December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Why the Poor are Mostly Deserving of their Fate
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:18 AM 5/17/96, snow wrote: >On Wed, 15 May 1996, Jim McCoy wrote: >> There are two kinds of libertarians, those who hate the poor and those who >> don't. I always seem to meet the former, I am beginning to suspect the >> latter don't exist. By the way, I certainly don't "hate the poor," as a class. More on this in a bit, but I certainly was not raised in a wealthy family, and I started my working career living in a tiny (and I do mean tiny) studio apartment in Santa Clara, CA. > Hi Mr. McCoy, My name is Petro, and I _am_ a poor libertarian >(well, sort of a libertarian, I tend to think they are a little short >sighted, and a little to authoritarian to me) Many of us ARE poor. We may >not _like_ being poor, and some of us are working to get out of that >situation, but most of us don't "hate" the poor. We (well, I) hate people >with their hands out. This is everyone from poor people who _won't_ try to >get out of their situation, to Multi-billion dollar corporations that >recieve government grants for over seas advertising to old people who >didn't plan for their "golden years" and expect us to provide the gold. Agreed. I was a libertarian (and a Libertarian, I guess, as I voted for the first LP candidate, John Hospers, in 1972) even when I was poor, in college. (No car, and I declined to attend MIT or Stanford, both of whom had accepted me, as their costs would've been an unduly-large burden on my parents.) Once working and ensconced in my tiny little studio apartment, I worked my butt off, working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, and sometimes some 16 hour days (no overtime). I made it a point to save as much as I could, foregoing various immediate gratifications that many in my cohort were partaking of. By the time I'd been working for 6-8 years, things really started to pay off, financially and professionally. I put the money I'd saved into small companies I thought would do well...companies like Sun, Apple, Genentech, and, of course, my own company, Intel. By the time I'd worked there for 12 years, I'd accumulated enough in savings and investments to never work again. So I bailed out and have lived the last 10 years doing as I please. (Still sounds good to me.) My point? Some of it was luck, some of it was hard work, some of it was my native abilities. But I saw some of my fellow engineers fail to invest, fail to save...and they are mostly still working. And of course I saw many in the "larger community" who spent their paychecks, who saw their earnings go up their nose (remember, this was the 1970s and 80s), and who found as many ways as they could to avoid hard work. An important point is this: it wasn't all "luck." At least not in the sense of luck at a roulette wheel. In fact, nearly all of my cohorts who worked hard and invested wisely really did well. (And people starting out can do just as well, perhaps even faster than my cohort did...look at the 3-10x increases in stock prices in less than 2 years of so many companies!) The effects are obvious: some of those who failed to study, prepare, work, save, and invest are now seeking to use "democracy" to take away the assets of those who did all these things. Many of them talk about "privilege" and claim that "white males" got all the benefits, conveniently ignoring that the same benefits were available to any of the Asians, women, or, indeed, coloreds, who similarly studied, prepared, worked, saved, and invested. Some of them now claim that we libertarians "hate the poor," that we lack "compassion." I'm tempted to say "Fuck them," but that would be rude. Instead, I'll say that those who think "the poor" are being victimized by "the rich" should take a close look at how wealth is actually created. It is only partly "luck" that is responsible for success. I look at the vast number of new markets and new fortunes that have been created since I stopped working, and I am more convinced than ever that anyone who is willing to work in a field which is in demand and who keeps up with developments, works hard, shows initiative, etc., will do extremely well. Sadly, about 60% of the adult population of the U.S. doesn't think this way, doesn't have "the culture of success," and instead looks to the government to give them benefits, handouts, and jobs. These people are headed for the scrap heap. Strong crypto builds walls against this unruly mob. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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[NOISE] Re:Rural Datafication (via RFC 1149)
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmm... Maybe this could be a low-cost way to get rural areas connected to the internet? The RFC says it's primarily for metropolitan areas, but I believe it could be equally effective in rural areas. :) (BTW, this is a "real" RFC. I got it from ftp.internic.net.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Network Working Group D. Waitzman Request for Comments: 1149 BBN STC 1 April 1990 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers Status of this Memo This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams in avian carriers. This specification is primarily useful in Metropolitan Area Networks. This is an experimental, not recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Overview and Rational Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers, but many carriers can be used without significant interference with each other, outside of early spring. This is because of the 3D ether space available to the carriers, in contrast to the 1D ether used by IEEE802.3. The carriers have an intrinsic collision avoidance system, which increases availability. Unlike some network technologies, such as packet radio, communication is not limited to line-of-sight distance. Connection oriented service is available in some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology. Frame Format The IP datagram is printed, on a small scroll of paper, in hexadecimal, with each octet separated by whitestuff and blackstuff. The scroll of paper is wrapped around one leg of the avian carrier. A band of duct tape is used to secure the datagram's edges. The bandwidth is limited to the leg length. The MTU is variable, and paradoxically, generally increases with increased carrier age. A typical MTU is 256 milligrams. Some datagram padding may be needed. Upon receipt, the duct tape is removed and the paper copy of the datagram is optically scanned into a electronically transmittable form. Discussion Multiple types of service can be provided with a prioritized pecking order. An additional property is built-in worm detection and eradication. Because IP only guarantees best effort delivery, loss of a carrier can be tolerated. With time, the carriers are self- Waitzman [Page 1] RFC 1149 IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers 1 April 1990 regenerating. While broadcasting is not specified, storms can cause data loss. There is persistent delivery retry, until the carrier drops. Audit trails are automatically generated, and can often be found on logs and cable trays. Security Considerations Security is not generally a problem in normal operation, but special measures must be taken (such as data encryption) when avian carriers are used in a tactical environment. Author's Address David Waitzman BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation BBN Labs Division 10 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA 02238 Phone: (617) 873-4323 EMail: dwaitzman(a)BBN.COM Waitzman [Page 2]

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Re: Past one terabit/second on fiber
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:09 PM 5/15/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > One problem with the development of such high-end technologies is that >they tend to increase economies of scale to the point where it's impractical to >have anything but a monopoly or ogliopoly. As well as concerns about the degree >of control such an organization may be able to exert in and of itself (acting >like a government, in essence), there's also that such an organization is >easier to pressure than a lot of small providers. Anyone have a suggested >solution, or reasons that I shouldn't be so worried? I think there are a number of reasons you shouldn't have to worry, at least about these technologies per se. What these technologies do is dramatically lower the cost of supplying the service, both allowing the usual providers to cut prices and in fact forcing them (via the market) to do so. Fiber, for example, lasts "forever," and effectively has an unlimited bandwith compared to most needs, which means that it has little cost other than the initial installation, amortized over time. You might as well forget about this 1 Tb/s fiber, for example. In order to justify such a thing, you need to have 1 Tb/s of information that you want to take from "here" to "there". A city of 1 million people would have to have a 1 Mbit/sec/person data appetite to fill that fiber, and you'd have to have a huge data infrastructure just to collect all that data in the same place. (Which would, in itself, require a mass of fibers of lower capacities.) There would probably be no need for this, either, since the data would probably not all be coming from/going to the same location. Probably the only place where 1 Tb/s fiber will be needed in the next 20+ years is undersea links, and even that is questionable. There's also the "all the eggs in one basket" problem. Send your data on 12, 80 Gb/s fibers and you have substantial redundancy. Send it on one fiber and you're more subject to downtime due to individual component failure. Secondly, fiber can be upgraded in an exceedingly economical, though granular way. As I observed a few years ago, a given cable way initially had only a single cable installed though it had capacity for three. And some of the fibers installed were probably not used immediately, due to lack of need. Finally, the fiber was probably only driven initially at a comparatively low speed (maybe 400 megabits/s, for example) but could have been later upgraded to 2.5 Gb/s, or perhaps even higher. Upgrading under those conditions is extremely cheap. The main thing we need to worry about is allowing those people with the fiber to exert influence over us to an extent greater than the cost of supplying that data-transmission service would reasonably allow. (The nosy landlord problem.) Ideally, they'd provide the fiber, we'd pay for it at a reasonable rate, and they'd be satisfied. The alternative, a busybody policy, is only practical to force on customers when the product being supplied is supply-limited. Since fiber cost is dropping like a rock, and capacity will outstrip demand for the forseeable future, there is no reason we should be limited to deal with only one organization. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Java & signed applets
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:02 PM 5/16/96, Lyal Collins wrote: >Signing anything is somewaht a waste of time, unless the verification >siftware is highly trusted, and there is good intergity/authenticity >control of the root public key(s). >So, in geneal - ho hum - until trusted hardware is available on the >desktop. Unless I am misunderstanding your message (terseness has its disadvantages), this is not really true. * Checking the signature on a signed applet is a kind of "sanity check" on the source of the software. It is rather unlikely, I think, that a malicious agent will corrupt or infect one's verification software so as to make untrusted applets looks trusted. (Ignoring what "trust" means for now.) * To wit, if you (Lyal Collins) run a signature verification applet downloaded, say, from Sun, and some time has passed and you have heard no reports that, say, Silicon Graphics broke into Sun and replaced all of Sun't applets with a malicious version, and if you have checked Sun's signature against published values (that is, you have used a public key widely disseminated, and not repudiated), then you can very probably "trust" this signature-checking procedure. (One can construct fanciful scenarios in which one's OS has been corrupted, one's microprocessor has been replaced, etc., but these are clearly fringe events. All security is economics....) (Note: I expect at least one person to argue that this is indeed a concern. Again, look to economics. How do you _really_ know that your "mother" is really your mother, and not a stranger who entered your life minutes after your birth? How do you _really_ know that a vending machine of Cokes is not able to detect your presence and give you a poisoned can of Coke?) * If one's basic signature-checking hardware and software is not compromised, signature checking works. If it _is_ compromised, you've got bigger problems. And no cryptographic system can really handle this issue. Oh, and I disagree also with the last point: "So, in geneal - ho hum - until trusted hardware is available on the desktop." What, for example, is "trusted hardware"? How does a user ever know that his hardware was not compromised at the chip factory, for example? (Not that I think this is a reasonable thing to worry about at this point, given much larger problems all around us, but I mention it to show that one gets caught in a recursive process in which one can of course never be absolutely certain of anything. The Solipsist view of things is internally consistent.) So, I'll take my chances that applet signing will be a welcome extra level of protection against malicious applets. Others are free, of course, to instead worry that their machines are insecure and the signature-checking software has cleverly been replaced by some agent trying to get them to download a malicious applet. (Of course, if They can corrupt one's crypto software, they can do all sorts of other bad things, and probably don't need to wait for you to download an applet to start doing them.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Past one terabit/second on fiber
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:23 PM 5/17/96 -0400, Alan Horowitz wrote: > >> >Now that's progress, don't you think? >> >> Yes, I do! Because these activities don't just happen by themselves, they >> take the place of other activities which were formerly done in their place. >> The trivial example of sending letters has been replaced by email. > > E-mail is cool. E-mail is lovely. I use it enthusiatically. It is >not the same thing as sitting down with a fountain pen and and some fine >stationary. I feel sorry for your significant other if your loveletters >go by e-mail. So you've found one specific instance where you don't think it's appropriate to send email. Big deal! Try again. >Yes, let's get people away from reading books. Hey, there's computer >games to play, burn that library down, will you? Want people to read books? Okay, first put the hurdle in front of them that they must go to the library. (This is particularly a hurdle for children, when not in school, because they can't drive.) Then, if the book(s) they want to read is already checked out, make them wait 1+ months until it returns. Make them come back to the library to get it, and make them return it the same way. See why some people DON'T read books? >Quantity of life is not the same as quality of life. You're misrepresenting form over substance. Information is no more valuable or trustworthy on paper than on electrons. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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The Crisis with Remailers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:29 PM 5/15/96, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: >Some nyms are valuable, most are valueless by design. All remailers >should be valueless by design. The penet.fi remailer design is >unsatisfactory precisely because it penet.fi is valuable, hence a >target. If it gets shut down a lot of people lose their nyms, >causing much inconvenience. I agree with this point, and the similar points made by Hal Finney and by several others. We have far too few remailers, they are too tempting as targets, the use of "mail-to-News" gateways is formally separable from the function as a remailer, and there is generally a stagnation in the deployment of new and varied kinds of remailers and their modes of operation. We used to discuss remailer architecture, topology, functionality, and "ideal behavior" quite a bit a few years ago, but seldom do here on the Cypherpunks list anymore. Various reasons: same old discussions, commercialization of Mixmaster-type remailers (so I hear, and Lance Cottrell can clarify this if this is indeed a factor) may be inhibiting free discussion of planned features, and perhaps the discussion is going on elsewhere (on remailerpunks, or the remailer operator's list). (I'm surprised there have been no "Master's Thesis"-level analyses of remailers and the modeling of them. I had expected by now at least a couple of such studies. Even better, some even more advanced studies. The "theory of remailers" was partly laid out by Chaum in his 1981 "Untraceable E-Mail" short article--at the CSUA site at Berkeley, last I checked--but much has happened since then. A practical analysis is needed. Note: the recent paper on remailers by the SAI researcher and another is _not_ what I meant...that was just put together from Raph's page, other sources, and a few days worth of Web searches, as near as I can tell.] A much richer ecology of remailers is sorely needed. A factor of at least 10 or 20 more (100-300 remailer sites), less reliance on specific sites, an "everyone a remailer" capability (which has many elegant advantages!), more traffic, temporarily instantiated sites, digital postage, greater ease of use (especially with crypto and chaining), and such things as nominal terminal remailers choosing to add their own hops (so as to lessen their own target potential). Having some of these improvements will be a big help. In the past we have discussed many ideas related to this; I sure don't have the energy right now to recapitulate the points made over the years. Cf. my Cyphernomicon for some general features, at least as of mid-94. Also, the archives, if they ever become available again. Yes, things are stagnating at this time. Not because we discuss "off-topic" things (as we sure did in 1992-3, for example!), but for various other reasons. I suspect the enemies of remailers will sense victory and will try to force the remaining remailers to shut down or at the least to severely restrict operations. From a high of perhaps 25 remailers, we may soon be down to less than a dozen. These remaining sites will feel even more pressure. The upcoming War on Intellectual Property Piracy, with opening shots against China already fired, will put even more heat on remailers. (A remailer can't just "block" copyrighted material. It ain't practical. And digital mixes (remailers) should not, obviously, be looking at content of packets mailed. (Only the last, plaintext, message can be looked at if things are done right, but I surmise from comments by remailer operators that a lot of the traffic is not encrypted at all, and that the operators do in fact take a few peeks at what's flowing through their systems....more evidence that we are very far indeed from Chaum's ideal digital mixes.) Yes, a crisis has been brewing for months. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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HUGE denial of service attack against any ecash customer!!!
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ian Goldberg seems to be on a roll. First he figured out how to find out how anyone can determine anyone else's ecash mint balances, and now he does this. The man's a genius. If you don't believe it, ask me, I'll tell you. ;-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text To: ecash(a)digicash.com Path: not-for-mail From: iang(a)cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg) Newsgroups: isaac.lists.ecash Subject: HUGE denial of service attack against any ecash customer!!! Date: 15 May 1996 16:09:29 -0700 Organization: ISAAC Group, UC Berkeley Lines: 42 Sender: owner-ecash(a)digicash.com Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (Again Cc:'d to ecash-feedback, hoping for a security prize. I wonder who's keeping track... Also Cc:'d to cypherpunks, for fun...) So I had some more free time... (Dave cringes when I say that.) Here's a cute one: Give me an account number, and I can prevent it from being used until an arbitrary time in the future (of my choosing). How? Simple. Send a deposit message with 0 coins (well, any message will work, I think, but this is one of the simplest messages there is) with a timestamp of some future time. Messages stamped prior to that (such as everything coming from the actual user for that account, until the time comes) will be politely discarded. (Actually, I think the last reply to a withdrawal request is continually resent, but I'm not exactly sure of this.) In any case, the actual user will be unable to withdraw money from his mint until the time sent in the denial-of-service message. (Unless he forward-dates his computer's clock, or something...) I've tested this against myself and Sameer (with his cooperation, of course). Anyone else want to be locked out for an hour? (Actually, I could pretty effectively lock out _everyone_ for an arbitrarily long time, it seems...) - Ian "Right. I want the sources to the client and the server released. Now." :-) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMZpj3kZRiTErSPb1AQF0SAQAmOEZJTg0v3utWFodDXZ4iv4xa7I+QbNQ Nlsbkug8dtkdf+Jboe+vBtrs5IWSSff8bWntGwfODckct26NwzpVM9bUIXohVoRQ jOkRT9a8m/X00jUAoFOTq5O5Rz87a3Uw8MGFugP5Y4DCk+UqnTA70cuozyOCgb8m 8oke89V9Q0E= =ARMe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailers
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Addressed to: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> ** Reply to note from Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> 05/15/96 6:29pm -0400 = I would really like to see a remailer that is somehow blinded. = on a message basis --it is not really possible if the logs are maintained or the fed are already monitoring the stream --which is probable if they are after something --and it will increase geometically if we get Bubba again. there are a number of very sophisticated ways to play the game, but each requires a real "Web of Silence" --what makes your counterpart reliable? where do we establish that "Web of Trust" which everyone bandies about. who are the two plants for our current chain? or is this just another case of sowing dissension by the feds? I only know two or three at most of the players on the remailers at all --and that is a passing knowledge, not acquaintance. = I don't know enough about how mail paths are generatered, but is it = impossible to conceal the origin of remailer postings? = impossible to conceal each orientation, but I have been playing with several easy techniques which are sufficiently obfuscatory that the Feds will not have the horsepower to break them unless someone provides them with the methodology --that in itself violates how we (cp) have always insisted on 'post it' and get on with the attempted destruction. even if they break the methodology, they gain very little v. the technique. = Postings made to remailernym(a)alpha.c2.org would be spit out = somewhere but = without accountability? = sure, possible if you wish to play the game with a "Web of silence." = Impossible? Would do wonders defeating traffic analysis. = no, not impoosible. just who wants to be responsible for something the NSA assholes can not own --and compromise? they get down right shitty when they kick your door down in the middle of the night as take your carcass away --if nothing else works, off to Springfield you go --without charges --lest we forget the crippled president or Hustler magazine --that is what they did to him _before_ they convicted him, _and_ after. = I'd consider running a remailer, but after listening to the response to = the anonymous poster a while back, it sounds like there are few if any = simple options which do not require major time and effort to setup and = run. = you can run it out of your client account on an IAP --there's nothing special about it in a simplified form. I could support a remailer point if I could manage to get the necessary "Web of Silence" counterparts --one them preferable foreign. BTW, it does not need to be complex to add another level of confusion. usually the best offensives are the simplest. == = Opp. Counsel: For all your expert testimony needs: jimbell(a)pacifier.com = is this subtle, crass, or just not? -- Overseeing first-rate programmers is a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.

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Re: Why does the state still stand:
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:34 PM 5/15/96 +0000, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: >On 15 May 96 at 0:45, Ed Carp wrote: > >> The problem, however, is twofold - (1) the government will >> play mind games on the rest of the population to make you look like >> a terrorist, or whatever turns the populace against you, > >Well, first of all, we should find how much of the population >*really* believe in what govt says. There is a difference between >the politically correct opinion that Joe & Jane Public give to a >poll interviewer and what they really think. > >Second, you suppose that Joe & Jane Public really like and approve what >they understand from what the medias say. I think that Ed Carp recognizes that these caveats were somewhat valid based on a pre-Internet era, when control of news and information was relatively centralized in newspapers and TV networks. Then, you were told what to think (although it wasn't quite phrased this way) and few people got an alternative story. But as you correctly point out, it is getting harder to pull the wool over the eyes of the public when they can get alternative information. >And finally third, this system does not work according to the will >of a majority. It wouldn't take too many peoples who believe that the >medias and their perceived lack of integrity is widely responsible >for the way the world goes right now, to have a substantial prize put >on the head of the medias. >Therefore, any journalist with two+ working neurons will realize >that sticking to the most objective facts available would be the best >way to build a great reputation while sticking to govt propaganda >would be a great way to attract a prize on his head. I don't think anybody in the media is going to have the guts to stick with the government as it sinks into the depths, torpedoed by its own technological inventions. The big names can just resign and keep their wealth; the small fish have no long-term credibility or hope to achieve the levels of their predecessors. >So, to see how AP will make the system evolve, you have to assess >the communication capabilities of govt vs the individual. This is >central to AP and the nature of actual govts. This is *why* the >internet is *so* dangerous to any govts that seek to either retain or >increase their power, even if it actually touches only but a tiny >portion of world population. > >For the first time in the history of humanity, we have a peer to >peer communication capability and an individual-to-world broadcasting >capability that is not controllable in practice by any other entity >(such as law, high finance, etc) > > >The explains fully why the various govts what to find a way to >enforce internet laws, breakable crypto schemes and non-anonymous >protocols. I expect that few government workers have any idea how dangerous the net is going to be to them in the next few years. The various proposals we've been seeing, such as Clipper and others, are probably the product of a very few strategists who began worrying in the early 1990's about the fate of centralized government systems. It will be interesting, someday, to talk to these people who monitor us, and ask them when they thought their position was hopeless. >JFA >PLEASE NOTE: THIS POST DOES NOT MEAN THAT I ENDORSE MR. BELL'S >SYSTEM. MY RATIONNAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT IT'S INTERNAL MECHANICS >AND IT'S INTRINSIC LOGICS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I LIKE NOR ENDORSE >THE SYSTEM. I SIMPLY CONCLUDED THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PREVENT >THE SYSTEM FROM BEING IMPLEMENTED. IMO, IT IS UNAVOIDABLE. I understand your...uh...caution. But as scary as it may be to "us," it's going to be even more terrifying to those it is likely to eliminate. Sort of the difference between two parachute jumps: With and without a parachute! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why does the state still stand:
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> > I did not > include offshore.com.ai in Anguilla due to its high cost; I consider anything > over 25$ a month to be impractical. > > _Country/Area_ _Name_ _Email_ > Anguilla Cable & Wireless webmaster(a)candw.com.ai > [...] Thanks very much for making this list. However I would not be so quick to reject http://offshore.com.ai. It is run by long-time Cypherpunk Vince Cate, apparently specifically for the kinds of purposes we are discussing. His project was discussed in a recent issue of Wired, I think the May issue. (I have no contact with Cate, and have never met him as far as I can recall.) For doing something like running a remailer which will post material which is illegal and/or copyrighted in the U.S., you are going to need a service which can stand up to pressure. Presumably some monetary incentive is going to be a necessity. Of course by this standard $25 a month is pretty inconsequential. One issue is whether these banking-secrecy countries like Anguilla are followers of the Berne convention or other international copyright regulations. Banking secrecy and software piracy don't necessarily go hand in hand. I hear a lot about copyright violations in China but not in the Caribbean. So actually it isn't clear that this country is the right location for a remailer that can post arbitrary material. As for the costs to the remailer operator, he simply passes those on to his customers. I think in the long run onshore remailers will be forced to take measures to restrict copyright-violating posts. So if your choice is between paying nothing and not getting your whistle-blowing message posted, or paying $10 and getting it out on the nets, then hopefully it is worth that much to you. We have discussed for-pay remailers and the consensus has been that no one would use them when others run for free. However now I think the false premise is being exposed, that free remailers simply will not be able to run in the current mode for much longer. Once a single remailer operator has been fined thousands of dollars because somebody posted some copyrighted message, I don't think you will find many people eager to sign up as operators. So this dream of a volatile collection of remailers popping up and going away just doesn't work in my view. Why would anyone offer a service knowing that he was exposing himself to liability like this? It would be just a game of Russian roulette, waiting to see whether it is your remailer which gets the bullet in the form of a post which violates the copyright of someone with deep pockets. Hal

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