-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:58 AM -0500 12/20/97, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: <SNIP>
I also wouldn't trust Lance Cottrell. He's selling privacy for the $$, not for the ideology; he'll bend over the moment he thinks there's more $$ in bending over, which is usually the case. Remember how Sameer Parekh's C2Net used to try to peddle a "privacy ISP" because he failed miserable and diversified into peddiling shitty software and making idiotic legal threats? He happily pulled plugs bases on content, while at the same time stating in court papers that he doesn't censor content. What a pathological liar.
I am very glad some helpful anonymous individual forwarded this note to me. These days I only read a filtered version of the Cypherpunks, although I host one of the unfiltered nodes, and Dr. Vulis has been in my kill file for some time. I am a bit startled at his assumption that because I charge for my services that I would bend at the first sign of trouble or pressure. Allow me to clarify my business interests. The Mixmaster software I created is free and licensed under GNU Copyleft. I do not and never have charged for the use of the Mixmaster remailer I run at mixmaster@remail.obscura.com. At this time we charge for anonymous ISP accounts, shell accounts and web hosting, and for the Anonymizer. I don't think anyone would every expect me to offer free Internet services with technical support. We also charge for unrestricted use of The Anonymizer (a free unlimited trial with 30 sec. delay is available to anyone). We did not want to charge for use of the Anonymizer, but the advertising supported model for the service fell through when advertisers turned out to be smart enough to see that the whole point of The Anonymizer is to keep them from gathering the data which is the whole reason the like to advertise on the Internet in the first place. The Anonymizer is not like a remailer in the resources it consumes. I have run remailers from home machines over 14.4kbps modems. The Anonymizer will overload a T1 (up to 1000 ms ping times) by its self. This translates to approximately $2000 of generosity per month, more than I can afford by a wide margin. As to my ideology, I think the fact that I run many of my services for free, and the rest with a limited free option, and that I could double or triple my income if I closed shop and went to work for someone else, speak for themselves. As long as privacy tools are free and run by hobbyists they remain, on the whole, toys. Fees allow me to have several people working full time to provide technical support, software development, and other services. I think anonymity is important. I have thought so for many years. I have put my time and efforts where my mouth is. I think that my contributions have not been insignificant. I hope that the public feels that privacy is important too, or I am wasting my time. The fact that they are willing to pay for strong privacy and anonymity shows that they do. Dr. Vulis' attack on Sameer was much worse than his attack on me. It is totally off base. Sameer handed off most of his "privacy ISP" business to me. The reason for this was not that it was failing, but that the software side of the business was so much more successful. About half his efforts were going toward a service generating about 10% of his revenues. Not to focus his efforts would have been very poor business practice. I don't care to be involved in long flame wars, or pointless and endless arguments, so I will not be following this thread on the list. My record, reputation, and positions are well documented, and easy to research. Anyone who wants the truth should have no difficulty finding it. -Lance Cottrell - ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki@infonex.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. http://www.infonex.com/~loki/ "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche - ---------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNJ2fLsogYxMMzklZAQGTVAf9E2X5gbOGsWP93lJiYEOQ2vtlmLhQJFSC v576ehJoqZZ402eFsT/rS/NQSYkknRr6isXKfvDarRnHy39ARfYQuZxmeSH9qOyP rIvYG6jCExubGoNFlFds4mEP/7SOrijnkaSqt1M0lrYjKHVhWcP1JjwRsRlCy2D2 sG+DzufbwoVLvx8cGtT5VhrMH/ZTCud98m7/0XMIL7+Ss7HzqGFtr/WIjwXRUmmK eOct3is9p1SPeMgpkhkZCObvBwi/lNxWVU/LqhXzmRxQgbM85AST5omp2WWGk7Xp ODmNmmzwNuVPvJGAchHibQpqxApheyK2yQRLTjT5foryT12mwV9xbQ== =bsCt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----