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From: thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman)
Newsgroups: alt.privacy,comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Public Info (Was: Telephone Caller ID's)
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.171000.492@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 17:10:00 GMT
References: <13801@asylum.SF.CA.US> <1991Mar29.154847.16915@engin.umich.edu> <1991Mar31.143128.785@darwin.ntu.edu.au>
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Reply-To: thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman)
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Lines: 48

The post by Hans Lachman pointed out everything I would have wanted
to except for the following:

In article <1991Mar31.143128.785@darwin.ntu.edu.au>, mcnab_pd@darwin.ntu.edu.au writes:

> The problem with any argument in favour of copyrighting "Telelphone ID" is
> that, for the most part, all the information in it is in the public domain.
> Your name, address and phone number are in the telephone directory.

[...]

There is no reason even this stuff should be "public domain" information.
The only way it managed to be treated as such is because phone service 
isn't the result of a free market.  A symptom of this is that you have to 
pay extra to *not* have your name listed.  How many people would have put 
up with this had they had the choice?

The same argument can be made about the 'public' nature of my mortgage
information.  When we bought a house, the information was made public 
record.  I can almost understand the fact that we own the land and the 
house being public, but I don't see why the price we paid needs to be 
public (except for taxes (and that's a worm of a different color)), and 
I see no reason at all that the mortgage information needs to be public.  
(This information is used to 'estimate' our income.)  Our junk mail and 
junk phone was next to non-existent before we bought the house.  Needless 
to say, the volume of both has become obscene.

As for Telephone ID, what I want is an answering machine that I could 
enter a list of 'approved' callers.  Callers on the approved list would 
ring my phone.  Everything else (including non-self-identifying calls) 
would be aimed at the answering machine.  I'd pay big money for something 
like this.

thant

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HARRY:  I've had a team working on this over and over the past few weeks
and what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts.
One...  people are not wearing enough hats.  Two...  matter is energy; in
the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally
perceive.  Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's
soul.  However, this soul does not exist 'ab initio,' as orthodox
Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of
guided self-observation.  However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's
unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
MAX:  What was that about hats again?
                                       Monty Python, 'The Meaning of Life'
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