At 12:38 PM 9/4/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
In the next five years or so, I would not be suprised to see a call for federal licensing of remailers. Some of the more mainstream remailer operators might even go along with it, eventually, calling for a "voluntary-mandatory" code of conduct and industry self- regulation.
Rather than a direct ban on remailers, I think a creeping expansion of the DMCA is more likely, and a greater threat. Instead of making remailing a criminal act - where only law enforcement is able to chase violators - it's more effective to change liability rules, empowering lots of aggrieved parties to do their own takedowns. The civil version of the DMCA has already been more effective in limiting programmer speech than 20 years of ITAR and BXA regs were - not because the penalties are scarier, but because they're swifter, more certain, and applied to upstream providers instead of actual infringers, which changes those providers into reluctant (but effective) local enforcers. (this is just a corporate/institutional version of "the policeman inside", discussed eventually on the list every time the "make bombs d00d" topic occurs - see <http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg01213.html> <http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1996.08.29-1996.09.04/msg00426.html> <http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1997.05.08-1997.05.14/msg00339.html>) Whereas many people reasonably calculated that their odds of being successfully prosecuted under a criminal enforcement scheme are very low - just look at the ratio of law enforcement agents to individuals using the Internet - broadening the categories of "enforcer" and "viable target" changes that calculation dramatically. By making every content provider a virtual prosecutor, and every ISP/web host/web page publisher/remailer a target, it's a lot easier to find someone to sue - and with that kind of risk in the air, potential targets get a lot more conservative and interested in suppressing the behavior in question.
I can envision a legal situation that is close to the Napster-Gnutella controversy, where the entry points to the network are targets for the RIAA/MPAA lawyers. Similarly, the entry points to the remailer network may be targets under such a legal structure.
Yeah - at least if the content isn't nested-encrypted, such that there's no reasonable way to identify content or its source. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids