At 5:22 PM 03/07/96, jim bell wrote:
Wouldn't help "Bob" in the least. And you didn't read what I wrote very carefully, either: Notice that I said, "under a different name." In other words, the source of the note does not identify the user name under which the illegal activity is promised to occur. Cancelling this particular fellow's account does NOTHING to prevent the illegal activity from occurring by other, unidentified users, and "Bob" knows it.
How is this differnet then me calling up AOL and saying "Using a friend's account whose password I have, I'm going to send child pornography out to many people sometime tommorow"? I don't know if it is or not, but hopefully it's the same. As long as anonymous remailers are legally identical to ISPs, I think we don't have to worry too much becuase ISPs are now serious money-making businesses with lots to spend on lobbying and legal fees, and will fight any laws that effect them such. Whether this Leahy bill is passed or not, clearly AOL is not going to quietly shut down their entire company after receiving such a phone call. And they can't really do anything to stop the theoretical next-day child porn mailing either. [If you like, have the phone caller threaten to send out encrypted child porn, just to make it more perfect an example.] So it would be beneficial to present anonymous remailers as just another sort of internet service provider. And we only really have to worry when there are laws that seem to apply to anon remailers but not AOL.