December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Pro-Crypto Fireworks
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fireworks expected at Thursday encryption hearing Washington, July 24 (Reuter) -- After sailing through two quiet subcommittee hearings, a bill to relax restrictions on computer encoding faces a much choppier ride before the full Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday. The committee will hear from some of the Clinton administration's big guns on crime and national security, including FBI Director Louis Freeh and William Crowell, deputy director of the National Security Agency. [Snip] Netscape's James Barksdale, who entranced senators at a June 12 subcommittee hearing, will return Thursday to again make the case for relaxing export restrictions. [Snip] Others expected to testify Thursday include William Reinsch, undersecretary for the Bureau of Export Administration at the Commerce Department; Tandem Computers Inc. President Roel Pieper; and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. The hearing will be broadcast live over the Internet, starting at about 9:15 a.m. EDT using Progressive Network's Real Audio software. The technique was first used at a June 26 subcommittee hearing on the encryption bill. Computer users anywhere in the world with sound capability can tune in at http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside. -----

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Keyserver at jpunix.com is retiring
by John A. Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The PGP public keyserver at jpunix.com has developed a stability problem over the past week or two that I can't seem to account for. The keyserver stops in the middle of a run and leaves the lock file so all incoming key requests get backed up until I notice it and manually fix it. Having to continually monitor the keyserver has become burdensome and is not doing anyone any good. I've always been happy to provide the keyserver as a public service to the PGP users community but, the keyserver is not getting any better no matter what I do to try and fix it. There are no errors generated and no log entries to point me to what the problem is. With this in mind, I have decided to retire the keyserver at jpunix.com effective 07/27/96 sometime in the AM Central Standard Time. If you have any applications that point to this server, I would ask that you point your application to one of the other servers or make some arrangement to use a different server. It's been an honor and a pleasure to provide this service and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. John Perry - perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com - PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMfacNFOTpEThrthvAQGl0AQAjcBWAe4beWMCZ6yyeoxkgPqjm3hyVmgb 7DeX8/MQ8tpOG+pMzalslBfWRtOaOk9mU/q2N82gEIq6/QcEvY8yUF105+87k6h3 U7mjBnbSjIAGOHBBARo2kzzmfxqVDCoo9SW+idm94HBNeRsIeFFGndII2YHivyP7 milYetDY0b8= =OkkS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[Noise] [Smut] [Off-topic] Re: A Global Village, or the future of porn on the net
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:04 AM 7/25/96 +0600, Arun Mehta wrote: >At 10:00 24/07/96 +0000, Alex F wrote: >> >>why is it that Bill(ary) signed an unconstitutional law? I >>am referring to the CDA and the telephony bill. > >... arguments that I wholeheartedly support deleted.. > >>Anyway, getting off-topic again. I'll be quiet now :) > >Let me see if I can bring this back on track. We have some interesting >developments that could converge: > >1) Legally, the Internet is more or less in the clear as far as indecency >is concerned. The moralists will rally again and put through a bill that >doesn't so blatantly violate the constitution, but for the time being >we're OK. Unless they start using prosecutions similar to what they pulled back during the Meese years with video distributors. I am waiting for them to start using RICO laws on sites carrying Usenet groups deemed "obscene". RICO has already been used in some juristictions for shutting down video stores (and maybe even bookstores). It is not over yet... The control freaks will not be happy until everything you view and see has previously been approved by some board or ministry. (Or they at least have some way of hurting you if you step out of line.) Whether that control freak behaviour is driven by religion, morality, "your own good", greed, power or lust does not matter. the results are pretty much that same. >2) Porn is very, very popular. As a consultant, I often use Netscape from >the offices of my clients, and invariably take a peek at the bookmarks. >Guess what is pointed to more than anything else. By making a hullaballoo >about porn on the net, its enemies may have shot themselves in the foot: >it will attract people rather than repel. But there is a social stigma surrounding porn. Most people who look at porn are not willing to admit it in front of friends and family. many of the more vocal opponnents to porn are the ones most attracted to it. Look at jimmy Swagart. He crusaded against it for years. Never stopped "Lonesome Cowboy Jim" (5 point if you can name that album and artist) from wanking off to it... >3) Porn on the net by and large isn't all that great, so if there is a risk, >it is that people might be bored. What you mostly have are stills of nudes >on the web and Usenet postings of indifferent quality. Depends where you go. Most of the Usenet stuff is crap, but that is true of any medium. (It is called a medium becuase it is rarely well done. (Stolen line... Forget the original author.)) There are exceptions. Usenet will give you smut that may (or is) illegal in your area. Some of this sort of stuff can be mail ordered, but there is more risk. (Like postal service stings/entrapment and the like.) There is much better quality available on the pay sites, but since you usually have to pay to view any of it, you never know what is available until you have forked out a bit of cash. (I am surprised I have not seen more sites using e-cash for this purpose... Porn drove the VCR industry for many years. I expect the same for the web and e-cash.) >4) the web is changing from static to dynamic through Java and the like. >VRML in fact adds a 3-D element. Most pay-for-porn sites are going for interactive video instead of java and/or vrml. (Yes, you can pay $$$ to duplicate the experience of a stroke booth via the net. All you lack is the resolution, the interaction, and the requisite sleeze of the experience. Dancers the size of postage stamps! Wow!) >Stir, add some spicy curry, and see if you get: > >Java classes for males and females corresponding to VRML >objects. The class methods might include kissing, hugging, >spanking, restraining... Might be interesting... This is more evident in CD-ROMs though. >A female object might be initialized with Hillary Clinton's face, Evangelista's >body... I think that was the cover of Spy magazine... >Anyone could now write a script which you could view enacted on >your screen, or interact with one another as in MUDs. Why, >someone might write a translator >that takes a story off alt.sex.whatever and produces >an appropriate script. People would only need to download the software and >appropriate objects once, then receive emscripts which could be >run in total privacy. "Be a Great porn Actor at Home!" Reenact bad plots, cheezy dialog, and bad writing in the privacy of your living room! >People should we willing to pay small amounts for use of the >classes and objects, >as well as for the scripts. Of course, it would only work in our >prudish societies if >the transactions were totally anonymous. If Digicash payment >systems were built-in, >that might be a reason for people to start adopting eCash. Well, if it is something that will cause arousal in male humans (or computer geeks), I am sure you can sell it. >Of course, this opens up a whole can of worms. For instance, >given the violence of >many pornographic stories on Usenet, it won't be long before >famous personalities >routinely get violated in cyberspace. Talk about copyright: do >you have the right >to prevent someone from doing this to you? Porn stories and/or hacked pictures of celebrities already occurs. Has since I have been on usenet... (Many years now.) One of my favorites involves the Brady Bunch... In fact there are celebrities who have hired people to track down phoney pictures and get them pulled from web sites. (I always expected something like this to show up on Star Trek:TNG. Having Beverly Crusher catching Weasly with the holodeck porn programs involving all sorts of convelutions of the bridge crew. He would probibly blame it on Riker...) >I unfortunately lack the bandwidth to find out the extent to >which porn on the net >is already moving in this direction. However, if you have >pointers, I'll go *find* >the bandwidth! Where on the net do people discuss such matters? Bandwidth is the only thing preventing the smut from getting farther than it already has. The easiest way to kill a web server is put porn on it and advertise. All of the schemes coming out for "cool gee-whiz web extensions" take more bandwidth than most people have... Just wait and see what happens when cable modems become available. Check out the alt.sex heirarchy. Something there I am sure... --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Keyserver at jpunix.com is retiring
by John Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The PGP public keyserver at jpunix.com has developed a stability problem over the past week or two that I can't seem to account for. The keyserver stops in the middle of a run and leaves the lock file so all incoming key requests get backed up until I notice it and manually fix it. Having to continually monitor the keyserver has become burdensome and is not doing anyone any good. I've always been happy to provide the keyserver as a public service to the PGP users community but, the keyserver is not getting any better no matter what I do to try and fix it. There are no errors generated and no log entries to point me to what the problem is. With this in mind, I have decided to retire the keyserver at jpunix.com effective 07/27/96 sometime in the AM Central Standard Time. If you have any applications that point to this server, I would ask that you point your application to one of the other servers or make some arrangement to use a different server. It's been an honor and a pleasure to provide this service and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. John Perry - perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com - PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMfacNFOTpEThrthvAQGl0AQAjcBWAe4beWMCZ6yyeoxkgPqjm3hyVmgb 7DeX8/MQ8tpOG+pMzalslBfWRtOaOk9mU/q2N82gEIq6/QcEvY8yUF105+87k6h3 U7mjBnbSjIAGOHBBARo2kzzmfxqVDCoo9SW+idm94HBNeRsIeFFGndII2YHivyP7 milYetDY0b8= =OkkS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Kids and Computer Privacy Was Re: No more stupid gun thread ...
by David Rosoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 03.48 AM 7/24/96 -0500, Scott Schryvers wrote: >Should kids have crypto? [weapons] Your analogy fails when I consider the simple point that crypto is not a weapon in and of itself, no matter what the misguided ITAR says. "... two plus two make five ..." >Under Itar crypto is a weapon. If a kid were to bring a disk >containing pgp to school could they be expelled for carrying a weapon? No, because crypto, *by itself* does NOT present a threat to any other kid or to any teacher or to the kid carrying the code. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMfZR5hguzHDTdpL5AQHqsgP5AcEWBP0SeGCWwgOKGgDVuzz4yJRXk218 lSepjhxa+OnK6Aw5Gxk/+ykJAZM++VPH4LKR3ztRP5X3CJMC8zJ+f4qatmqzRptU yKagSL8yF2/xN9ltwJcl6T3F4f88LJKD0vDpp4M+FeIX90zDosxPl0TYYv3niG2u v2ePUFTwWKI= =IlGz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Netscape
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Weinstein wrote: > I'm also curious why these anonymous crusaders did not act > sooner? The US version has been available for sale in retail > outlets for about a year now. Was it not worth $50 to make > your point? If you look real carefully at ftp://utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/replay /pub/incoming you'll notice that the "commercial" 2.01 for Win32 has actually been uploaded. The reason that is was not done sooner is probably that it felt more like stealing to upload software that Netscape expected you to pay for. Now that Netscape is finally giving away strong crypto versions to anybody who asks for it (and claims to be an American) it isn't really stealing in the same sense anymore. It's just ITAR we're ignoring, not Netscape's commercial interests.

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Re: Parsing John Youn (Re: OPS_nuk)
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jul 25, 1996 03:46:19, 'tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May)' wrote: >P.S. John Young does an invaluable service in forwarding items and making them >available at his site, but I find parsing his text into something >understandable a real chore. Too bad when style gets in the way of substance, >unless, of course, ones aspires to Joycehood. Tim, pity the moot transcriber a-choring (spit). It's a grind (pus) forwarding other's fishwrap (buggers), hardly able to contain one's gibbering idiocy (pee) counterreaction to the new's gratuitous fatuity (dookie). Usually, though, one's bowel-rumblings (Bic lits) pass unnosed in the c'punk parfumerie.

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Re: Digital Watermarks (long, getting off-topic)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:14 PM 7/24/96 +0200, Gary Howland wrote: >Timothy C. May wrote: > >> Pre-recorded DAT tapes were available for a while...they did not sell. I >> believe this was because DAT machine purchasers were sophisticated and new >> how to make CD-to-DAT copies, with or without SCMS. > >Don't forget that pre-recorded DAT tapes are at least an order of >magnitude more expensive to manufacture than CDs. Isn't it odd that when music is sold, CD's are MORE expensive than cassette tapes, even though you _know_ that the manufacturing cost of CD's is less? Another oddity: The price for a blank, standard-quality videocassette is about the same as that of a blank, standard-quality audio cassette tape, despite the fact that the volume of tape included in the former is probably about a factor of 10 higher. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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My Cypherpunk Patriotism
by Joey Grasty 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Y'all: I received the following fan mail today, in regards to my announcement of the WinSock Remailer. In my announcement, I noted that I have blocked the Church of Scientology discussion groups alt.religion.scientology and alt.clearing.technology. The author shall remain anonymous: > Please make your blocking configurable in a text file that > the remailer reads at startup time. Other people who install > your remailer may not feel the need to surrender to > the Church of Scientology's legal terrorism the way you have. Anyone who has checked my webpage (http://www.c2.net/~winsock/) knows that the blocking lists are entirely up to the user. Let me state clearly that I'm just not interested in the Church of Scientology, its supporters or detractors. My interest is in writing remailers and seeing that the remailers are widely distributed. If I involve myself in this COS mess, then I'm distracting myself from my mission, which is writing remailers. Fighting "wars" is for the young and strong. Think of me as a weapons designer. I build the weapons, someone else fights the wars. Freedom needs weapons designers and warriors. That is my version of "Cypherpunk Patriotism". I offered my detractor a copy of the remailer so that he can run his own remailer and fight his war with COS. Let's see if he puts up or shuts up. My guess is the latter. Regards, -- Joey Grasty jgrasty(a)gate.net [home -- encryption, privacy, RKBA and other hopeless causes] jgrasty(a)pts.mot.com [work -- designing pagers] "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann PGP = A7 CC 31 E4 7E A3 36 13 93 F4 C9 06 89 51 F5 A7

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FW: Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part II
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: tcmay(a)got.net >...certainly a Schelling point or evolutionary game >theory interpretation of what we call "rights" is superior to an appeal-to-God or "natural rights" interpretation. ........................................................................ ................. So there is the "game theory" interpretation of "rights" as would be understood by an individual within a group of 2 or more, or a "society" of many individuals, and then there is the interpretation of how anyone might interpret the concept even if they were not a member of any society but lived totally alone in the wilderness? I don't know why these would be categorized as being part of a "game" - evolutionary or otherwise. A game is something that is evaluated somewhat outside the context of our regular life - a diversion, an accessory, even if it also can be taken seriously or if it can become a career for some people. It is not given the same significance as other practical pursuits like medicine or engineering, which are intended to have definite, practical, beneficial results. Any person normally posseses some ability to determine the propriety to themselves of certain things in existence: they have some measure of ability to make judgements over what is "right" or "wrong" for humankind similar to themselves. Most people develop some sensitivity to the difference between that which is destructive to the goals & values of living things versus that which is supportive of them; most everyone is expected to improve the ability to think about these things as they grow up, even if they don't hold formal arguments with anyone else about it. But people's minds work on overtime and just because they can make judgements, they therefore do make judgements, and furthermore they intend that everyone else should accept these same conclusions - they go into "global mode", expecting that their perspective will be incontestably valid over all. But I wouldn't think that they imagine themselves to be playing a game. I think they're quite serious about it, and "rightly" so, as the consequences of these decisions have major effects upon the quality of their life and happiness. I think that to think of these concepts in terms of game theory is to miss the place of significance which these decisions have in the life of conscious, self-determining beings like ourselves; that it doesn't do justice to the need to achieve correspondence with the facts of life & molecular physics. Or, what's the Prize for these Olympics (and who cares)? .. Blanc ~ Blanc

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