > The first amendment only protects speech that listeners can ignore
> >if they don't consent to hearing.
>
> But everyone that opened the thing *did* consent. ;-)
>
> --
> Wolfkin.
> wolfkin@freedomspace.net | Libertarian webhost? www.freedomspace.net
> On a visible but distant shore, a new image of man;
> The shape of his own future, now in his own hands.-- Johnny Clegg.
Libertarianism, to some extent, is the nature of the Internet.
Ross F.
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson 202/387-8208 http://www.tomco.net/~raf/ "C is the speed of light."