3/21/2005

Electronic Mail

Progressive values give us guidance in big issues like war and sprawl, but they are equally useful in prosaic issues we encounter in our daily lives. Take, for example, electronic mail. Email is possibly the most useful technology to arrive in politics since the pen. Not so long ago, it was necessary to spend hours on the phone to organize any little group activity. Now it just takes a few minutes to compose an email. Before, you played telephone tag. Now, you just wait for an email reply.

But email is a double-edged sword. It's convenient to send out important messages to large numbers of people, but equally convenient to pollute their inboxes with juvenile fighting, or to send people their tenth copy of the latest gaffe from the president. Email takes Freedom of Speech to a whole new level, but makes it even more important than ever to promote the companion value of Responsibility.

We've seen a highly public drama of Freedom of Speech played out over the past few weeks in the Ward Churchill saga. Here we had a person who exercised his unquestionable Right to free speech, but did not exercise the companion Responsibility to respect other people and to try to avoid misunderstanding. We had someone who tried to gain attention and enrich himself by consciously acting in an irresponsible manner. Democrats believe that the government should not try to coerce someone to use their freedom of speech responsibly. The correct way to respond is to ignore the irresponsible person.

We face similar issues with electronic mail. People use email for all kinds of purposes, for good or ill, to communicate important information or to get attention. As a Party we can't restrain anyone's Send button; instead we have to rely on their sense of Responsibility.

But Democrats make an important distinction between individuals and organizations when it comes to the exercise of rights and responsibilities. For example, we don't advocate making it illegal for an individual to lie in a casual situation, but we do look for legal remedies when a corporation lies to us. The Douglas County Democratic Party is an organization, so we can, and must, restrain its freedom of speech in order to ensure that the Party acts in a responsible way.

In the case of electronic mail, this restriction comes in the form of an Electronic Mail Policy. We have adopted this policy as an interim measure to respect the individual's right to participate in Party activities without having to wade through unnecessary or irresponsible correspondence (also known as "spam"). We will be submitting the interim policy as a draft to the Rules Committee for eventual adoption by the Central Committee. This should drastically cut down on the quantity, and improve the quality, of electronic mail you receive from the Douglas Democrats.

For email you want to send to large numbers of people but which doesn't comply with the new policy, we draw your attention to our DCBlog Yahoo group. This is especially good for posting material forwarded from others. People who like what they read can then subscribe to the original mailing list and receive the content directly. You can post to this group simply by sending your contribution to dcblog@yahoogroups.com. People subscribe to this site, and can elect to receive material forwarded directly to them by email, or can request a daily compendium. This gives them control over their inbox.

For opinions and editorial matter, a good place to post your contributions is the Community Forum on Dougzilla.

The new policy spells out exactly what we will and won't broadcast to the membership. It doesn't restrict any individuals acting on their own behalf. However, I'd like to call attention to the final section of the policy, entitled "Other Requirements." We will enforce these common-sense requirements for mail we send out, but we also ask our membership to voluntarily comply in their own correspondence with other Party members. If you receive an email message that does not show the level of respect and responsibility described in these guidelines, it reflects badly on the sender. The correct response is to ignore it.

posted by pdt @ 3/21/2005 11:28:00 AM