-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 04:58 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Wei Dai wrote:
An interesting way to look at what happened is that John Gilmore owns the name "cypherpunks@toad.com" and has chosen to exercise that ownership. [...] I suspect that the hierarchical nature of name ownership on the Internet today will be an important technological barrier for the establishment of truly anarchic virtual communities. Unless this problem is solved, the closest we'll come is pseudo-anarchies that exist with the tolerance of beneficent dictators.
Wei Dai's message raises an important question: what is the relationship between ownership and list content or quality? Much of the pathology of the list in the past few months can be characterized as a "tragedy of the commons" problem, where several private actors are seeking to maximize the gain they can extract from a finite and commonly owned (or unownable) resource. The resource in this case is the "reputation capital" which has built up in the terms "cypherpunks" and "cypherpunks@toad.com". Dmitri Vulis' behavior, where he seeks to punish the list for failing to punish or ostracize Tim May after Tim was disrespectful to Vulis, is an attempt to achieve private gain (public retribution) at the expense of public goods (the continuing quality and good name of the list). Several authors have characterized John Gilmore and Sandy Sandfort's actions with respect to moderation and the list as an attempt to monopolize or appropriate the good name of the list for their own private purposes. (I do not think that the latter characterization is accurate, but it is at least popular.) I suspect that many people will see at least one "tragedy of the commons" problem related to the list. Some free-market economists have suggested that the solution to "tragedy of the commons" problems is private ownership - that where economic actors are given ownership over what might have been owned in common, that they will seek to maximize their long-term gain through careful management and will not adopt wasteful or harmful short-term strategies which would have otherwise seemed attractive. That view (that private ownership is likely to eliminate or at least minimize wasteful or nonoptimal use of resources) has historically been a popular one on the list. Yet private ownership of the list (or of the list's most concrete identity, the label "cypherpunks") seems wrong to many people. Are mailing lists an example of a situation where "the tragedy of the commons" is not a useful metaphor? Are mailing lists an example of "public goods" where private ownership is impossible, or should be avoided? If not, shouldn't we work towards more private ownership, not less? Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for good use of resources? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMvcZgv37pMWUJFlhAQEf6gf9FAPo+nF/h3ZAZTTzmZZLpj57xDvpcgKW oXCvalcY20s+ah26SFP5cInGSxgOy+UC5zxAeEz/Oo/M/5n1LVZTFVg7f3PORgJW VwY7uVhqvekaX/vNYutg7RpwvhdEz5dneipZMaFOWm0M+8ipZ5Ffb6vNLpRd6h2v Hf+zF6aTvleTxQX1e3C8nrL1hhXd8HX12nK/Kz4/lOyRYvKw//VxtVa3++2M158t YtBXQKLlYAW/NMUhMMSuqvkWbCW3PrDBhpsZRXXqWyruIeV3TKHlR4N3Rru74wHj DPNH8sek3Ql8sjA0BbziUqbC15mLH6QSZbxy4MPVwc2s8r4Ff6t1Ew== =QFGr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles@netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |