"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> writes:
[...] Given that _political_ discussions of crypto are now encouraged in _talk_.politics.crypto (emphasis added) rather than sci.crypt, do you think political and social essays dealing with crypto anarchy, offshore databases, undermining governments, etc., will be welcome in the "comp" hierarchy?
I rather doubt it. And I would bet that if comp.org.cypherpunks is ever approved, those who dislike crypto anarchy and sociopolitical chatter will use the "comp" name to try to suppress such discussions. [...]
I think that the statement of our desire to create a new group should clearly indicate that the discussion group is of a special nature due to the tight integration of technical and political discussions. Cypherpunks are trying to achieve political goals through technological means, so it is difficult, and not regarded as desirable to produce a false dichotomy for discussions. As an example, we could cite the Linux newsgroups like comp.os.linux.misc. Linux is a piece of software written to help achieve a political goal, and, thus, in the Linux groups it is not considered off-topic to philosophize about these goals or the future as and after Linux knocks Microsoft out of the market. :) talk.politics.crypto and sci.crypt can, then, easily be argued against since the discussions there are much more restricted than what we desire.
[...] You really think whoever is spamming the list with ASCII art and broke into Paul's account to post hundreds of "John Gilmore is a cocksucker" posts will back off because of the "dedication" of some? To the perverse personality, this is merely a greater challenge and temptation. [...]
Given that you have been on the list a great deal longer than I, I do respect that you may have deeper insights into the mind of the "perverse personality" than I do. I, however, am not aware of evidence that the person or persons behind the disruptions since the middle of last year would try to interrupt a democratic USENET creation vote. My recollection of the history is that the initial attacks were directed at you personally. Dr. Vulis was blamed for them and thus, apparently, became the target of nasty e-mailings to his site. He responded to this by spamming the list with rather large articles on Armenian war crimes and forwardings of the messages. At that point Gilmore booted Vulis. Gilmore then became a target of attack and, it seems that many (presumably) innocent bystanders were unwittingly subscribed to the list in an effort to cause more work, and, hence, annoyance to Gilmore when they complained about the unwanted mail. At this point many new personalities seemed to materialize out of nowhere bent on doing nothing more than fueling flame wars. Then the "moderation experiment" (fiasco)... I do not see in this evidence, however, that any of the disruptors would target the process of the creating a new group USENET group. At first, the the disruptor could easily have rationalized that anonymous, personal attacks were fair play, since anarachists favour no explicit rules with regards to speech. After Vulis was removed by Gilmore the disruptor could then rationalize that "anything goes" since list had then passed from a state of anarchy to one with Gilmore trying to decide who could or not be on the list. (I do not think that these conjectued rationalizations are valid myself, but am just trying to give an my thoughts on the psychology of the "perverse personality".) USENET nesgroup creation is whole new ball game, however. There are explicitly defined rules and the process is intended to be democratic. If my guess as to the identity of the person masterminding the attacks is correct, that person seems to have democratic sympathies or, at least, be strongly opposed to even hints of censorship, so I do not think he would attempt to disrupt the process of deciding if a new group is created or not since that would both be inferring in a democratic process and an attempt to prevent a group of people from creating a discussion group, and thus, himself, becoming a censor. (This makes me think that given that the process is intended to be democratic, it may be more fitting that a more anarchisticly method is used to create an "alt.*" group for cyphepunks than the democratic one used to create a "comp.*" one.) In any case, if you have deeper insights than mine into the mind of the disruptor, or evidence that he or she or them would try to disrupt a comp.* newsgroup creation proces, I would be eager to hear them. Leonard