...

Forgery is a crime and such acts are not justified. - Jai Maharaj

Spamming is a crime (theft of computer resources) and sometimes such acts may be justifiable self-defense. - Martin Pool

The commission of crimes such as forgery and censorship is not an acceptable excuse to stop the flow of information, even if the free flow is perceived by some as a crime. Jai Maharaj jai@mantra.com Om Shanti

At 4:03 PM 7/30/97 -0700, Paul Pomes wrote:

...

Yes, the removal of data from computer networks through forgery is a crime. People who do so are criminals. - Jai Maharaj

Not if it's done through the normal operation of the protocol. - Paul Pomes

While there is a tendency to reconcile atrocities if they are perpetrated long enough, there is serious doubt that forgery and censorship are among them -- no, not in a world that is beginning to learn about true freedom. Jai Maharaj jai@mantra.com Om Shanti

almost totally redundant. Instead of posting 1 message, 1000 messages are posted. The 2nd through 1000th message add no more information than the first. This would not be a problem if the network had infinite bandwidth and storage capabilities.

1. When a message is cross-posted using the "newsgroups:" line only one copy is sent to the news-spool and is seen in all the relevent newsgroups. 2. Bandwidth requirements are no justification for censorship, unless you own the equipment you are removing the messages from, even then it is reprehensible. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199707311120.MAA00669@server.test.net>, on 07/31/97 at 12:20 PM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:

Another longer term way to improve the situation is to charge some small token amount per article, just to encourage people to use it with some intelligence (use cross posts rather than separately reposting to each group).

It is also entirely possible for people to have 'bots which auto-post in response to articles matching keywords, or matching authors. (We've seen a few of these on cypherpunks).

If people want to make a nuisance for others by spewing random garbage via bots to newsgroups, they could post mega bytes of stuff per day and swamp the content. What can you do about this? Charging a small amount per post, or per megabyte would provide a small disincentive for this type of behaviour. However it would never reflect the true cost to USENET bandwidth as a whole.

One interesting idea which has been floated on this list in the past is for authors to have their free posting rate moderated by other peoples ratings of their posts.

One way to implement this is for other people to pay the author for their articles a penny if they like the article. That way people who write things which others find interesting to read get subsidized posting. Is it still free speech if you have to pay for your posts if you're arguing for an unpopular minority?

This will not work!!! Charging for e-mail/news posts will no nothing to prevent spam and more than likely increase the noise on such lists. It is the spamers who have the money to post volumns of their crap. Allso I think you will find that it will be the fanatics who will think it worth the $$$ to get their message out. While I find the various mailling lists & newsgroups of intrest the majority of them are not thet intresting that I would be willing to pay $$$ every time I post a reply to someones questions (most of my posts outside of CP are answering questions on programming,crypto, & OS/2). I think that the overall quality of the newsgroups would decline if you started paying on a per-post basis. It should be noted that the Bandwith issue is a red-herring. It is an antiquated concept from the Fidonet days and does not apply. The bandwith of the USENET has been *PAID IN FULL* by every subscriber to an ISP. The ISP customers pay for their connections to their ISP who in turn pay for their connections to the Access providers who inturn pay for the Backbone. The PIPE has been paid for what goes over it not an issue. If all I want to do with my T1 connection is ship *.jpg files via ftp 24/7 that is no ones busines but my own. If I chooses to use my bandwith to transmit a variety of file formats using various protocols (HTTP,FTP,GOFFER,ARCHIE,...ect) who are you to say that some formats are good and some are not!! (this is not even getting into the content of the data being shiped).

Also, this might be an interesting information market model because technical experts might even find themselves with a well paid job of answering technical questions in newsgroups.

There is a web site that is doing exactly this. They provide forums for users to post technical questions in which "experts" will answer them. Upon receiving the answer the person who posted the question is requested to rate the answer. I haven't been on the site in awhile but the last time I was there they were working on a mechinism to compensate their "experts" for answering questions. They had a point system based on the difaculty of the questions. After registering with them and obtaining a certain number of points for correctly answering questions you would be classified as an "expert" for that forum which then would make you eligable for compensation. I believe all funds were to be generated through web page advertisement. I'll see if I can find the URL for the site and post it to the list. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM+CJB49Co1n+aLhhAQFwPwP/d785GrsF7f9Snv+TPdtXz4fDuLPrdB71 Ho7h/XOn5+dviy/Bn8U82Qo+xyCtCvNfb9Zf6/CvP+TFjAsFZlx/UE0ZYSbcHZS2 48UZqw60bIXW9N0ia9jUpd76FmsobFHHUSo+wRR5CXugNJzlYmoOfgHaRAsW85gR tmzq1Fn5jik= =2wPi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I'm back from the weekend to a large quantity of unanswered e-mail which I'll get to eventually. if you said something of interest in the last week or so, I'll comment on it this week - I hope. But first I'll rant and rave some more on the subject of payment for physical transportation and the snail mail, with the payment for the Internet in mind. Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:

William Geiger MLCVXII <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:

...

In <199707311120.MAA00669@server.test.net>, on 07/31/97

...

at 12:20 PM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:

One way to implement this is for other people to pay the author for their articles a penny if they like the article. That way people who write things which others find interesting to read get subsidized posting. Is it still free speech if you have to pay for your posts if you're arguing for an unpopular minority?

This will not work!!!

Charging for e-mail/news posts will do nothing to prevent spam and more than likely increase the noise on such lists. It is the spamers who have the money to post volumns of their crap.

As I think I pointed out before, the "spammers" would be more willing to spend money to post than the folks who just talk and answer questions. I wouldn't answer questions on comp.unix.questions if I had to pay to do that. Any scheme that requires the poster to pay will dampen signal more than it will damped the noise and thus worsed the signal to noise ratio.

For email spam I disagree. I currently get 10 spams a day or so. All as a result of one unprotected post to a USENET group a few weeks back. Before that I hadn't posted to USENET for a while and the spams had nearly died down.

If the spammer had to pay 1c for each spam, he'd be out of business with his current scatter gun approach. He'd have to get a lot more selective, because it would be in his commercial interests to do so.

I've been getting dramatically less junk e-mail sent to the addresses which I placed on the various "removal" lists. (Maybe 1 or 2 / day, vs 10-20 on the 'control" ones.)

...

Also I think you will find that it will be the fanatics who will think it worth the $$$ to get their message out.

Fine by me, so long as they're paying their way, the NoCems from a reliable rating service will take care of them.

You have more of a point in newsgroups, or mailing lists as the spammer only has to make one post.

Charging for posts in that scenario only makes sense to stop people who spew multiple mega-bytes of robo-spam just to be annoying, and for no commercial gain at all.

NoCems are the real answer to public forums. Spammers will feel less incentive to spam when it becomes clear most people have them filtered out anyway.

...

While I find the various mailling lists & newsgroups of intrest the majority of them are not thet intresting that I would be willing to pay $$$ every time I post a reply to someones questions (most of my posts outside of CP are answering questions on programming,crypto, & OS/2). I think that the overall quality of the newsgroups would decline if you started paying on a per-post basis.

Surely you aren't that prolific a writer that 1c a post would be a burden on you?

I make what 20 posts a day at peak? Often 1 or none some days.

...

It should be noted that the Bandwith issue is a red-herring. It is an antiquated concept from the Fidonet days and does not apply. The bandwith of the USENET has been *PAID IN FULL* by every subscriber to an ISP. The ISP customers pay for their connections to their ISP who in turn pay for their connections to the Access providers who inturn pay for the Backbone. The PIPE has been paid for what goes over it not an issue. If all I want to do with my T1 connection is ship *.jpg files via ftp 24/7 that is no ones busines but my own. If I chooses to use my bandwith to transmit a variety of file formats using various protocols (HTTP,FTP,GOFFER,ARCHIE,...ect) who are you to say that some formats are good and some are not!! (this is not even getting into the content of the data being shiped).

That's interesting, and probably true, but still bandwidth is limited, see. It is entirely possible for some idiots to consume vastly more than their share of the shared pipe.

Probably what you're saying is that you like a lot of other "power users" myself included use more bandwidth than the average neophyte. So you're in favor of flat charges because it represents a good deal for you.

Get me on a T1 and I use it, man. Hmm, I'll just upgrade to gcc 2.7.x (10 megs later) and then I'll upgrade the OS (another 50 megs later), and so the day gos on. Bandwidth hog.

Sitting on the end of this pay per second 28.8k PPP line really cramps my style :-) I've started buying linux CD sets, and upgrading OS less frequently. I'm still on X32a (for linux people) even though it's expired and tried to disable it's self, I've hacked around the disablement (set the clock back 2 months for a couple of seconds while it's starting, and then forward again part way through seems to fix it) because I don't fancy the cost of 10 megs at 28.8k, nor the hassle.

Now I would be pretty happy to spend $500 - $1500 a year for a 64k leased line, or at least for a flat rate phone bill. But nooo you can't get that in the UK. You're looking at more like $10k once you've factored in leased line + bandwidth leasing.

Bill G wrote that the payment for (non-toll) roads is flat. This isn't quite true. You see, the more you use a road, the more gasoline you use up. When you buy gasoline, a very substantial portion of its price are the taxes imposed by varous gubmint entities. A "toll-free" road still brings revenues when it's used - the more traffic, the more gas is burned, the more gas is bought, the more tax is paid. The funds raised from gasoline taxes are supposed to be earmarked for highway repairs and new construction. Thus, the gubmint taxes you for every mile you drive. Owners with less "fuel-efficient" cars are taxed more heavily. All miles are equal, whether you drive on an interstate or around your own backyard. Tolls come in when the gubmint wants to make a certain mile "more equal" than the other miles. E.g. in New York City it costs $7 to cross the Verazzano bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island, but if you live on Staten Island, you can get a discount. (By the way, this toll is used to subsidize the subway, which doesn't even go to Staten Island.) Of course the U.S. highway infrastructure isn't getting adequate maintenance anyway and is failing at an increasing rate. The New York City subways/buses are an example of a true flat rate. Last months the system changed so that if you use a little plastic card to pay your fare instead of the traditional token, you can change for free between buses and subways. Thus, someone who lives and works in Manhattan and takes a subway for 1 or 2 stops pays the same $1.50 as someone who takes the subway from Manhattan to the outskirts of Queens and then changes to a bus. The argument is that once the infrastructure is in place, the incremental cost of carrying one more passenger doesn't depend much on how far he's going. The real reason is that the users who benefit from this fare structure are much more likely to vote Republican than the users who subsidize them. :-) And NYC subways are still in a much worse shape than the public transportation in cities where the fare depends on the length of the trip (like Washington, DC, or London) or is artificially low and can't cover the costs (like Moscow). I might as well remind those still reading this rant that the reason why NYC subways fell into such disrepair was political. When 3 private companies built competing underground railroad systems in NYC in late 19th/early 20th century, they each charged a flat 5c for a ride and had sufficient revenue for maintenance, new construction, and dividends to the investors. Unfortunately, USD like any other currency is subject to inflation. When the 3 companies tried to raise their fares to match their rising costs, the New York City and State politicians didn't let them. To keep the subway fare at 5c was the standard promise of every politician running for NYC mayor in the first half of the century. The subway companies were forced to operate at a loss and were happy to turn over their trains to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority - a piece of gubmint controlled by New York State. Now that the gubmint owns the subways, the fares have been rising much faster than the inflation. (I remember when the subway cost 50c on a weekday, 25c on a weekend.) However the years of neglect (blamed on the lack of capital) have left the subways in a much worse shape, and the repairs are likely to cost more than regular maintenance would have. (Just like the U.S. highway infrastructure.) And the cost of collecting the fares is a substantial one. (This is also the case with long distance telephone calls - I believe that flat-rate service, not wasting any resources on keeping track how long a particular user has used a circuit, will prevail eventually.) E.g. the MTA just spent close to $1B on installing new turnstiles with card readers. Most users of New York City subways already pay a special city income tax (not that I like it). Wouldn't it be more "efficient" to make the subways "free", and to collect the funds for running the subways from the "general" city and state taxes? (Using taxes is the socialist solution; letting a private company charge a flat fee for unlimited usage, if it so chooses, is the efficient free market solution.) Now on the subject of snail mail: someone asked why USPS is in the business of censoring content (e.g. pyramid schemes). USPS has been in this business for a long time. It refuses to deliver "obscene" content, and in the past refused to deliver "birth control" information (to a consenting recipient) judging it to be obscene. Not too long ago USPS used to raid "competing" services, such as FedEx, examine the contents of the letters, judge that they weren't sufficiently "urgent" and should have sent via 1st class mail (USPS's gubmint-granted monopoly), and harrass the sender and the recipient. Not too long ago USPS seriously proposed charging 1st class postage any time a fax machine was used. Is USPS's postage "flat"? Obviously, they charge per piece of mail. However is costs the same 32c to smail a first-class envelope under a certain weight from Queens to Brooklyn or to Hawaii. Obviously, it takes much more effort to deliver such a letter to HI than to Brooklyn. The European tradition was to charge according to the distance the letter was supposed to travel. I recall reading that in late 19th century USPS simply did not deliver to rural areas - the farmer was supposed to travel to his nearest post office to collect the mail. There was a political battle in U.S. Congress, with "free rural delivery" being the slogan of the politicians representing the states with a lot of farmers, while the ones from the more urban states did not want their contituents to subsidize the obviously expensive rural delivery. Eventually the farmers won, resulting in the birth of "mail order" industry - companies mass-mailing catalogs and delivering good by mail (such as Sears), who were in fact subsidized by the city dwellers who had to pay the same postage to deliver a package across town than Sears paid to deliver its catalog across the Great Plains. It costs USPS much more to deliver an envelope with a handwritten address than one with an OCR-readable address. That's why the senders of "junk mail" (pre-sorted, with OCR-ready labels) are said to subsidize the senders who scribble something on an envelope - even though the "bulk" postage is less than "first class". USPS has been talking about various schemes so people who mail a single envelope with an OCR-ready address would get a smaller postage hike than the "scribblers". I'm not sure what all this means in terms of flat vs. metered Internet fees, so in closing I'll rant about the pyramid schemes, "airplane games", "earn money stuffing envelopes" scams, et al. No gubmint should be in the business of declaring them to be "illegal" any more than they should be declaring pornography, bomb-making recipes, religious propaganda, or crypto programs to be "illegal". You may recall that the first wide-known pyramid scheme was run buy a chap named Ponzi in Boston. He collected money from "investors", and said he expected to pay back a handsome return based on some "postal orders" business. He did in fact pay the promised returns to the early invesors using the funds collected from the later investors, until the rate at which he had to pay out the old investors exceeded the rate at which he was getting new investors. Ponzi was arrested, convicted of "fraud" (because he was claiming that the returns came from "postal orders" when in fact they didn't), spend a brief time in jail, then moved to Florida where he made lots of money on the real easte boom. A similar scheme in Russia by an organizaton called "MMM", run by the Mavrodi bothers, left a large number of "investors" holding the bag. Interestingly, one of the Mavrodi brothers is now in Russian jail (awaiting trial), and the other one is still running a pyramid scheme: he accepts "voluntary donations" from an investor, in return for a "voluntary donation" at a later date whose amount and time are not guaranteed and depend on the "donations" collected from others. The Russian government does not shut down Mavrodi's latest operation so far, claiming it's not "fraud" since he doesn't misrepresent the source of his returns nor the risks involved. Reportedly so far he's getting oodles of investors and pretty good returns. Eventually of course his scheme will collapse, but the "investors" who got in and out early enough will have made good money. A similar scheme recently brought down the government of Albania. Reportedly the investors who got in late in the game and didn't get the returns they expected (or actually lost their investments) demanded that the gubmint reimburse them for their losses (by taxing the money from the more intelligent Albanians). When the idiots want the gubmint to protect them from their own idiocy, the gubmint happily uses this excuse to screw not only those who would fleece the idiots, but everyone. The obvious moral of this extra-long rant is that gubmint of any kind is a root of all evil and Kent Crispin sounds like a pedophile. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sat, Aug 02, 1997 at 09:31:20AM -0500, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

Just commenting on some stuff I missed earlier:

Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:

...

...

Another longer term way to improve the situation is to charge some small token amount per article, just to encourage people to use it with some intelligence (use cross posts rather than separately reposting to each group).

Problem is, a "small token" for some may be a lot of money for someone else. A poor person may be unwilling to part with 5c; a rich person or a corporation may still be willing to spend a million dollars on an advertising campaing (selling something or warning about the second cumming of Jesus).

The way the things are now, everyone is equally free to post and if you're into reputations, they can build one with the contents of their writings, not the amount of money they can afford to spend on posting.

In more general terms: A "free market" fundamentally grants more control to those with more money. Postage of whatever variety turns the medium over to those with more money. That would, in my opinion, fundamentally alter the character of email in a strongly negative direction. This, by the way, is one of the fundamental problems with the proposition that a free market is the appropriate response to every social issue -- in many arenas a broad primary goal is allowing equal opportunity to each individual. In a "free market" a fundamental feedback loop is that inequality of distribution of wealth increases -- this obviously follows from the fact that it is easier to make money if you have money. With wealth goes control. Thus, the ultimate end of completely unfettered free markets is fascism, where the wealthy run the government. This is another manifestation of the fundamental conflict between democratic ideals and unfettered free markets. Naturally, rich, indolent technologists tend to favor schemes that will put them in control. :-) [...] -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Adam Back wrote:

Next we choose a threshold say 1000 posts per day. Seems hard to imagine anyone generating manually over 1000 emails per day. That's more than 1 per minute for a 10 hour day.

I bet this mailing list generates traffic of that order. I would not wish to see legitimite mailing lists shut down to stop the spam. The best soultion given so far is Cause's suggestion of modifying the fax law so that we can sue the spammers. - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+OZaaQK0ynCmdStAQHwswP+PUSe66qf6Na6TdkrWwW3jWoorfqYIi5v J6azAQ87dZuxMFqLuYrQ2eqq/701HNjhJdp8RcSfGEyPp4hx2wu7WwnKqCiX9HW/ 7HRxJ6wkzc53DToKk6OmQp8heDJ45eFzqwVwaaItwe3P8BpN2szQiO/HXXBXDWYd qsoP/J/GWI8= =RugV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Adam Back wrote:

David Formosa <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

[...]

...

The best soultion given so far is Cause's suggestion of modifying the fax law so that we can sue the spammers.

Law, and suing and the internet don't mix.

You got to be jokeing, what about alomost every AOL vs. Cyberpromo or Compuserve vs. Cyberpromo or all thouse other ISPs against Cyberpromo.

Eg. Say I spam you via an anonymous remailer. So now who are you going to sue?

The spammers if there advertising a servese will need someway for me to contact them. Some way for me to get the goods. Just anonomising the email will not hide there identy. Any way pushing spammer email though most email remailers will cause them to crash from sheare volume. - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+PrK6QK0ynCmdStAQHO5QP+PtZAMkM0LhIlDSiqVyPd0nFkpj9RUyGO GOHGwCthHRNIOnUVO4RleulbIVErrm6dMauqKM3IL5MtjBz0iDWSQPk06OULq0e+ SQGyhl178H4WfZlZ+G7gcevh/Zyof0/rFJ6YBJX4MXfkitQNRdw4jCSoyiXjK7tt zM1Cl75OdX8= =AcLG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Adam Back wrote:

David Formosa <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

[...]

...

You got to be jokeing, what about alomost every AOL vs. Cyberpromo or Compuserve vs. Cyberpromo or all thouse other ISPs against Cyberpromo.

[...]

Government backed legal systems are inefficient. A purely anonymous transaction where both parties identity is well concealed is much more efficient.

I have truble seeing this working protocol wise, what is to stop me taking the money and running (or the product and running). For some things such as text and grafics it is possable to use a bye a bit type protocol. But for something like the password to the GAK database you would have have trubble negosating the protocol without someone getting ripped off.

There is no one to sue. Fighting legal suits is expensive, especially in the US.

[...]

Third party arbitrators holding with a copy of the contract, a deposit from each party in escrow, and a reputation as a fair arbitrator is much more efficient.

So the escrow agent will get sued instead of you. These agents will have to pay massive insurance rates and thuse be very expencive to use. There seems to be an underlieing object of this schem to screw the lawers. While this is a wounderfull aim I don't think that this schem will do it as most escrow agents are lawers or soliciters.

It'll probably help if the arbitration service is anonymous also,

I don't see how you can mainige the joint targets of anonymousaty and reputation in this schem. I would be interested if you can. [...]

...

The spammers if there advertising a servese will need someway for me to contact them. Some way for me to get the goods. Just anonomising the email will not hide there identy.

True. But how do you prove to one of these inefficent government courts that it is indeed the spam beneficiary who posted the spam.

Look at there email logs, paychecks to Spamford ect in the discovery phase. [...]

...

Any way pushing spammer email though most email remailers will cause them to crash from sheare volume.

That's also not a good thing.

I didn't say it was. Most likely the anon-admins will make use of throtelers to stop e-spaming (I beleave thay do this for mail bombs) - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+WKCKQK0ynCmdStAQFFrAP6AiPB4m2TfUb8k2TZOIQRbeb0N1KakLas CaQ1IxbbTH6DA6qnVMK4zTJPmIyoMP4y/mkastSTrv9SAD5bXh2jv3zLdfgw96bi 626dadBoQEU/ymp5Iftd4T+OduQwhMzLZLD+lvRJYCJWjX343PISRZ14NtR3PmSV JWUr1m6wpsE= =e4wp -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

At 03:52 PM 8/3/97 +1000, Charles wrote:

? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} said:

...

The best solution given so far is Cause's suggestion of modifying [Cauce , by the way....] the fax law so that we can sue the spammers.

Thus giving gubmints the toe in the door they are so desperately looking for to regulate/license/control the online world.

The first thing you would see after passing such a law (if indeed the original legislation itself didn't contain the provision) would be a requirement for identification of all accounts and account holders. Anonymous email and anonymous remailers would be the first victims.

Hear, hear! The fax law says precisely that you can't send a fax without correct identification of the sender, and an email equivalent law would do the same. (Anonymous remailers wouldn't necessarily be banned, as long as they identified themselves correctly; if anything this would probably encourage deployment of remailers, mainly by spammers, which is a mixed blessing.) Also, there are several Supreme Court cases, such as McIntyre vs. Ohio, that strongly uphold the right to anonymous publication; the fax law probably violates this, though I doubt it's been taken to court. The issue of the cost to the receipient of junk faxes was the justification for the junk fax laws; I've heard that Spamford himself was the junk faxer who they were a response to, though I haven't seen any verification of that, and of course widespread caller-id could have taken care of the problem without requiring a Federal law. One obvious implementation of identification would of course be a Key Management Infrastructure... They might not do it, not only because it would require everyone to change their email programs, but more seriously because it would require everyone to use encryption-capable mailers (or at least signature-capable), and even with 40-bit escrowed mail, it makes eavesdropping much more work. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

At 06:32 AM 8/3/97 +1000, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Adam Back wrote:

...

Next we choose a threshold say 1000 posts per day. Seems hard to imagine anyone generating manually over 1000 emails per day. That's more than 1 per minute for a 10 hour day.

I bet this mailing list generates traffic of that order. I would not wish to see legitimite mailing lists shut down to stop the spam.

The best soultion given so far is Cause's suggestion of modifying the fax law so that we can sue the spammers.

Take bugtraq which has over 12,000 subscribers. Each post to bugtraq would send out 12,000 emails so it would cost aleph one 1200$ per post to his list. I dont think anyone would want to run a mailing list under these sorts of conditions. Or say you run a normaly small mailing list with only a few subscribers. One evil person could send just a few hundred emails to you cost you money. The same goes for anon emails. Anyone not wanting to take the chance of ending up spending $100 or more at the whim of any 14 year old with a copy of upyours or not wanting to have to pay for providing a free public service would simply give up and shut down his mailinglist.

Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:

...

In more general terms: A "free market" fundamentally grants more control to those with more money. Postage of whatever variety turns the medium over to those with more money. That would, in my opinion, fundamentally alter the character of email in a strongly negative direction.

More to the point, if you're charging prices that don't reflect the true costs of the activities, it'll catch up with you after a while; either the Tacky People will find a way to siphon money out of the system by some variant on spamming, or it won't have the same community you're looking for, because it's only used by people willing to pay extra for the service, or because the information flow that used to be provided free gets stifled, or somebody will offer a competing system that offers similar features at a lower cost, or whatever. Somehow Usenet has survived growing from a system small enough to read all the mail to a system with gigabytes of traffic per day, and it's still possible to find some signal among the noise (though the Web has siphoned off much of that signal.) And we've grown from tens of thousands of students and defense contractors on the Arpanet and UUCP and Fido nets and BBSs to tens of millions of users on the Internet. Filtering tools help find the interesting parts of the global discussion, and make it easier to get rid of the uninteresting parts. The present situation is that the social dynamics and economics are such that Tacky People can make money by being rude to everyone without being interesting in return. While trying to charge money for communications may work, I'm inclined to doubt it; the more interesting currency to try to model is Reputation, which leads to more like an Ender's Game kind of net, or to semi-closed communities like the Well (is?was?). # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

On Tue, Aug 05, 1997 at 10:28:02AM -0700, stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:

...

Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:

...

In more general terms: A "free market" fundamentally grants more control to those with more money. Postage of whatever variety turns the medium over to those with more money. That would, in my opinion, fundamentally alter the character of email in a strongly negative direction.

More to the point, if you're charging prices that don't reflect the true costs of the activities, it'll catch up with you after a while;

I am, of course, familiar with this line of reasoning :-). However, it is arguably the case that the true cost of email *is* being paid. The real problem is that email is unbelievably cheap, for both recipient and sender -- a sender can send more mail than anyone can read at a very low cost, and a recipient can easily receive more mail than they can possibly read, again for a very low cost. [...]

The present situation is that the social dynamics and economics are such that Tacky People can make money by being rude to everyone without being interesting in return. While trying to charge money for communications may work, I'm inclined to doubt it; the more interesting currency to try to model is Reputation, which leads to more like an Ender's Game kind of net, or to semi-closed communities like the Well (is?was?).

Yes, virtual cryptographically closed communities. A concept whose time has come, perhaps. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <19970731095523.04336@bywater.songbird.com>, on 07/31/97 at 09:55 AM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:

...

It should be noted that the Bandwith issue is a red-herring.

However, I think your argument here is faulty, because bandwidth is in fact oversubscribed -- the whole system depends on each end subscriber not using all their bandwidth all the time.

...

The bandwith of the USENET has been *PAID IN FULL* by every subscriber to an ISP. The ISP customers pay for their connections to their ISP who in turn pay for their connections to the Access providers who inturn pay for the Backbone. The PIPE has been paid for what goes over it not an issue. If all I want to do with my T1 connection is ship *.jpg files via ftp 24/7 that is no ones busines but my own.

Not really. A T1 line, for example, can handle maybe 40-50 28.8 modems going full blast, but a small ISP over a T1 might have 200 customers. This goes right on up the line -- at every level bandwidth is oversubscribed, and successful operation of the net depends on certain statistical usage patterns. So, while it isn't written down in a contract anywhere, what you are really paying for is peak bandwidth, not sustained bandwidth.

Well the ISP may have 200 customer for the T1 line but they woun't have 200 dial up lines per T1 (at least not one that wishes to stay in business long). Now how many dial-up lines per T1 a ISP will have will depend on the traffic analysis for his customer base. There is nothing wrong with oversubscribing his bandwith because he knows that all his cutomers will not be on-line all the time using 100% of their 28.8 dial-up bandwith. What an ISP does have to provide for is enough bandwith to be able to handle the amount of dial-ups he has available. If an ISP has 200 dial-up lines then he best provide enough T1's to be able to support them. The same is true for Access providers. If an access provider is servicing 20 T1's then he best have the bandwith to the backbone to provide the bandwith that he has sold. He is collecting the $$$ to provide the service he is obligated to provide it. Now if an access provider does detailed analysis of his traffic and determins that he needs only 4 T3's to provide service for 20 T1's and therefore reduces his costs that's fine. But if one of his T1 customers traffic increases he is obligated to add more bandwith on his end to handle it. This is what the whole bandwith issue comes down to. ISP & Access providers atempting to maximise profits for given resources. This doesn't nullify their obligations to their customers. If they sell T1 bandwith 24/7 to their customers then they are required to provide that service if their customers demand it. The current movement to blaim users for using the resources that they have been sold is wrong. It is no different that if a car dealer sells you a 100,000 mile warrenty on a car then renigs on the contract because he really didn't expect you to drive 100,000 miles with it. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM+DDFY9Co1n+aLhhAQHnewP/YQiKR/jqvARsCAgt9KYGFBZIXJ4Hn7rp ptUd8h4rAYmaomAw5ydJzPaiUSHEE+Vw5eMc9lKCJYlVvs4e31lgFC0Da4jaDuKK IC2e1CUIq5Rn585BHtdg8CqAtw37q/7LUkCBmGfTjg106VPrvDVqK0bN5dncA2lD OjYalqVi1iA= =bD4T -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Thu, Jul 31, 1997 at 12:25:59PM -0400, William H. Geiger III wrote: [...]

Now if an access provider does detailed analysis of his traffic and determins that he needs only 4 T3's to provide service for 20 T1's and therefore reduces his costs that's fine. But if one of his T1 customers traffic increases he is obligated to add more bandwith on his end to handle it.

He has several other options. Most importantly, he can terminate the agreement. This gives the customer a choice -- find another provider, or moderate their use. As I said, this stuff sometimes isn't written in the contract, but it's there, nonetheless.

This is what the whole bandwith issue comes down to.

Thinking about this a little more, however, this whole line of reasoning has almost nothing to do with the bandwidth problem associated with spam, and is a complete red herring. Granted that you have contractually guaranteed that you get full time 24/7 28.8 modem access, and you have paid for it. I can still completely flood your bandwidth with stuff you don't want. Granted that at your machine you can throw away the stuff as fast as your receive it. But you aren't receiving the stuff you want to receive, because I have completely choked your line. Spam can be thought of, therefore, as essentially a low-level denial of service attack. What is overlooked in the free speech debate is that speech always has a physical manifestation, and that physical manifestation may in itself cause harm, regardless of the semantic content of the speech. For example, I could rupture your eardrums by putting a megaphone next to your head. And I can cause you economic harm by flooding your mailbox with stuff you don't want. I have a right to speak; you have a right to not pay attention. I don't have the right to force you to pay attention. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

...

I agree. If charging for mail would eliminate spam, then I should not be getting the mailboxfull of physical junk mail I receive every morning. Postage benefits the MAIL CARRIER, not the recipient, and it is in the best interests of the mail carrier to carry MORE mail, not less. So, e-postage will almost certainly cause more spam, not less.

Hashcash is a more elegant and simple solution to UCE: most UCE is sent by small companies looking for a cheap way to get big exposure, they aren`t going to have the hardware to generate partial hash collisions for every address they want to mail, it would be prohibitively expensive for them to buy fast hardware to generate the collisions. Of course large companies who can afford to buy, or already have, mainframes will be able to send UCE, but most large companies are smart enough to realise that with the response rate gained from UCE, the reputation capital lost through sending it, and the valuable mainframe time used to generate the hashcash, it all adds up to a big shit sandwich. Adam Back: I haven`t read the hashcash paper/description for a while, can you give us some figures on how much processor time is required to generate hashcash for a 10,000 recipient spam, for n recipients? Sudden and very exciting idea: What if we could find a way to make the amount of hashcash required grow exponentially with the number of recipients? Of course the spammer could then find the optimum number of recipients and divide the list of addresses to be spammed into blocks of that size but that is a waste of sendmail time, also a waste of bandwidth and the overall time would probably still be prohibitively high. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: [...]

I'm sorry, I don't see how posting megabytes of noise every day can swamp the content.

You don't recall the poetry feastavil? What about the sex groups for the less popular fetishes?

Moreover, if such actions were indeed cause a problem, they would not be eliminated with payments. Some people would be willing to spend money to "flood" the net

Here we aggry, porn4pron and others will still make a proffet from spamming. Infact puting a cost to posting creates a biase aggainst unpopulare options and towards spam. Indeed such a payment system would make the problem worce.

Instead of discouraging the behavior you don't like, encourage the behavior you do like.

[Nods] The good old blow job prinisipul.

I invite Adam and David to subscribe to the freedom-knights mailing list (send 'subscribe freedom-knights@jetcafe.org' to majordomo@jetcafe.org) if you want to continue this not-quite-crypto discussion there.

I have attempted to do so in the past, and will attempt to do so again. - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+PidqQK0ynCmdStAQHZawP/RS2pCTyKrsOMqHGq2BuNsdEd4Xe+qJt8 8HzSL+80yuU4wXK2MttgVyhLC91JgFJkxgllhhJxfZtn2rF+FdEJ3DwRzsC4jzm6 CwXKmoG2kAe3wZ7V5w9rTuGgblCwKjUsXlSAAFERC4eXtpeV5VvlhmUhONTrW4t4 dpxGGQawZZ8= =PliC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: [...]

Why do people try to flood newsgroups with shit?

I can see a number of resons 1) For profet (pron4porn ect) 2) To prevent discution that thay do not like (Sientology, the poatry feastivil.) 3) To the amusument of there small minds (trollers ect) 4) By accedent (ARRM, other spews) 5) Out of shear madness (Dr Rouger Rabbit) [...]

Examples from the Net.Scum rogue collection: Scott Kellog from Sematech falsely accuses various people of "spamming" his newsgroup, but hasn't been caught forging cancels yet.

<snide> But lieing is free speach isn't it? </snide> As long as he is not forging cancels I don't see anything wrong with the little troll having some fun.

On the other hand Bob Curtis has taken over alt.smokers.cigars and forges cancels for articles that merely question his "ownership" of the newsgroup. Do read - it's very enlightening.

IRC Bob Curtis was sent away with his tail between his legs.

They argue that according to Hardin, Usenet would be used more "efficiently" if every newsgroup had an "owner"

I don't see anywhere that being suggested. Most peaple suggest that Usenet would work better if peaple stopped abuseing it. I don't trust the newsgroup care peaple any further then I can kick them. In fact I have been encourgaing them to stop. [...]

The good news is that newsgroup floods don't really hurt anyone except the egos of the assholes who claim to "own' the affected newsgroups.

And the newsevers and the regular readers. [...]

...

Here we aggry, porn4pron and others will still make a proffet from spamming.

[...]

I like the idea of encouraging news readers to send e-cash (possibly via anon remailers) to the posters whose writings they like and would like to see more of.

A local bank (to me anyway) offers e-cash. I'll see how I can contrabue to makeing the usenet a better place. [...]

And my response is: why not just killfile the idiots, or why not choose to not select their crap for reading - it's easily identifiable.

Its not realy. All you get is a war where your spamer becomes more sofistercated in there spaming to avoid the filters.

Do you remember all the talk about "intelligent internet agents" who were supposed to look for stuff we're interested in

I belave this is the idear behind Mr Hayes' newsreader. [...]

...

I have attempted to do so in the past, and will attempt to do so again.

There's some interesting discussion going on there in addition to my xposts.

I have again requested entery. No responce yet. - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+rm76QK0ynCmdStAQHhngP9HdAnn4jhRvkfxjQ/+b7w3FjqTSR9L2Wh nKSQoOUSzX95F/RLb6zwVC6+HKGh0Z41cJutKl7m2yw7D5shCBC1lmuWXaes+1el fGE8mCIzV9pbU20tLDL8xXhQSAfCBVJ/cJQZVjz+C2/DCARKnlPL7v/fkG56hplo XjQWZ8yDiNQ= =nqqo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

In a "free market" a fundamental feedback loop is that inequality of distribution of wealth increases -- this obviously follows from the fact that it is easier to make money if you have money. With wealth goes control. Thus, the ultimate end of completely unfettered free markets is fascism, where the wealthy run the government. This is another manifestation of the fundamental conflict between democratic ideals and unfettered free markets.

Naturally, rich, indolent technologists tend to favor schemes that will put them in control. :-)

I can't fuly agree. In Europe, both communism and fascism started from the socialists (in fact, the fascist were called National Socialists) and their premise that a free market cannot bring about the social good (including equality) they sought, and both accept the "... idea of a political party which embraces all activities of the individual from the cradle to the grave, which claims to guide his views on everything, and which delights in making all problems questions of party...," F.A. Hayek, The Road to Surfdom. Both favor totalitarian means to this end. In the case of the Communist, the solution is no private ownership. In the case of Fascism, government mandidated oligopoly, which is as far from a free market as communism. --Steve

David Formosa <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, Steve Schear wrote:

...

I can't fuly agree. In Europe, both communism and fascism started from the socialists (in fact, the fascist were called National Socialists)

The fascists called themselves Socialists for the same reson that the main pro logging group calls themselfs _The Forest Protection Socity_ as a returorical techneek to sucker peaple.

Socialism tends to lead to a fascist society.

...

and both accept the "... idea of a political party which embraces all activities of the individual from the cradle to the grave, which claims to guide his views on everything, and which delights in making all problems questions of party...," F.A. Hayek, The Road to Surfdom.

That's a reasonable expose' of the similarities.

Replace political party with free market and you get the econmic reationalisum/thatureisum that has chocked socity. The freandly socilisum that both the GNU mannifesto and most of the net works on has no such totalitarian tendencies.

The free market is much closer to the freedom of the net than you might imagine. eg. Socialism says that the state will steal from by force (guns, imprisonment, etc follow quickly if you resist the theft) to give to others who `need'. Needs are unbounded. How do you measure `need'? By who has the most expensive lobyists, who can afford to pay the highest bribes to politicians? By who is the laziest and has allowed their personal affairs to slip into the most disgraceful state. In a free market economy such `needs' are met by charity. People give of their own free will, and give to charitable organisations that they view as the most efficient at handling the causes they individually think worthy. If people don't want to give to this charitable cause, well then it isn't worth supporting, to them. If you have to take their charity and gun point, it isn't charity, it's theft. Socialism is based on theft. So is Fascism. It's forced labour, or at least forced theft of assetts. `Social contract' foo. What social contract did I sign with the crooks milking the political system? Adam -- 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----- On Sun, 3 Aug 1997 frissell@panix.com wrote:

In a free society, the "poor" have more money (collectively) than the rich and outbid them for resources all the time. Were this not so, communities of the "poor" would never increase in size and yet they do.

Death must be popular, everybodies doing it. If the poor where infact powerfull thay would be less poor peaple not more.

I can teach a poor person in America today the simple ways to triple or quadruple his income.

Attach your name to the end of this list and forward it to 5 others, in a few days you will be rolling in cash. - -- Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep. ex-net.scum and proud You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves? --Terry Pratchett -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM+WRSqQK0ynCmdStAQGz9gQA1oZ9lTrjhvADOL7gSo5zS48RB85Cfvt0 +jcqqxZful5RFi81DMkNDU+YzZiXhzCuskaA6WXue59Mq/SlOdpWjukJWhyxr+IT DinHXQjd9hvozEAGijVU4gAvkOrLRZjkoW4a0ZQReHy3TPZc6IAa8qiCsFZXcCPQ +VI5R6bMsRE= =UPYn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Adam Back wrote:

[detect multi-post]

...

That is cancel all but one groups worth of articles, and then modify the Newsgroups line to cross-post to all the groups the article was originally posted to.

No that is worce, it would be forgery of the orginal post. In addtion it would violate the usenet requirement to avoid modifing the post.

In my opinion, the hnorable way to deal with multi-posts is to detect them automatically and to ignore them. A NoCeM 'bot like the one run by the Venerable CancelMoose is a good thing. A compression scheme where many copies of the same text would be transmitted only once even if they're posted once would be an excellent thing (given that such traffic is a very substantial portion of a full uncensored feed), but it's not crucial. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sun, Aug 03, 1997 at 10:28:28AM -0400, frissell@panix.com wrote:

At 09:29 AM 8/2/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:

...

In more general terms: A "free market" fundamentally grants more control to those with more money.

In a free society, the "poor" have more money (collectively) than the rich and outbid them for resources all the time.

I'm not sure what you mean by "free society", since earlier writings by you and others indicate that you believe that no such thing currently exists (certainly not here in the US), or indeed has ever existed. Consequently, your statement here must be false on its face, since the poor have never been in a "free society". Even so, your statement is not an argument against what I said in any significant way, but rather is a corollary -- the trend for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, if extrapolated to the extreme, still results in a very small number of people controlling more wealth than all the rest of mankind. What intrinsic characteristic of completely unrestricted markets do you see that naturally contervails this trend?

Were this not so, communities of the "poor" would never increase in size and yet they do.

Doesn't follow at all. The poor can increase in numbers, and just get poorer. You can see this all over the world.

It is also much easier for the poor to get money in a free society than for the powerless to get power in the sort of societies you favor.

Doubtful. I favor free societies. Realistic free societies, that is.

I can teach a poor person in America today the simple ways to triple or quadruple his income.

I don't believe you. Oh, in isolated cases perhaps. But not as a general lesson you can give to any Joe Poverty, and suddenly make him middle class. But once again I am struck by the thought that, contrary to much of the sentiment expressed on this list, you actually believe that America today is a *true free society*. Have you turned in your cpunks credentials?

I could not teach a resident of France or Germany or Japan a simple way to triple or quadruple his "influence" on his government

But are you then implying that you could in the US!?!?

and indeed a tripling of such influence would give him much less than a tripling of income.

No doubt about it. :-) -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html