George Gleason writes:

Oh, here goes another Big Bad Corporation abusing our rights...! Well, are there any Libertarians out there who will please speak up for the right of Bidzos & co to earn a legal profit any way they see fit...? Or am I, the token leftist in the crowd, going to stick my neck out solo on this one...?

Pardon my rhetoric, but I find it truly amazing how the much extolled rights of private property can suddenly become a non-issue when you consider you've found a bigger issue. Some of us feel that way about ecology.

I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, and I respect certain types of private property--but not others. When someone "claims" the Amazon jungle, perhaps with the blessings of a corrupt Pope, I don't. (Just and out-of-band example to quickly make the point the even Libertarians can have doubts about some property claims and even have sympathies with radical environmentalists.) The whole cloud of issues surrounding intellectual property, patents on algorithms and methods, the specifics of RSA, and so on, is a complicated set. Discussions on this list and in newsgroups makes this clear. RSADSI has licensed some of their patents to the Clipper folks. What this means is not clear to me. If Clipper (or related things) is ever _mandated_, with alternatives outlawed, then the government would effectively have granted an exclusive franchise to RSADSI, and others, sort of like _mandating_ MacDonald's hamburgers as the national standard and requiring license fees be paid to MacDonald's every time a hamburger is made or bought. So, in answer to George's question, this Libertarian is angry at the growing police state (RICO, civil forfeiture, no knock searches, the War on Drugs, national socialist health care, wars on several fronts, etc.) and fears the imminent outlawing of unapproved encryption. -Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.