Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!usc!jarthur!uunet!sco!seanf
From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Lotus Marketplace
Keywords: CD-Rom consumer database,privacy
Message-ID: <8840@scolex.sco.COM>
Date: 19 Nov 90 09:16:48 GMT
References: <1990Nov16.205011.10348@uncecs.edu> <1990Nov17.074534.8751@looking.on.ca> <48514@cornell.UUCP>
Sender: news@sco.COM
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 30


In article <48514@cornell.UUCP> wayner@hermod.cs.cornell.edu (Peter Wayner) writes:
>This is an _excellent_ point! One day, everyone is getting all excited
>because BellSomething didn't want Craig Neidorf keeping a document
>filled with information on their computers.  The next day, we're
>getting all upset about Lotus selling information about our likes and
>dislikes to the world. There is a _fundamental_ problem here with our
>knee-jerk sympathies. 

You don't see a difference between a document describing the implementation
of a phone system, and something with 80 million names, addresses, income
levels, race, gender, and ages on it?

Yep.  There *is* a fundamental problem with your knee-jerk sympathies.

A list of just names and addresses is bad enough, but tolerable (after all,
you can get more-or-less the same thing from a few hundred or thousand phone
books), but adding in the ages, income levels, genders, and races really
frightens me.  What if someone decides to go looking for old, rich widows,
and break into houses found thereby?  (Yeah, it's stretching a point,
but...)

Then, of course, it's from Lotus, so I have a prejudice 8-).

-- 
-----------------+
Sean Eric Fagan  | "*Never* knock on Death's door:  ring the bell and 
seanf@sco.COM    |   run away!  Death hates that!"
uunet!sco!seanf  |     -- Dr. Mike Stratford (Matt Frewer, "Doctor, Doctor")
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.