At 06:12 AM 3/11/96 -0500, Gary Howland wrote:

Dan Weinstein writes: Dan says "you" wrote:

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Question: What, exactly, is the motivation of a person running an anonymous remailer? His motivation is clear: To allow people to send anonymously untraceable messages. Assuming he's of ordinary levels of intelligence or beyond, he is aware that somebody may some day use his system for illegal purposes. You're going to have to explain why a court _CAN'T_ interpret this as being in violation of the law.

If I rent cars, someone might one day use a car rented from me in a robbery. Does that make my an accessary? NO.

This is an unfair analogy. Now if you had said that you rented cars without asking for proof of identification, thus making your car hire centre very useful to robbers, that may more closely resemble the anon-remailer situation. Gary

Exactly! I'm glad you noticed, and commented. As you've noticed, I keep getting faulty reasoning from people who SHOULD know better. Analogies are extremely useful, but if they are poorly crafted, they do little more than show the limitations of their author.