On Fri, 30 May 1997, Tim May wrote:
(I've removed 9 of the addresses from this response.)
Thanks, those were the addresses that Mr. Pomes sent his message to including my employer and the abuse address for my employer's provider. Since he was accusing me of being unresponsive, I figured I should probably send my response to those folks as well.
And just who is "the operator of the cypherpunks list"
At the time it was whomever was moderating the non-flames list, before that it was probably John Gilmore, because he runs toad.com where it used to be hosted. I haven't been on cypherpunks since I was in college, or really paid much attention to it. I can probably dig through my mail archive to find out exactly who I corresponded with, because my memory for names is horrible, but frankly I'm lazy, and don't really want to do this.
And why would he or she or they have anything to say about blocking remailers?
Standard Policy. Some people don't want to get anonymous mail, and my remailer (and all others to my knowlege) has the capability of blocking mail sent to particular addresses. If the address is a mailing list, I require the maintainer of the list to actually request the block. Most lists have a single person (or group of people) who informally "run" the list. Often it's whomever is administrating the machine that is acting as the list exploder, sometimes a list moderator, etc. etc.
Neither May nor Gilmore nor Hughes have any say over blocking remailers, blocking use of remailers, etc.
Admittedly, I did pull those names out of mostly thin air, as they are the people who I feel can speak most authoritatively for the wishes of the list. Cypherpunks is an unusual example of a list without an authority (or with lots of authorities, depending on how you look at it). But, really, in the unlikely event that I got mail from one of those three asking for the cypherpunks list to be blocked, I would be likely to honor it. I seriously doubt that this would ever happen, though.
I mean no disrespect to Jeff, but even getting involved in the slightest way in debates about remailer traffic and what should/should not be blocked is what can only be called a "conceptual error."
Agreed (and no disrespect taken). My posting was a quick comment stating why I refuse to tell my remailer not to mail to the cypherpunks list. Shit, if any mailing list should be anonymous-mail friendly it should be this one.
Ideal mixes, which today's remailers are of course only an approximation of, do not pass and reject messages based on content, or even on sources and destinations. The ideal mix is a soulless black box executing certain protocols.
(Practicality may dictate that a remailer place certain minimal, and hopefully publicized, constraints on the process, e.g., no sending to whitehouse.gov, no sending to hundreds of addresses, whatever.)
Exactly... The reason that blocking by source or destination exists is to keep the remailers operating, and the remailer operators out of court. In an ideal world, everyone would be comfortable with the concept of anonymity and blocking techniques would be unnecessary. Right now that isn't the case, and I don't see this changing for the better anytime soon. So, I have to have policies like "if you want a block, send me mail from the account you want blocked, if you want a mailing list blocked, then get whomever is in charge of the list to contact me." I don't (and can't) block anything based on content... it's either all or nothing. In other words, I can't tell the remailer not to send anti-Tim May postings unless I tell it not to send anything at all. I know better than to think that you or most cypherpunks readers want this. We're on the same page, Tim. -Jeff ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When they came for the 2nd Amendment, I said nothing, for I owned no gun Then the sixth was next to go, and I remained silent, as I was not on trial They took away the fourth, and I said nothing, as I had nothing to hide And then they came for the First, and I could say nothing."