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Re: Excerpt on SPAM from Edupage, 11 February 1997
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:06 AM 2/15/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 10:19 AM -0600 2/15/97, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > >>I much prefer the plan where a potential mail correspondant includes an >>e-cash dollar directly cashable by me. If I like the mail (and the >>sender), I throw the dollar away and the sender goes on the approved >>list. If not, I keep the dollar, and the sender goes on the twit list. >>Paper junk mail costs an advertiser more than $1 per piece, so they'd >>still be getting a bargain. And potentially, some receivers may throw >>away the dollar and welcome the spam. > >The basic flaw in all of these schemes is that they are "top-down" >solutions, imposed on the market for invented reasons. There we must disagree. Not that "top-down" imposed solutions won't generally work, I agree with that. Rather, I suggest that there are valid and logical market-driven reasons that people, both buyers and sellers, would want to adopt the system I've proposed. The benefits for the recipient of the payment-containing spam/advertising are obvious. He gets money. Admittedly it is less obvious why a seller would want to pay for what he seemed to previously got for free, but that's more-or-less the case. More in a moment. [snip] >However, just "making up" a fee--as Roy does here, and as Jim Bell and >others have done before--is not a solution either. Nor does it stand any >chance of being "enforced" (for a large number of reasons I won't get into >here). >--Tim May Yes, the charge will be "enforced"...by the market! Here's how. "Spam" in other media is termed "advertising" or "junk mail." And advertisers pay good money for it, precisely because that it will drum up enough business to not only pay for the ad rates, but also make some profit as well. They're apparently correct, because those companies stay in business for years or decades. Now, you'd probably imagine that businessmen would like to see the cost of their advertising drop. Superficially, you'd be right, but in reality if the cost of advertising on TV or radio or newspapers is an essential element of the system. To understand why, imagine that the price of such advertising dropped by a factor of 100. Suddenly, anybody doing ads could do ten times as many, for a tenth the total cost, or any such similar ratio. Or thousands of companies whose products didn't previously profit enough for such ads would now be able to do them, as well. The airwaves would be flooded. There wouldn't be enough time for entertainment, or news, or much of anything other than ads. Worse, since total advertising revenue would probably be down by at least a factor of 25, even assuming "only" a 4x increase in ad volume, there would be far less money available for producing good shows. With fewer, worse shows, and many more ads, the average viewers would stay away in droves. Pretty soon, the VALUE of that advertising to the advertiser would drop...to 1/100 of what it was before. The newspapers would, likewise, be flooded with ads. Even local newspapers would look like the Sunday New York Times. And the current newspaper reader might as well stay away, because it would be a rare page that actually contained an article, and was not filled with ads. Junk mail, if the TOTAL cost (paper, printing, labelling, mailing, etc) dropped by a factor of 100, our mailboxes would be filled with paper three times a day, maybe more often. Well, actually this is not true. There are other effects which would limit this progression. For example, as ad space went up, people would watch/read less, so advertisers won't be motived to place ads even if they are free. If junk mail was free, nobody would have the time to read most of it, and it would go into the trash even faster than it does today. In effect, if nothing else limited this advertising, our patience (or lack of it) would do so. The _value_ of that advertising would drop to zero, along with its cost. The end result, I argue, would be occasional low-value, sporadic advertising that "nobody" reads and everybody hates. Sound familiar? On the Internet, it's called, "spam." Classic Internet-type spam is, essentially, a "zero-cost" ad. Not _exactly_ zero cost, but pretty close, at least in terms of bare cash outlay. What limits Internet-spam is that if it's overdone (or, some would argue, done at all!) an advertiser ends up pissing off the reader, making him even less likely to purchase the goods or services the spammer/advertiser was offering. At that point, in effect the cost of that advertising is "infinite," because the outlay of zero money caused a _reduction_ in sales. An advertiser can't force a customer to buy, and he knows it. But what he wants is the customer's time and attention, even if there's no guarantee of a sale. Really, what he wants is to buy the attention of a potential customer, maybe only few a few seconds or a minute or so. That's what advertising does. But like an ad in a newspaper or a commercial on TV (which the target customer can ignore, mute, or walk away from) there is no guarantee of contact. So how, you'll ask, can the "free money with spam" deal be "enforced"? Well, it can't, if your definition of "enforced" includes merely the idea of some higher legal authority like a government or a trade organization or something. But if you include the idea of the participants in the market, themselves, "enforcing" such a payment, it can. Let's suppose, for simplicity's sake, that we are considering two types of advertisers. One has a product that few people want. Not NONE, just few. It's either poor quality, or too expensive (compared to its perceived value), or just not particularly interesting to the majority of the public. The other has a product that far more people want. It's good, or is seen to be inexpensive, or is interesting. Now, the former advertiser must put out far more ads to make a given buck than the latter. The latter advertiser wants and needs the attention of any given potential customer more than the former, because the latter is far more likely to satisfy the customer's curiosity and desires and be able to do business with him. In short, the purveyor of products that more people want (products which are more likely to interest the average potential advertisement reader...) can AFFORD to pay a larger amount of money to a given ad-recipient than can the other advertiser, the seller of junk. Logic suggests that in the competition for "share of mind," the good-product seller would choose to give a larger amount of money to any given ad-recipient, in order to attract his attention and distinguish him from the other guy, if nothing else. After all, that's the one thing HE CAN DO that the other guy, statistically, cannot. He can say, in effect, "My ad is more important and intersting to look at, and I can prove it by paying you more!" He is also saying that he values you, as a customer, more than the guy who can only pay less. Moreover, if I were a potential ad-reader, faced with the prospect of reading "N" ads where "N" is a larger number than I really want to see, presumably I would like to be able to pre-separate the ads into two groups, the ones I'm more likely to want to read and the other pile. Even if I were to totally ignore the fact that I'm more enriched by ads which contain a larger payment (for example if that payment were to go (hypothetically) to a charity of my choice) I should STILL recognize that it is more likely that an interesting, useful ad would be able to afford a larger payment to potential recipients. Therefore, logic suggests that absent any other guide, I should spend my limited time reading preferentially reading the ads where the advertiser was willing (and able) to make a larger payment. Were a mail-reader program equipped with the ability to collect such payments and change the ranking of ads, it seems logical to believe that one of the most frequently-chosen options would be one which presented the highest-paying ads FIRST, then the others in decending order of value. There are multiple levels of self-interest at work here, reinforcing themselves. First, in the short term, advertisers who pay more make you, the customer, richer. But more importantly, if the customer preferentially reads high-payment ads, over the medium-term the advertisers will tend to get the idea and will raise their payments to whatever they feel they must to get your attention. Further, in the long term giving more business to advertisers who pay customers more will tend to strengthen those advertisers, leading to their dominance in the industry. In short, like Darwin's natural-selection concept, the idea of including payments with unsolicited ads will simply take over. In fact, at some point the concept of sending unsolicited product or service advertising (at least on the Internet) WITHOUT including a gratuity will become as gauche as exiting a restaurant without leaving a tip. At that point, the behavior of millions of potential customers will, in effort, ENFORCE the practice, because the vast majority of the public will simply ignore advertising by rude, un-generous people. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: [Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Ehling wrote: > > At 10:31 AM 2/14/97 -0800, you wrote: > <snip> > > > >Having been "on" the net for over 15 years -- and with experience > >in both ends of the censorship/moderation problem (I'm probably > >the only Cypherpunks member to have had a book "banned in Boston"), > >I'm sorry that a handful of sociopaths managed to destroy this > >experiment in anarchy, but I suspect that this was inevitable. The experiment in anarchy continues full speed. Cypherpunks is not dead, although it will take the newly created online communities to pick up steam. Cypherpunks mailing list simply expanded and took another form. Again, thanks to John Gilmore for running this list for years. His job required a lot of dedication and effort and I am thankful to him for what he did for it. cypherpunks(a)toad.com enhanced my understanding of reality immensely. - Igor.

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Re: [Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from Netly]
by Michael Ehling 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:31 AM 2/14/97 -0800, you wrote: <snip> > >Having been "on" the net for over 15 years -- and with experience >in both ends of the censorship/moderation problem (I'm probably >the only Cypherpunks member to have had a book "banned in Boston"), >I'm sorry that a handful of sociopaths managed to destroy this >experiment in anarchy, but I suspect that this was inevitable. > >Martin Minow >minow(a)apple.com > For the FWIW dept: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Hmm...yes I agree. Handful of sociopaths. Inevitable? Perhaps. On one hand anarchy, on the other control. Free-wheeling vs. stifling. Complete free speech vs. censorship. Oh, sure. You can always say that one is more "right" than the other. But I believe everyone sees the validity of both sides...whether you agree with them is another thing. So, we seem stuck between the two. And yet, they say there is always a third option. We just need some time to pull away and see it. This "experiment in anarchy" may be coming to an end. But I like your choice of words: "experiment." We've learned a great deal through this one. Perhaps next time we'll structure things differently. Who knows? Long after the last packet leaves cyhperpunks(a)toad.com, the spirit, the ideas and ideals will remain. Take good care, Michael Ehling mehling(a)ibm.net

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Re: Good Bye Cypherpunks!
by John W. Noerenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:07 PM -0500 2/14/97, Vin McLellan wrote: > > So now we ourselves burn the village in order to save it. > > <nostalgic sigh> > > How American! > Vin, your words are poignant and heartfelt. To be honest, I share your feelings (but I can't help but be amused that having recently decided to resubscribe after a lengthy absence, I returned just in time to wallow into a sea of discontent -- sorta like walking out the door of the cabin and all the snow on the roof falling on your head -- you're cold, you're wet, and you feel pretty damn stupid to boot). However, the denizens of this place are a resourceful lot. If alt.cypherpunks doesn't work out, if the distributed mailing lists don't work, we'll try something else. I don't think anyone is ready to give up, yet. best, john noerenberg jwn2(a)qualcomm.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart. -- David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars, 1995 --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Excerpt on SPAM from Edupage, 11 February 1997
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:06 AM 2/15/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 10:19 AM -0600 2/15/97, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > >>I much prefer the plan where a potential mail correspondant includes an >>e-cash dollar directly cashable by me. If I like the mail (and the >>sender), I throw the dollar away and the sender goes on the approved >>list. If not, I keep the dollar, and the sender goes on the twit list. >>Paper junk mail costs an advertiser more than $1 per piece, so they'd >>still be getting a bargain. And potentially, some receivers may throw >>away the dollar and welcome the spam. > >The basic flaw in all of these schemes is that they are "top-down" >solutions, imposed on the market for invented reasons. There we must disagree. Not that "top-down" imposed solutions won't generally work, I agree with that. Rather, I suggest that there are valid and logical market-driven reasons that people, both buyers and sellers, would want to adopt the system I've proposed. The benefits for the recipient of the payment-containing spam/advertising are obvious. He gets money. Admittedly it is less obvious why a seller would want to pay for what he seemed to previously got for free, but that's more-or-less the case. More in a moment. [snip] >However, just "making up" a fee--as Roy does here, and as Jim Bell and >others have done before--is not a solution either. Nor does it stand any >chance of being "enforced" (for a large number of reasons I won't get into >here). >--Tim May Yes, the charge will be "enforced"...by the market! Here's how. "Spam" in other media is termed "advertising" or "junk mail." And advertisers pay good money for it, precisely because that it will drum up enough business to not only pay for the ad rates, but also make some profit as well. They're apparently correct, because those companies stay in business for years or decades. Now, you'd probably imagine that businessmen would like to see the cost of their advertising drop. Superficially, you'd be right, but in reality if the cost of advertising on TV or radio or newspapers is an essential element of the system. To understand why, imagine that the price of such advertising dropped by a factor of 100. Suddenly, anybody doing ads could do ten times as many, for a tenth the total cost, or any such similar ratio. Or thousands of companies whose products didn't previously profit enough for such ads would now be able to do them, as well. The airwaves would be flooded. There wouldn't be enough time for entertainment, or news, or much of anything other than ads. Worse, since total advertising revenue would probably be down by at least a factor of 25, even assuming "only" a 4x increase in ad volume, there would be far less money available for producing good shows. With fewer, worse shows, and many more ads, the average viewers would stay away in droves. Pretty soon, the VALUE of that advertising to the advertiser would drop...to 1/100 of what it was before. The newspapers would, likewise, be flooded with ads. Even local newspapers would look like the Sunday New York Times. And the current newspaper reader might as well stay away, because it would be a rare page that actually contained an article, and was not filled with ads. Junk mail, if the TOTAL cost (paper, printing, labelling, mailing, etc) dropped by a factor of 100, our mailboxes would be filled with paper three times a day, maybe more often. Well, actually this is not true. There are other effects which would limit this progression. For example, as ad space went up, people would watch/read less, so advertisers won't be motived to place ads even if they are free. If junk mail was free, nobody would have the time to read most of it, and it would go into the trash even faster than it does today. In effect, if nothing else limited this advertising, our patience (or lack of it) would do so. The _value_ of that advertising would drop to zero, along with its cost. The end result, I argue, would be occasional low-value, sporadic advertising that "nobody" reads and everybody hates. Sound familiar? On the Internet, it's called, "spam." Classic Internet-type spam is, essentially, a "zero-cost" ad. Not _exactly_ zero cost, but pretty close, at least in terms of bare cash outlay. What limits Internet-spam is that if it's overdone (or, some would argue, done at all!) an advertiser ends up pissing off the reader, making him even less likely to purchase the goods or services the spammer/advertiser was offering. At that point, in effect the cost of that advertising is "infinite," because the outlay of zero money caused a _reduction_ in sales. An advertiser can't force a customer to buy, and he knows it. But what he wants is the customer's time and attention, even if there's no guarantee of a sale. Really, what he wants is to buy the attention of a potential customer, maybe only few a few seconds or a minute or so. That's what advertising does. But like an ad in a newspaper or a commercial on TV (which the target customer can ignore, mute, or walk away from) there is no guarantee of contact. So how, you'll ask, can the "free money with spam" deal be "enforced"? Well, it can't, if your definition of "enforced" includes merely the idea of some higher legal authority like a government or a trade organization or something. But if you include the idea of the participants in the market, themselves, "enforcing" such a payment, it can. Let's suppose, for simplicity's sake, that we are considering two types of advertisers. One has a product that few people want. Not NONE, just few. It's either poor quality, or too expensive (compared to its perceived value), or just not particularly interesting to the majority of the public. The other has a product that far more people want. It's good, or is seen to be inexpensive, or is interesting. Now, the former advertiser must put out far more ads to make a given buck than the latter. The latter advertiser wants and needs the attention of any given potential customer more than the former, because the latter is far more likely to satisfy the customer's curiosity and desires and be able to do business with him. In short, the purveyor of products that more people want (products which are more likely to interest the average potential advertisement reader...) can AFFORD to pay a larger amount of money to a given ad-recipient than can the other advertiser, the seller of junk. Logic suggests that in the competition for "share of mind," the good-product seller would choose to give a larger amount of money to any given ad-recipient, in order to attract his attention and distinguish him from the other guy, if nothing else. After all, that's the one thing HE CAN DO that the other guy, statistically, cannot. He can say, in effect, "My ad is more important and intersting to look at, and I can prove it by paying you more!" He is also saying that he values you, as a customer, more than the guy who can only pay less. Moreover, if I were a potential ad-reader, faced with the prospect of reading "N" ads where "N" is a larger number than I really want to see, presumably I would like to be able to pre-separate the ads into two groups, the ones I'm more likely to want to read and the other pile. Even if I were to totally ignore the fact that I'm more enriched by ads which contain a larger payment (for example if that payment were to go (hypothetically) to a charity of my choice) I should STILL recognize that it is more likely that an interesting, useful ad would be able to afford a larger payment to potential recipients. Therefore, logic suggests that absent any other guide, I should spend my limited time reading preferentially reading the ads where the advertiser was willing (and able) to make a larger payment. Were a mail-reader program equipped with the ability to collect such payments and change the ranking of ads, it seems logical to believe that one of the most frequently-chosen options would be one which presented the highest-paying ads FIRST, then the others in decending order of value. There are multiple levels of self-interest at work here, reinforcing themselves. First, in the short term, advertisers who pay more make you, the customer, richer. But more importantly, if the customer preferentially reads high-payment ads, over the medium-term the advertisers will tend to get the idea and will raise their payments to whatever they feel they must to get your attention. Further, in the long term giving more business to advertisers who pay customers more will tend to strengthen those advertisers, leading to their dominance in the industry. In short, like Darwin's natural-selection concept, the idea of including payments with unsolicited ads will simply take over. In fact, at some point the concept of sending unsolicited product or service advertising (at least on the Internet) WITHOUT including a gratuity will become as gauche as exiting a restaurant without leaving a tip. At that point, the behavior of millions of potential customers will, in effort, ENFORCE the practice, because the vast majority of the public will simply ignore advertising by rude, un-generous people. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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7.9 cpm long-distance
by remove＠structuremg.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Starway Telecommunications Inc. Announces . . . 7.9 cpm flat rate long-distance period. Anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US for 7.9 cpm, including your own state! Calls to Canada at 9.9! Canada to Canada at 7.9 too! Calling cards - 9.9 cpm! It's unbelievable! Don't worry about switching carriers, you don't need to. Still waiting for the mystical "BLACKBOX" technology? We've got the low rates secure NOW without the box and we will be the first ones with the boxes when they are released! Other companies promise it - we've GOT it NOW!! Contracts have been signed between a major health related network marketing firm called Neways, with 750,000 distributors and grossing $100 million in 1996, and each of the top three long distance carriers, to create Starway Telecommunications Inc. Low international rates will be released later this week! Cellular long-distance rumored to be at 7.9 as well. And cellular service will be available in another month. Pagers and many other services will be available soon! For more information check out my webpage - http://www.structuremg.com/program/starways.htm Sounds like an incredible company, doesn't it? They are! Want to learn how you can profit from this amazing opportunity? Check out the website. We are now accepting applications for distributors. Don't pass up this timelyopportunity. Save money on your long-distance and make some money! Bryant Salus Structure Marketing Group ************************************************************** If you wish to be removed from our future mailings simply reply with "REMOVE" in the subject and place your email address in the body. You must do this correctly to be removed. **************************************************************

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John Who? / WAS--Re: [Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Again, thanks to John Gilmore for running this list for years. His > job required a lot of dedication and effort and I am thankful to him > for what he did for it. cypherpunks(a)toad.com enhanced my understanding > of reality immensely. I certainly hope that the lack of posts expressing gratitude to John Gilmore for his maintenance of the CypherPunks list on toad.com for all these years is merely because those who have benefitted from his efforts are expressing their thanks via private email to him. Certainly, as Igor has indicated, he did not just sit on his butt playing with Little Peter while 'the machine' ran itself and provided the CypherPunks with a home for both rational discourse and mad ramblings. There are quite a few people, ranging from long-term members to passers-by who have had their horizons broadened by the list, and I would hope that they are appreciative of the fact that the mechanics of bits and bytes underlying the distribution of our grand soliloquys came at the expense of a considerable portion of his own time and energy. I know that I am. Toto

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Still no sign of alt.cypherpunks heirarchy at Netcom
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm tapping my toes, druming my fingers and waiting... --Steve

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Re: Why Digital Video Disks are late to market
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone seen discussions on how these protection mechanisms can be circumvented? >http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/news/97/942news/encryp.html > >To summarize, the Digital Video Disk standard contains an encryption >standard for copyright and anti-piracy protection. however, "some U.S. >PC and silicon vendors have just about abandoned hope of keeping to >their revised launch schedules for DVD-enabled systems." [snip] >A solution may be in the offing within days. Some sources said late last >week that Matsushita [who owns license rights] and key U.S. computer >companies may resolve the software-licensing issues by the end of this >week. The PC industry seeks amendments to the licensing-agreement language >that would result in equivalent treatment of software- and hardware-based >CSS decryption. > >... there apparently has been some speculation among the U.S. PC community >that Matsushita may be stonewalling on the software-licensing issue so that >it can establish its hardware-based decryption solution in the marketplace. > --Steve

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Re: PGP key compromise with multiple independent encryptions of same message?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:27 AM 2/17/97 -0500, David Coe wrote: >If I were to PGP-encrypt the same exact message to a number of >different people, each copy with that person's public key, would >I be making it easy (or easier) for one (or a group) of those >recipients to compromise another recipient's private key? If you're doing it as N separate messages, you're using N separate IDEA session keys; IDEA's strong enough that's no risk, especially since they'll be using separate Initialization Vectors. If you use the multiple-recipient capability, which uses one copy of the message encrypted with one session key, and separate headers with the session key encrypted with each public key. If PGP didn't take precautions to prevent it, there are attacks on RSA which can be used when you encrypt the same message with different RSA keys. However, PGP pads the session key with different random padding for each session-key-encrypted-with-public-key header, so they're different messages, so there's no risk there either. So don't keep worrying about it; use whichever is more convenient. (But it was worth worrying about once. :-) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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