C2Net was wrong to censor the cypherpunks list in the guise of moderation. It was wrong to send threatening letters to people who claimed its products were weak. The whole moderation/censorship experiment was a terrible mistake. The actions taken by C2Net were completely unjustified. At the same time, it is dishonest to say that its products have backdoors or are weak. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. It may stretch the intellects of some cypherpunks beyond the breaking point to hold these two views about matters at the same time. In the black and white world where some cypherpunks live, a company which tries to prevent criticism is evil, hence it must be fraudulent as well. More mature list readers will recognize that a company or a person can be wrong in some actions while being right in other ways. The burden of proof in claiming that there is a weakness in someone's security product is on those making the claim. Compare the unfounded statements by Vulis with the carefully documented breaks of weak software by Ian Goldberg, David Wagner, John Kelsey, and Bruce Schneier. What if Goldberg and Wagner had claimed that Netscape's RNG seeding was weak, without providing any more evidence than that claim? What if Schneier et al had broken cellular phone encryption without backing it up? They would have been justifiably ignored. If anyone really does believe that C2Net's products have backdoors or weaknesses, why don't they present them? Either they want people to keep using C2Net's supposedly broken products, which reflects badly on them, or they want people to stop but they are unable to present any evidence of these purported weaknesses. When Vulis or anyone else claims Stronghold is broken, ask him why he is presenting his claims in a form which will cause people to keep using this "broken" software. Does he want people to have weak encryption? Is he in favor of backdoors? If not, he would surely present evidence of the weaknesses, if there is any. Make Vulis explain his motivations when he makes these claims.
On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Anonymous wrote:
C2Net was wrong to censor the cypherpunks list in the guise of moderation. It was wrong to send threatening letters to people who claimed its products were weak. The whole moderation/censorship experiment was a terrible mistake. The actions taken by C2Net were completely unjustified.
Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The messages still went out on the unfiltered list. Had he worked for Mc Donald's or the the NYC Sanitiation Department, would you blame them for this as well? -- Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> PGP encrypted email preferred. "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"
Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> writes:
On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Anonymous wrote:
C2Net was wrong to censor the cypherpunks list in the guise of moderation. It was wrong to send threatening letters to people who claimed its products were weak. The whole moderation/censorship experiment was a terrible mistake. The actions taken by C2Net were completely unjustified.
Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The messages still went out on the unfiltered list. Had he worked for Mc Donald's or the the NYC Sanitiation Department, would you blame them for this as well?
Lucky is lying: the censored articles were also filtered from the list which was billed as being unfiltered. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM writes:
Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> writes:
Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The messages still went out on the unfiltered list.
Lucky is lying: the censored articles were also filtered from the list which was billed as being unfiltered.
This is revisionist history. I can't recall any intimation at the time that any messages were filtered from the unfiltered list. Obviously I can't say whether _all_ the censored articles came out on the unfiltered list. But I do know that I received at least one message from Vulis with an unsubstantiated allegation [of a secret backdoor, I think?] in Stronghold on the unfiltered list, as well as some later complaints from Vulis that Sandy's filtering was unfair and hypocritical. Unfortunately I didn't save the original message-- I just wrote it off as the typical Vulis spew. -- Jeff
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The messages still went out on the unfiltered list. Had he worked for Mc Donald's or the the NYC Sanitiation Department, would you blame them for this as well?
Lucky is lying: the censored articles were also filtered from the list which was billed as being unfiltered.
There were 3 lists: cypherpunks-unedited (everything) cypherpunks (moderated by Sandy) cypherpunks-flames (the stuff Sandy rejected) At the time I was subscribed to cypherpunks and cypherpunks-flames in the belief that this would result in getting everything, and save the bandwidth of subscribing to all 3, but allow me to tell what was rejected. I didn't see the censored post at all. This means at least that Sandy didn't post it to either of cypherpunks or cypherpunks-flames. This is consistent with his later admission that he considered Dimitri's comments on Stronghold security as a conflict of interests for him to post, as he was manually posting to both of those lists. Unfortunately I wasn't on cypherpunks-unedited at the time, but I thought that it was immediate send out from toad.com without going via Sandy. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The messages still went out on the unfiltered list. Had he worked for Mc Donald's or the the NYC Sanitiation Department, would you blame them for this as well?
Lucky is lying: the censored articles were also filtered from the list which was billed as being unfiltered.
There were 3 lists:
cypherpunks-unedited (everything) cypherpunks (moderated by Sandy) cypherpunks-flames (the stuff Sandy rejected)
At the time I was subscribed to cypherpunks and cypherpunks-flames in the belief that this would result in getting everything, and save the bandwidth of subscribing to all 3, but allow me to tell what was rejected.
I didn't see the censored post at all. This means at least that Sandy didn't post it to either of cypherpunks or cypherpunks-flames. This is consistent with his later admission that he considered Dimitri's comments on Stronghold security as a conflict of interests for him to post, as he was manually posting to both of those lists.
Unfortunately I wasn't on cypherpunks-unedited at the time, but I thought that it was immediate send out from toad.com without going via Sandy.
Going over my notes I see that at least one of my submissions - the one quoting the C2Net lawyer letter in its entirety - didn't appear even on cypherpunks-unedited. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
Unfortunately I wasn't on cypherpunks-unedited at the time, but I thought that it was immediate send out from toad.com without going via Sandy.
Going over my notes I see that at least one of my submissions - the one quoting the C2Net lawyer letter in its entirety - didn't appear even on cypherpunks-unedited.
I think I saw this claim made before around the time of the "moderation experiment". The only ways I can see that this could have happened are either that: i) John Gilmore started editing cypherpunks-unedited at Sandy/C2net's request ii) cypherpunks-unedited was edited all along by someone (John or Sandy) i) is sort of feasible, perhaps there are others who were on unedited and were counting who could confirm this. Toto I think was. ii) is hard to believe because the fact that something is edited shows -- when the editor is sleeping you get lag. I'm fairly sure I didn't see the C2 legal letter you posted yesterday before. Can anyone else can confirm? Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- when the whole sordid affair went down, particularly Dimitri's charges on faults, and my very strong "discussion" on the possibility Sameer may have cut a deal to save his own skin, thereby making C2 very insecure and very dangerous, I was subscribed to unedited, edited, flame, and announce --sorting them into separate folders just to watch. the premise was that none would be dumped: unedited was all, flame was anything which was not in the edited feed. As to sameer, I was not terribly kind as to his general morality, or the class morality as a whole. the fed hot water had mysteriously cooled off. unedited was clearly delayed during the day. I never saw dimitri's letter, and I would have, since dimitri was one of the louder (and, frankly, a bit too vituperative). there was a time I read most everything Dimitri posted just for the inanities and humour. Dimitri (dont get a fat head, sucker) is more bark than bite; did your mother repress you as a child, Dimitri? I sent one small comment on C2 backdoor possibilities for ass-saving in the wee hours, it went through. the others did not, I thought maybe I had missed it, and checked DejaVu and the archives (which are not always the best) --so I reposted in the wee hours. likewise, tim copied several of his protests which never made it to the unedited list. so, in addition to the travesty of "moderating" the free speech list, Dimitri non-withstanding, they lied to us in regards the unedited list. as for Sandy's excuse that a few blatant examples from Dimitri placed him personally in double jeopardy --that's pure hyperbole, and it's fetid. and real low for a man with a law ticket. secondly, there should have been absolutely no hold on the unedited list and therefore no liability. no question in my mind that Gilmore, Sandfort, Sameer, and whoever else had their little stinky fingers in the pie were trying to censor them all --just in varying degrees. all of their actions were reprehensible, and from my standpoint, I would not trust any of them to not kick a dog when it was down --or even pour kerosene on a cat's behind. Bad Day in Blackrock. where is Spenced Tracy and Gary Cooper when High Noon really does join The Greatest Show on Earth? -------- previous messages follow for reference --------- on or about 971006:0936 Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> purported to expostulate: +Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes: +> Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: +> > Unfortunately I wasn't on cypherpunks-unedited at the time, but I +> > thought that it was immediate send out from toad.com without going via +> > Sandy. +> +> Going over my notes I see that at least one of my submissions - the +> one quoting the C2Net lawyer letter in its entirety - didn't appear +> even on cypherpunks-unedited. +I think I saw this claim made before around the time of the "moderation +experiment". +The only ways I can see that this could have happened are either that: + i) John Gilmore started editing cypherpunks-unedited at +Sandy/C2net's + request + ii) cypherpunks-unedited was edited all along by someone (John or +Sandy) +i) is sort of feasible, perhaps there are others who were on unedited +and were counting who could confirm this. Toto I think was. +ii) is hard to believe because the fact that something is edited shows +-- when the editor is sleeping you get lag. +I'm fairly sure I didn't see the C2 legal letter you posted yesterday +before. +Can anyone else can confirm? +Adam -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBNDmZJ704kQrCC2kFAQHiFgQAtGjl5NMat+rckQk8EcIk2fvOVg9+TP4s dDVHzq+cZkrm+4Lt8h4NiypotJdZIQv6025F+Kzqsut5bGI1foIpZL3N2lGBT4Gy 082MSbk/e+5u5aWAmmUS8/e2fzX88VwuSSUnEOk8ObBWpsA5y4C+c1JgZGQLcE16 P5ezRec5T70= =HQ2M -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (6)
-
Adam Back -
Anonymous -
Attila T. Hun -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
Jeff Barber -
Lucky Green