December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "German service cuts Net access" (to Santa Cruz)
by James M. Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dmitri, On 01 28 96 you say: Heck, any message on the Internet is inherently porno- graphic because it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's. And we all know that to Sen Exon a 1 looks like a penis and a 0 looks like a vagina! :-) On C-Span, did I hear Senator Kennedy suggest the Senate Ethics Committee delve into Senator Exon for unlawful carnal knowledge of nuclear arithmetic? Cordially, Jim

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None Unix swapfile security issues...
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm working on a unix application where I want to store a key in memory and don't want it to get written out to a swap file. If the key is in any of the application's memory pages, it could be swapped out at any time, and potentially left in the swap file when the computer is turned off. But, what if the program creates a pipe() and writes the key into it, then reads the key out when necessary? A pipe has a 4K buffer, but that buffer is in the kernel's memory, not in the application's pages. Could a kernel buffer get written out to a swapfile?

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Germans, Nazis, Jews, and My Beliefs
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all of the recent developments, including the comments against censorship and in favor of measures to route around censorship, and the charges of pro-Nazi sentiment, let me state some of my beliefs: * I strongly believe, to the point of certainty, that the events described variously as "the Holocaust" and "the gassing of Jews" occurred. I first encountered photos in "Life" magazine, circa 1966, and nothing I have seen since then has even slightly shaken my belief that Hitler and his government oversaw the extermination in the most barbaric manner of several millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, cripples, etc. * However, I am very fond of German culture in general. Though my ancestry is essentially Scandinavian (Denmark, Norway) and Anglo-Saxon (Scotland, England), I have felt more affinity for things Germanic than for things French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Perhaps it was my interest in science, where Einstein, Heisenberg, Schodinger, etc., reigned supreme (though Darwin and Newton were no slouches!), but I felt an affinity for Germany that I did not feel for, say, France (though I lived for a year in the south of France, near Nice, as a child). * By "German culture" I mean: Einstein, the Rhine, beer, Beethoven, Mozart, castles, the Alps, Salzburg, Goethe, Heidelberg, and of course, the language (which is a root language of English, naturlich, and part of the "Indo-Germanisches," or "Indo-European" family of languages...proto-IE goes back a lot further than either Greek or Latin, which are just variants of PIE). * Nothing about the Third Reich appeals to me, excpept that they had some pretty good scientists. (And I believe that Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and others dragged their feet on alerting Hitler and his advisors to the real prospects for atomic bombs...in a way that Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, and dozens of others in the U.S. at that time did not.) As one opposed to the excesses of government power, I view the excesses of the Third Reich as an object lesson about the dangers of totalitarianism. * I believe that much of "Jewish culture" is, for historical reasons, closely related to German culture. It is understandable that so many Jews hate Germans and German culture, but also sad. (I don't mean the newer Israeli/Hebrew culture, but the Yiddish/German culture, which was so shaken by the Holocaust that, sadly in my opinion, it cannot acknowledte its essential Germanness.) * As far as racial or ethnic differences go, I believe the so-called races are essentially indistinguishable, except for superficial differences in appearance, stature, pigmentation, etc. (And a comparison between Watusis and pygmies will reveal that "Negroids" are as varied in stature--and basketball skill--as any differences between Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.) That all the races and sub-races, from Australian Aboriginal to European to Asian to American Indian can interbreed with identical fertility rates suggests no genomic differences. In fact, it strongly suggest that evolution as we normally think of it essentially stopped some tens of thousands of years ago, which makes a lot of sense. And there you have it. Let no one call me a Nazi. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Telecom Bill may makes abortion talke illegal on the net...
by wlkngowl＠unix.asb.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thomas Grant Edwards <tedwards(a)Glue.umd.edu> wrote: >Sec. 507 of the Telecom Bill Ammends Section 1462 of title 18 of the U.S. >Code (Chapter 71), in ways which may make sending the following over the >Internet illegal: [..] > o any information telling about how to obtain or make abortions and > drugs, or obtaining or making anything that is for indecent or immoral ^^^^^ > use So the PharmWeb and any discussion of pharamacology would be illegal? Or does that soley apply to abortion drugs? Immoral is a pretty vague word legally... [..] > (a) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, >motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of >indecent character; or So much for good foreign films... > (b) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy phonograph recording, >electrical transcription, or other article or thing capable of producing >sound; or Whoopie cuishins would be illegal. [..]

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Re: Tim's paranoid rant about Declan appearing on "Europe's Most Wanted"
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: > > Rich, by now I suspect you've seen this joke, but what the hell: > > > > Q: What's a left-wing firing squad? > > > > A: Everyone stands in a circle and shoots at each other At 06:11 PM 2/1/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote: > I guess this is supposed to be something clever about how the vanguard is > supposed to discard their personal interests for the common good. Actually it refers to the famous factionalism of the left: Similar to the parody in Monty Python's "Life of Brian" --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: RC2 Source Code - Legal Warning from RSADSI
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Once lost, trade secret can never be regained. The person(s) responsible can be sued so they never work again :), but it's unclear if RSA can stop anyone using unpublished trade-secret source. At any rate, I'll stop my comparison of the distributed RC2 and the licensed RC2 since RSA's done it for us. :) /r$

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Domain registration
by David Mazieres 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, several people have told me it is possible to get response times of 8 hours on domain registration requests. The last MODIFY request I sent in was in mid January. They sent back an autoreply telling me they were still working on modify requests from the third week in december, and then didn't change my domain until last week. (The inaddr.arpa modify request was considerably faster, however.) Maybe they just don't like me, or maybe they have very very recently automated the process. At any rate, I stand corrected. David

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Police PR Mendacity
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Financial Times, 2 Feb 1996 Governments around the world are taking action to police computer networks By Our Foreign Staff The US Congress last night passed legislation that imposes stiff penalties for the distribution of "indecent" material on the Internet, a global web of computer networks that can be reached by an estimated 30m computer users. The action echoes moves by other leading industrial countries to bring the Internet under some form of control. It coincides with a call by French officials for an international law on communications to deal with regulation of electronic publishing on the Net. In Japan, meanwhile, Tokyo police have made what are believed to be the first arrests in a crackdown on the distribution of pornography via computer networks. The rapid growth of the Internet has created widespread concerns about its use to distribute pornography, racial hate messages and other offensive materials. However the vast bulk of material published on the global computer network is commercial or technical in nature. The measures passed in the US Congress, which were attached to a broad Telecommunications Bill, for the first time place legal limits on the types of materials that can be distributed via computer networks. Government intervention is strongly opposed by Internet pioneers, and by many within the computer industry, who believe that rapid growth of the Internet and electronic commerce will be stunted by regulation. Moreover, legal experts say that the regulation of cyberspace raises complex issues about jurisdiction because the Internet carries information across national borders. In France, the issue has been brought to a head by the recent publication, on the Internet, of "Le Grand Secret" (The Big Secret), a book about Francois Mitterrand's battle with cancer written by Dr Claude Gubler, the late president's personal physician, which has been banned by the French courts. Mr Francois Fillon, post and telecoms minister, said in the French Senate yesterday that he was to propose to a March meeting of EU culture and telecoms ministers an international conference to debate a law. He said the government was creating a working group with representatives from the ministries of justice, culture and telecoms, and stressed that his concerns included the problem of dealing with regulation outside national boundaries and the difficulty of pursuing those who abused the system. He also suggested the possibility of introducing ethical codes for Internet operators along the lines of those already in place for the country's Minitel telephone- based information system. In Japan, where use of the Internet is growing rapidly, the legality of publishing pornography on computer networks is about to be tested in the courts following the first arrests for allegedly criminal use of the Internet. Tokyo police announced that they had arrested a 28-year-old businessman, Mr Hiroshi Kamekura, on suspicion of distributing pornographic pictures. He is alleged to have produced the images at home and distributed them on his home page since last month, said police. According to Mr Kamekura, the service was popular and he was asked by other Internet users to produce more provocative pictures. Police also arrested a high school student, accused of distributing pornographic pictures over the Internet since last September. The arrests may raise eyebrows in a country where graphic, frequently sadistic pornography, moderated only by a ban on depictions of pubic hair, is openly sold on book stalls everywhere. A German court has already acted to prevent users in that country from accessing sexually explicit Internet discussion groups. The court forced Compuserve, a US-based online information service, to block access to about 200 of the thousands of "Usenet" groups to be found on the Internet. -----

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No Subject
by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) charges a licence fee of $50,000 per _annum_ for BBS operators, and nearly twice as much for e-mail providers. It is preparing to finalise a policy for Internet service providers; as it doesn't understand the distintion between Internet _networks_ (MCI, Sprintnet etc) and "retail" providers (the geek in the garage), it is planning to charge well over $100,000 in annual licence fees. This is totally against the opinions of Telecom Secretary R K Takkar, as expressed to my newsletter, The Indian Techonomist, some months ago. I spoke to Mr Takkar for some time, providing him the "education" that he asked for in my newsletter and that large datacom companies here have been curiously averse to give him. He appreciated my point of view, and invited me to send a proposal for an alternative datacom policy, which I have done (and which is summarised below). I hope to meet him next week to follow this up. As a major part of my call for removing restraints is based on the Internet's treatment by other world governments, I would like letters of support to show this. My proposal may appear tame, but it isn't really. It will allow small ISPs to pay as little as $150 a year in licence fees; reduce the (high) likelihood of cartels between large companies; and entrench electronic free-speech at (some) parity with other media. (Note that the DoT has said that it is "not considering" blocking access to parts of the Net for reasons of morals or security. This despite the local media's loudly proclaimed discovery that the Net is 97.34% paedophile, or whatever.) Highlights 1. Definitions - The category for E-mail providers becomes redundant, leaving international gateway, national network, and "retail" service providers - Content providers have constitutional protection as electronic publishers - BBSes do not require licensing, being content providers 2. Goals - Licence fees not for revenue generation, but to ensure responsibility (unavoidable. Mr Takkar's words) - Licence fees based on telecom infrastructure costs, not revenues (at the moment, a licence is almost like income tax) - Regulation required for free and fair competition (see below) - TRAI should also handle datacom regulation, and datacom consumer complaints (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is likely to be very independent of the government, headed by a former Supreme Court judge) 3. Regulation - Equal access to gateway, network and service providers (to prevent denial of service and cartels, very likely here without explicit rules preventing them) - Rationalisation of DoT leased line tariff structure (now, a network costs more than the sum of its parts! too complicated to explain briefly) 4. Licensing - Uniform fee structure for gateway, network and service providers (say 2.5% of leased line costs, which are known as they are provided by the DoT) - Barriers to entry greatly reduced (minimal ISP pays $150 p.a) - However, total licence fee revenue for DoT not significantly reduced (important for success of this proposal; large nationwide network may still pay $100,000+ thanks to its huge leased line requirements) The full text of the proposal will be made publicly available on the Net sometime next week. Those who would like to see it, and a template for a letter of support, should send me mail at dcom-appeal(a)dxm.org. I would like letters from non-commercial organisations, lobby groups, policy bodies, and so on, but NOT datacom companies (I wouldn't mind _personal_ letters of support from them, but they wouldn't do for the DoT). I would particularly like to see something from Hong Kong, which I have used as a good example of how to do things in Asia. Thanks, Rishab ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry http://dxm.org/techonomist/ rishab(a)dxm.org Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335; H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Germany, China, but not India?
by rishab＠dxm.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry if this post got screwed up the first time. In the context of recent events in Germany and China, it is interesting to note that, despite horrid rumours about high license fees for ISPs, the Indian government is "not considering" blocking portions of the Net for security or moral reasons. The Telecom Secretary appears relatively progressive, and has invited me to send an alternative proposal for datacom policy. I would like letters of support: read on. -Rishab India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) charges a licence fee of $50,000 per _annum_ for BBS operators, and nearly twice as much for e-mail providers. It is preparing to finalise a policy for Internet service providers; as it doesn't understand the distintion between Internet _networks_ (MCI, Sprintnet etc) and "retail" providers (the geek in the garage), it is planning to charge well over $100,000 in annual licence fees. This is totally against the opinions of Telecom Secretary R K Takkar, as expressed to my newsletter, The Indian Techonomist, some months ago. I spoke to Mr Takkar for some time, providing him the "education" that he asked for in my newsletter and that large datacom companies here have been curiously averse to give him. He appreciated my point of view, and invited me to send a proposal for an alternative datacom policy, which I have done (and which is summarised below). I hope to meet him next week to follow this up. As a major part of my call for removing restraints is based on the Internet's treatment by other world governments, I would like letters of support to show this. My proposal may appear tame, but it isn't really. It will allow small ISPs to pay as little as $150 a year in licence fees; reduce the (high) likelihood of cartels between large companies; and entrench electronic free-speech at (some) parity with other media. (Note that the DoT has said that it is "not considering" blocking access to parts of the Net for reasons of morals or security. This despite the local media's loudly proclaimed discovery that the Net is 97.34% paedophile, or whatever.) Highlights 1. Definitions - The category for E-mail providers becomes redundant, leaving international gateway, national network, and "retail" service providers - Content providers have constitutional protection as electronic publishers - BBSes do not require licensing, being content providers 2. Goals - Licence fees not for revenue generation, but to ensure responsibility (unavoidable. Mr Takkar's words) - Licence fees based on telecom infrastructure costs, not revenues (at the moment, a licence is almost like income tax) - Regulation required for free and fair competition (see below) - TRAI should also handle datacom regulation, and datacom consumer complaints (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is likely to be very independent of the government, headed by a former Supreme Court judge) 3. Regulation - Equal access to gateway, network and service providers (to prevent denial of service and cartels, very likely here without explicit rules preventing them) - Rationalisation of DoT leased line tariff structure (now, a network costs more than the sum of its parts! too complicated to explain briefly) 4. Licensing - Uniform fee structure for gateway, network and service providers (say 2.5% of leased line costs, which are known as they are provided by the DoT) - Barriers to entry greatly reduced (minimal ISP pays $150 p.a) - However, total licence fee revenue for DoT not significantly reduced (important for success of this proposal; large nationwide network may still pay $100,000+ thanks to its huge leased line requirements) The full text of the proposal will be made publicly available on the Net sometime next week. Those who would like to see it, and a template for a letter of support, should send me mail at dcom-appeal(a)dxm.org. I would like letters from non-commercial organisations, lobby groups, policy bodies, and so on, but NOT datacom companies (I wouldn't mind _personal_ letters of support from them, but they wouldn't do for the DoT). I would particularly like to see something from Hong Kong, which I have used as a good example of how to do things in Asia. Thanks, Rishab ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry http://dxm.org/techonomist/ rishab(a)dxm.org Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335; H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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