Brad and ClariNet have already caused one remailer to go down (the operator of it has commented here before and of course can do so again if he sees this), and his comments Saturday night cause me to think he may be considering a test case of some sort. (He is fearful of losing his Associate Press/etc. franchise if he fails to enforce his rights.)
I might be the (ex-)remailer operator in question. I find Brad's lack of knowledge about remailers quite surprising in light of almost 4 hours of conversation devoted solely to this topic, by telephone, over the course of a month. My summary analysis of Brad is: he'll try to scare/bully you into getting what he wants by citing (or imagining) laws upon which he will base prosecution. Prosecution never follows. If you debate his law, he resorts to "You are Netcom's customer; Netcom is my customer; if you want to remain Netcom's customer then you had better toe my line." Persection of more or less potency always follows. I try not to flame, but the greater my contact with Brad---the greater my disdain for him. He is an extremely small-minded man. Brad can't yet even demonstrate a crime. He constantly reports remailer abuses in the form of AP Newswire articles distributed anonymously; and thus (_obviously_) stolen from ClariNet. The AP Newswire, however, is already distributed electronically has a vast army of legitimate direct-subscribers. Brad never offers evidence that the posts actually come from ClariNet, and in fact ***he immediately deletes the posts whenever he sees them*** (and saves no copies!). I have no idea how or why he is allowed to do this. Though it certainly cuts down on `competition'. ............................................................ collins@acm.org Scott Collins