From: greg@ideath.goldenbear.com (Greg Broiles) Date: Fri, 26 Mar 93 01:14:00 PST I've got my net access becuase I pay UUNET roughly $50/month for it - and I get my own domain name, with as many hosts (and as many users on those hosts) as I care to set up...... It's this slippery notion of 'accountability' that is perhaps at the root of this 'anonymity' problem - the idea that there's gonna be some hell to pay if somebody writes to 'postmaster@leviathan.com', and complains about Chris Jones. The fact is, you can mail to 'postmaster@goldenbear.com' and whine all you like, it's just another alias for the same damn person (me). I think there are going to be more & more people like me in the future - I *am* my boss, the postmaster, and the sysadmin - and if people don't like what I do or say on the net, that's just too damn bad. Well, there is still *some* accountability --- if you do something really wretched, and someone complains to UUNET, won't UUNET at least tell that person who is paying for that link, and if you do something really egregious, and UUNET gets enough complaints, will UUNET shut you down? I suspect that it would take something really serious to cause UUNET to shut you down --- for example, if you started sending child porn, which might enable the Feds to seize *UUNET*'s computers --- but there is still some limited amount of accountability, and potential retribution if you do something which enough people considers is wrong. If we lived in a world where it was easy to filter out anonymous {mail, news}, and the anonymous poster had to *pay* for each octet of {mail, news} that he/she posted, then I suspect that a lot of objections to Anonymous mail and news would die down. Many people have said this repeatedly, and I agree with them. Unfortunately, we do not live in such a world now, and pretending that we are in such a world (by answering people's complaints with promises of vaporware) is just going to make enemies. But by working towards such a world, so that people can get all of the benefits of anonymity without forcing *other* people to pay the costs of anonymity --- that is certainly something which should be applauded. - Ted