I just signed onto this list. What the hell is all this nonsense that I hear about mandating PGP signed messages?
I thought the whole grassroots crypto thing was about protecting privacy rights and individual liberty and all that. So what if someone wants to post a message to cypherpunks AND DOES NOT WANT ANYONE TO BE ABLE TO PROVE THEY WROTE THE MESSAGE. Whether because they fear legal prosecution, or some other social consequence down the line, or whatever
Of course we all agree with you there, but as someone else mentioned, users would be perfectly free to sign with a _pseudonymous_ key. My key wouldn't have to be in the name of "Jonathan Rochkind," it could be "Dirk the Destroyer", or whatever else I wanted it to be. I'm not sure if Eric is suggesting that everyone submit their public key to the list or not. If he is, then things would be made a bit dificult, as you would have to make your one-time-only anonymous key, send it to toad.com, wait for it to be recognized, and _then_ send your message to the list. Assuming that not only do I not want your messages traceable to Jonathan Rochkind, but I also don't want them traceable to _each other_, then I'd have to make a new key before sending each message, and go through that whole rigamarole each time. I'm not how often people actually _would_ desire to do such a thing (generally, it's important to most people to build up a good reputation, pseudonymous or otherwise), but.... I agree you have a good point that it's important the list be set up so it's possible to contribute to it anonymously/pseudonomously. And that _some_ implementations of what Eric is suggesting might make that either impossible or just a pain in the ass (and we probably dont' want to do either). There are probably other implementations that wouldn't have this problem. Although I would still oppose them, pretty much on the grounds Tim May has been ranting about. (and I do mean ranting in the best way. :) ). People should pretty much be able to do what they want, and I don't see any compelling reason to force people to sign their messages whether they like it or not.