My document entitled When Spamming Gets Personal mentions an unprovoked attack on Nutters.org which happened back in March this year (2003). As it turns out, this was merely the prelude to a war, in which the spammers in question sent me extortionate demands via email, insisting that I change the content of Nutters.org in certain ways, or suffer the consequences. I haven't documented this little war fully on Nutters.org at this time, and I may never do so, since I no longer find it all that interesting. At the time, however, it was very gruelling to deal with, and I had to completely alter my Internet hosting arrangements to defend against future such attacks.

At the time I received their extortionate demands, I had to consider the course of action I would take. I'd never had to think about responding to blackmail before, except maybe in a theoretical sense. It was pretty clear that my Internet setup, being a smallish box on a smallish ADSL link situated at my home, was easy prey. It doesn't take too much knowledge to figure that one out. Withstanding a serious onslaught was out of the question.

So, under the circumstances, ought I stick to my guns and face the consequences squarely, or wuss out and keep my Internet connection? Ought I be pragmatic, and back off at least until I have a better chance to fight, or take the attitude that if they want my right to free expression, they're going to have to take it off me by force (knowing full well that they can)?

It's popular in cartoons to depict persons facing a moral dilemma as having miniature angel and demon versions of themselves hovering over opposite shoulders and giving "good" and "evil" advice on the subject, respectively. I'm a little stranger than that. If I were to depict my own dilemma, I would have an avatar called "pragma", who looks like a roughly-cut miniature statue of myself, floating on one side, and on the other, an avatar called "princip", who is a non-corporeal mini-me, floating in misty wisps, and radiant with inner light. They argue like so.

Princip: "We must not capitulate to the demands of these extortionists!"

Pragma: "I tend to agree. We don't want to encourage that kind of behaviour."

Princip: "Our right to free speech is an intrinsic good. We must not surrender it."

Pragma: "Yeah, but a right to free speech isn't of much practical value when your platform has been denied. Maybe we should try to find a compromise."

Princip: "I will not enter into negotiation with terrorists. I do not consider them rational actors. I would just as soon try to have a reasonable discussion with a rabid Alsatian."

Pragma: "Yeah, well, these guys don't strike me as being on a quest for truth and fairness, so trying to be reasonable with them is probably a waste of time. That wasn't what I meant by a compromise."

Princip: "You want me to compromise on principles?"

Pragma: "Look, a right to free speech isn't of any practical value if you've got no platform on which to use it. I'm suggesting that we modify our speech to the minimum extent which will cause them to withdraw their threat, whilst expressing our damnation of their coercion in the strongest possible terms."

Princip: "We most certainly shall exercise our right of free speech to damn these actions! But I suspect that any sufficiently spirited statement would be objectionable to these censors."

Pragma: "I hate to say it, but you're probably right. We'd just be encouraging them to micromanage the site content. Giving them a mandate to govern us."

Princip: "Need I say more?"

Pragma: "We could take the whole site down and replace it with a black protest page detailing the outrage."

Princip: "Thus demonstrating the effect their actions would have had, more or less, without causing us the inconvenience of an actual attack?"

Pragma: "Exactly. It might encourage feedback. Get people asking about it. We couldn't do that if the site were completely down."

Princip: "I'd still feel like I wasn't sufficiently performing my duty to resist despotism."

Pragma: "But isn't the only alternative to face an attack which you have little or no chance to survive?"

Princip: "I would not be abandoning my duty in any way if I were to face such an attack, but I would be compromising my duty out of cowardly self-interest in your scenario."

Pragma: "Do you really want to be a martyr?"

Princip: "I want to do my duty. If the consequences are martyrdom, then a martyr I shall be."

Pragma: "And what of the consequent inconvenience to the others that use the system?"

Princip: "I refuse to compromise my rights for the sake of convenience; even for the sake of someone else's convenience. We will do our best to minimise the inconvenience to others."

Pragma: "I'm starting to agree with you. If we want people to be sympathetic to our cause, then an outrageous attack against a defenceless target is likely to attract greater condemnation for the attacker and sympathy for the victim. If we were to opt for the 'capitulate under protest' approach, we'd just be a whiner who won't stand up for himself."

Princip: "My goal is not to gain sympathy."

Pragma: "I know. I was just observing that your approach has the side-effect that it is likely to gain the most sympathy. Assuming anyone notices or cares at all, that is. It's not like too many people would notice our departure."

Princip: "Better to vanish in obscurity than to live in oppression."

Pragma: "I don't know about that, but I will agree for now that our best course of action is to defy the extortionists and face whatever attacks may come."

Princip: "Excellent."

Princip usually wins those arguments by sheer obstinacy.