(I have no idea where the virtual nexus of this debate is taking place...I see these addresses copied on the message to which I'm replying: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu, cypherpunks@toad.com, brock@well.com, telstar@wired.com, shabbir@vtw.org, jseiger@cdt.org (Jonah Seiger), Declan McCullagh <declan@eff.org>. I despise such massive cross-contamination of lists and duplication of messages, so I will delete all but the list I am part of, and Jonah Seiger, out of courtesy, as it his message I am replying to.) At 2:23 PM 8/27/96, Jonah Seiger wrote:

"One more round of 'work within the system' vs 'up against the wall!'," he said.

This is an important debate that unfortunately seems to be dividing the net.community when we most need to be united. All of us working on net-policy issues share a common vision and goals - promoting the free flow of information, preserving and enhancing First Amendment values and protecting individual privacy. There are, for better or worse, many different views on the best way to accomplish those objectives, and the debate over who has the right tactics seems to frequently escalate in to religious war.

Meanwhile, our opponents are well organized, determined, and do a much better job of keeping their internal strategic differences to themselves. Perhaps this is part of the reason they keep kicking our butts all over town.

I think it laudable that CDT has chosen to remain in D.C. to "work within the system." Personally, I could never stomach doing this. Nor do I think the Cypherpunks group per se should do it; technological monkeywrenching of the best-laid plans of Leahy, Swinestein, and all the other "mice and men" is so much more effective and satisfying. Yes, as far as legislation goes, the politicians are constantly on the offensive, proposing new and more draconian legislation on a continuing basis. Maybe they hope to wear us out, to create battle fatigue (some say it worked with EFF, but I've heard various reasons given as to why EFF left D.C.). But technology also is winning, in its own way. Web proxies defeat national governments in their plans to limit access. Remailers have transformed the Net. Digital pseudonyms have restored anonymous commentaries to their once-honored place. And the sheer growth of the Net, the Web, and the vast number of connections has made Leahy- and Exon-style control essentially hopeless to enforce. On the specific issue of whether Sen. Leahy is or is not a "friend of the Net," to use him as an example here, I suggest a different approach. Instead of classifying Leahy as a friend or an enemy, or Burns as a friend or an enemy, etc., why not a *ratings system*? As with the "perfect 100%" liberal ratings that the ACLU or somesuch puts out... Thus, we can say "Conrad Burns has scored a 67% on Digital Liberty issues, Patrick Leahy has scored a 42% on these issues, and Dianne Feinstein scored 17%." Determination would have to be made on what the important issues, but this has been done successfully in the past, as with the liberal groups and union groups (and conservative/NRA/family values groups) who "score" candidates. A scoring system has the advantage of looking relatively impartial, and avoids the "friend/enemy" naming, at least in terms of personalities. Thus, one can say to Leahy, "Sorry, Senator, this is just how you score. If you want to score higher in the future, take careful note of what our community thinks is important and vote accordingly." The issues for a scorecard might be accumulated on the Net, with inputs from CDT, VTW, EFF, Cypherpunks, and other interested groups. It could be messy, but perhaps not. Even a *simple* set of principles, picked by almost any of these organizations, would likely be enough to get a reasonable scoring system...it's not as if we all don't know that Leahy's support for the Digital Telephony Bill was a major downcheck--whatever the realpolitik issues were--and that his support of Pro-Code is a major upcheck. The value of scoring is that it takes out the often-painful issues of classifying politicians as "friends" or "enemies." Objective scoring means never having to say you're sorry. --Tim may -- [This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996] And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said: "Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck." So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular Translation, TCM, 1996]