December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Voting Monarchist?
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

unicorn(a)schloss.li wrote: <snip> >I hate lightning it's pretty, but it can be nasty. most pretty things can. > Vote Monarchist who is the candidate? LaRouche?

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GAR [was:Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: ... >The reason this is such a hot button for Cypherpunks is that "responsible >freedom" and "accountability" are often code words for controlling some >very basic freedoms. Placing limits on anonymous speech would involve some >very fundamental restrictions on freedoms of various sorts. Even if >"safeguards" are built-in, the effect would almost certainly be to >illegalize remailers (unless they had "escrow" features!). Again, and as Tim is aware, this is not the true meaning of the fine old word "escrow," which as we all know involves neutral, trusted third parties. I think that this requires a new term, so I am now proposing one: "GAR -- Government Access to Remailers." In real life, the gar is a fish that lives in great numbers in the Everglades, just west of where I type. They can grow to a very large size. The fossil record indicates that this species has been around, unchanged, since dinosaur times. Keeping the Pinnochio tale in mind, I find it quite fitting that the gar has a *very* long nose in relation to its body. ;) >And a wide array >of other freedoms, too numerous for me to write about here. Indeed. JMR Regards, Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." -- Benjamin Franklin "As govt.s grow arithmetically, corruption grows exponentially." -- Ray's Law of official corruption. Defeat the Duopoly! Stop the Browne out. Harry Browne for President. Jo Jorgensen for Vice-president. http://www.HarryBrowne96.org/ http://www.twr.com/stbo ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 <mailto:liberty@gate.net> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMi12Nm1lp8bpvW01AQHHRwQAsr2a7rPwC9mfZ/ht2dF1jvRt/yuWJptL Utg1nm0YY5WrbvA12YAmkYBc4P7/xyqEARlIUWK3Z9qhcMFXjfXMRI5IwyfBmXSQ Ilra/XIUd6ES2p9jNupiKDO2yn56bpbubVS/T1QFkjRDgrLuRMEUndhNK8n5pGUA jL2L/IwMVCo= =seP6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Workers of the Web, UNITE!
by Martin Minow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Tired: Libertarian cypherpunks >Wired: Crypto-socialists > The Wobblies are a prime example of Tom Leherer's comment: "They won all of the battles, but we had all the good songs." Up the Revolution. Martin (crypto social democrat)

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Spam, and how to stop it.
by Steve Shelby 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Wed Sep 04 08:53:00 1996 Hello all. I assist in running an ISP. We recently had a problem with some of the users massmailing from our server. We would have never known, but someone on CompuServe that didn't like it mailed our support email address. We checked into it, and I called the two people voice. It pretty gratifying to be able to talk to one of these spammer massmailer 'get rich quick' scheme people directly. What I'm looking for is a way to monitor the amount of mail leaving the system per user. I'm not interested in poking into users mail, but I would like the ability to spot other users sending out more than x messages per x minutes. If anyone has any tips on this subject I'd like to hear them. Spam and massmailing is one of the major things that's bogging down the net these days, I believe. Thanks -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMi2Xz/uS3FANHwnlAQFDEAQAgj1ngBhFk1J2IEzmWnPROA5RYPgAnkcN iZPCJ+mnaGppts6MqurCbWv4lPvHZ8Mm6RlMXsPVUCQKu2PsHG6Vmik/3bAZ1D67 V6Zin1bq1027fvsE2i0tbg0t2wWTLgZkFl3JOWxz7nExaLNgM2WNxw3FbgqrnKXa Ufm7YICPH2I= =Hr63 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Jon Lebkowsky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:04 PM 9/3/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >The reason this is such a hot button for Cypherpunks is that "responsible >freedom" and "accountability" are often code words for controlling some >very basic freedoms. Placing limits on anonymous speech would involve some >very fundamental restrictions on freedoms of various sorts. Even if >"safeguards" are built-in, the effect would almost certainly be to >illegalize remailers (unless they had "escrow" features!). And a wide array >of other freedoms, too numerous for me to write about here. The terms "responsibility" and "accountability" are misused, which is unfortunate, since I think we'd all argue in favor of taking responsibility for our speech/actions in a positive sense. The negative is in asking me to sacrifice my freedom because some few behave irresponsibly. This is like setting an illogical default, assuming that it's a preventive, but it prevents nothing. Getting beyond this discussion of EFF, has any global entity discussed making remailers illegal? jonl -- Jon Lebkowsky <jonl(a)hotwired.com> FAX (512)444-2693 http://www.well.com/~jonl Electronic Frontiers Forum, 6PM PDT Thursdays <http://www.hotwired.com/eff> "No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."--Saul Alinsky

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Re: Moscowchannel.com hack
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: On Sat, 31 Aug 1996, Joel McNamara wrote: : > Just a matter of time before some builds a dedicated Satan type tool that : > scans for HTTP server holes or messed up file permissions to make locating : > potential victims easy. Snow replied: : Write your web site to a CD-ROM and hard-code the base directory into the : webserver. Or host it on something with mandatory access control protections. There are still a handful of us building such things, and they can give really good protection to web page contents. Rick. smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Jon Lebkowsky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:44 AM 9/3/96 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >At 03:17 PM 9/3/96 -0700, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: >> Not necessarily. The character of the anonymous speech is decisive. If you >> use anonymity to cloak harassment, for instance, the anonymity (which >> removes accountability) is a problem. The accountability issue is real and >> should be addressed, not evaded. > >No: The harassment is the problem, not the anonymity that makes it >possible. The harassment is one problem, the lack of accountability another. Which is not to say that 'lack of accountability' should be 'fixed' by some sort of blanket restriction...but it should be acknowledged as a problem. -- Jon Lebkowsky <jonl(a)hotwired.com> FAX (512)444-2693 http://www.well.com/~jonl Electronic Frontiers Forum, 6PM PDT Thursdays <http://www.hotwired.com/eff> "No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."--Saul Alinsky

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Jon Lebkowsky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:40 PM 9/2/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >> what *constructive* >> alternative to EFF do you propose? if you have none, please shut up. > >I think any organization that would apply political pressure rather than >bow to it would be an alternative. I think an organization in touch >enough with its own policy to prevent its staff and board from making >embarassing big brother type proposals to curtail the ability of any of us >to post without attributation would be an alternative. I think an >organization without the internal conflict and strife that has clearly >marred EFF in past and made it a laughable attempt at cohesive political >persuasion would be an alternative. I think an organization that had >official policies on the core issues which it proposes to influence would >be an alternative. > >In short, an organization that had even one of the needed elements of >legislative influence. (Cohesive, directed, persistent, and >uncompromising). "Uncompromising" is not an "element of legislative influence," at least not on this planet. -- Jon Lebkowsky <jonl(a)hotwired.com> FAX (512)444-2693 http://www.well.com/~jonl Electronic Frontiers Forum, 6PM PDT Thursdays <http://www.hotwired.com/eff> "No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."--Saul Alinsky

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Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology (fwd)
by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Suggest you look at draft-eastlake-internet-payment-*.txt in the IETF shadow directories. I don't think any one step will solve all our spam problems but I wouldn't mind spending, say, 5 cents for each real piece of mail I sent outside my company and if end machines charged 5 cents per piece of ouside mail received, I think spamming would be crippled. (Note that with bad guy lists, you could collect the money and then just throw away the mail.) Donald (not on cypherpunks) ===================================================================== Donald E. Eastlake 3rd +1 508-287-4877(tel) dee(a)cybercash.com 318 Acton Street +1 508-371-7148(fax) dee(a)world.std.com Carlisle, MA 01741 USA +1 703-620-4200(main office, Reston, VA) http://www.cybercash.com http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 19:47:15 -0400 From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 11:35:28 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) Subject: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology Keywords: agoric systems, computational ecologies, resource auctioning, Mark Miller, K. Eric Drexler, Bernardo Huberman, contracts, distributed trust, metered usage, software objects, software ICs, superdistribution, Brad Cox, emergent order. In physics there are various conservation laws: conservation of energy, mass, charge, and whatnot. You all know about this... Conservation of mass says that mass is neither created nor destroyed. (For smart aleck quibblers, conservation of mass-energy.) How does this relate to our issues? "Abuse of Resources": Mail loops, infinite loops, spamming, overloads of networks, and congestion in general are cases where "unrealistic" models of costs are implemented in software. In the real physical world, infinite loops don't occur (at least not in the sense seen with mail loops, as a relevant example.) Conservation laws are related to the "cost model" of the universe. Real physical objects have costs, or ontological status, or presence.... (Please don't read too much into this point...I mean to be suggestive, not literal.) There are no "memory leaks" in the universe which suddenly fill it up with stuff, no perpetual motion machines, no creation and destruction of objects. Cyberspace Ontologies: There are several things which need to be done to make the cyberspatial world more like the spatial world: * payment for CPU cycles consumed (via contractual, permission-based access: "If you want access to this machine, here are the terms and conditions.") * metering mechanisms, such as e-stamps for e-mail (essentially a special case of the first point, where a machine says "I'll pass on your message if you pay me to.") * digital contracts, agreements on usage and payment (resource auctioning, or the "smart contracts" that Nick Szabo has written about) (you can all think of additional examples....) Cryptographic protocols have their uses here, but there are also some other measures which bear looking into. In the LISP community, for example, work has been done on "engines," which are building blocks that are "fueled up" with "CPU fuel" and allowed to run for some amount of CPU cycles. Thus, one could put an engine into a process and it would run for some number of ticks, then stop. (I'm sure there are Unix-level tools which do similar things, in terms of giving a spawned process so many ticks of the clock. The "engines" concept is somewhat more semantically clean, in that it's pushed down into the "ontology" of the thing being simulated or run, and is not at the "God level" (to use a non-technical term!).) Now, certainly I support the right of any person or machine to run programs freely and without charge, to pass on e-mail free of charge, to run remailers for no charge, to accept spam mail without complaint, and so on. What I'm suggesting is that many of the problems being seen with overuse of resources, spam, congestion, and denial of service are really due to a poor model of resource allocation. Unix and other modern operating systems offer various tools for helping to constrain such problems, but, I submit, better methods are needed. (Especially when multiple machines, networks, and even anonymous sites are part of the overall system....clearly the constraints must be managed locally, and via "contract," as part of a computational ecology, and not as a hierarchical, top down Unix-type operating system.) Economics is about the "allocation of scarce resources." Many of the existing models being used treat various scarce resources as _free_. Then, when the inevitable problems occur, calls for top-down regulation are heard (e.g., the frequent calls for illegalization of "unwanted mail"). In my view, building a consistent, distributed, "conservative" system is what Cypherpunks need to be thinking about. (I used the term "conservative" in the physics sense. A system in which various conservation laws are obeyed.) As I said before, this should not be compelled, but voluntary. However, those who give their resources away for free (choosing not to adopt a conservative ontology, in other words) should be in no position to complain or run to the government for top-down regulation because there freely-given resources are being overused or "abused" (in their thinking). And closely related to this whole issue--and something I've written about extensively--is the issue of "building walls in cyberspace." In the real world, persistent structures are build out of real materials, resulting in castles, forts, skyscrapers, bridges, houses, highways, etc. These objects have persistence, have controllable access (gates, doors, locks,...), and have "structural integrity." Cryptographic and distributed trust protocols are about the only means I can think of for constructing the equivalents in cyberspace. (And to a large extent, this is already happening: the Net and the Web have structure which cannot be demolished casually, or by top-down orders from any single national leader. Millions of machines, linked in various ways and implementing various protocols and "terms of service" with users and other machines....an early version of the "conservative" system I think we'll someday see.) Well, this gives the flavor of my points. I haven't rigorously argued all of the points, but the Cypherpunks forum is for presenting informal arguments. Thoughts? --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu

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Re: Metcalf and Other Net.Fogies
by Jon Lebkowsky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:27 AM 9/5/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I'm evolving a hunch that the problems we're seeing with "old fogies" >denouncing the Net, and anonymity, and "smut on the Net," are part of a >larger cultural issue. Namely, the familiar case of an older generation >complaining about the sloth and sin of the younger generations. Hey, I'm 47, and I haven't given up on sloth and sin yet. 8-) Seriously, the problem here is that you don't want to set up the stereotype you allude to further down ('don't trust anyone over 30'). Stereotypic thinking, ya know? Besides which, I've run into some real dorks who were UNDER 30... >(Caveat: I'm 44, so I'm certainly a generation older than many of you, and >am about the same age, give or take a few years, of Dyson, Metcalfe, Kapor, >Denning, and the other Net.Doomsayers. However, 20-25 years ago, when I was >in college, I recall of course similar predictions of disaster. (And as it >turned out, the predictions that promiscuity would lead to a disaster >turned out to be partly correct, viz. AIDS.)) Hmmmmm...are Dyson and Kapor really net.doomsayers? I really haven't heard any kinda doom and gloom from those two... >Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3COM, and how >publisher of "Infoworld" and sailing enthusiast, was interviewed on CNBC a >few minutes ago. He repeated his prediction of an "Internet collapse" in >1996, based on overuse, on bad pricing models, on lack of controls, and on >other concerns. ... and I've tended to think Metcalfe was just sending an 'ad absurdum' flare when he predicted the death of the Internet, not so much predicting as taking an impact analysis to the extreme. >It could be that the Dennings, Dysons, Kapors, etc. of the world are simply >growing jaded with the Net and are projecting their own ennui in their >comments that the Net may need to be controlled. This may come with age, as >I'm sure the Kapor of 25 years ago would not have wanted President Nixon >and Attorney-General Mitchell telling him what he could read and write. I'm not sure which comments you're referring to, but I've come to understand that the generation-gap thing has no pat answer. Dave Farber is younger than Bruce Taylor, if ya know what I mean...and there are plenty of old pharts who are active in the various movements and groups opposing any restriction of the Internet. >(In fairness, none of these folks listed have called for censorship. But >all have expressed "concerns" of one sort or another. Not that discussing >concerns is inappropriate--after all, we do it all the time. But I sense in >many of their phrasings of concerns a stereotypical "old fogeyness" >emerging.) I dunno. Consider this: almost 30 years ago a bunch of us were more or less active in left wing politics that had some of the same aims I see expressed on this list and elsewhere, and we made mistakes. I don't know that I learned from my mistakes the way you're sposed to, but some folks learned, and are trying not to fuck up again. On the other hand, some folks really are just stodgy, but I bet they were stodgy kids, too. >Just a thought. Maybe the solution to the EFF problem is to "not trust >anyone over 30." Heh, right. Feet tall. -- Jon Lebkowsky http://www.well.com/~jonl jonl(a)hotwired.com

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