If the people decide for creation of a new USENET newsgroup, we need to think very hard about actually moving it to a different hierarchy from alt.*. I would propose comp.org.cypherpunks, comp.cypherpunks, sci.crypt.cypherpunks or something like that. A comp.* or sci.* newsgroup, if created, has the following advantages over an alt.* newsgroup: 1) There is usually less spam in sci.* or comp.* 2) There are virtually no completely irrelevant flamewars 3) The propagation will be a lot better 4) More people will be able to read it because of the issue of providers not carrying alt.*. I see nothing that would make a sci.* or comp.* newsgroup worse than alt.* newsgroup. igor Timothy C. May wrote:

(Please leave my name in any replies to ensure I see your comments.)

I talked to Hugh Daniel at the Saturday meeting about the creation of an "alt.cypherpunks" unmoderated (of course) newsgroup as a possible alternative (or supplement) to cypherpunks@toad.com. Greg Broiles and John Gilmore were there for part of the discussion, too.

(We did not, unfortunately, get to the "future of the list" topic at the physical meeting...the excellent presentations ran way over the expected time and we never got to this topic. Sort of too bad, given John's edict that we have 10 days to find and implement an alternative....)

A Usenet newsgroup has many advantages and disadvantages. Whether it might be gatewayed to other mailing lists--perhaps even the list(s) which survives "cypherpunks@toad.com"--depends of course on the decision of those hosting others lists.

A charter statement is needed, and then the issuance of a creation message. A better charter statement will increase the chances of more sites carrying the newsgroup. While many sites carry essentially all newsgroups--more than 30,000--, some sites do not and only carry some of the alt.heirarchy. And some sites do not carry _any_ of the alt newsgroups.

At Hugh's suggestion, I'm suggesting a "first cut" at a charter statement. Suggestions for additional language or changes are welcome.

Charter for alt.cypherpunks: (suggested)

"Alt.cypherpunks is for the unmoderated discussion of cryptography and the political, social, and economic implications of unrestricted, strong cryptography. The Cypherpunks grpup has existed since 1992 and has been central in the debate about strong crypto, government restrictions, crypto anarchy, and in showing weaknesses of various ciphers and security products. The mailing list has had as many as 1500 subscribers, plus gateways to newsgroups and Web sites. It is expected that "alt.cypherpunks" will be a free-wheeling forum for many viewpoints. As it is unmoderated, readers are strongly advised to learn how to use filters and other tools for making virtual anarchies manageable for their own tastes."

I invite your comments, editorial suggestions, etc. Perhaps when enough of the "collective mind" has made inputs (ughh!), the charter can be submitted with the creation message. (I'm not knowledgeable about the process, but I'll bet many of you are.)

There are of course disadvantages to such a newsgroup, as any Usenet user certainly knows. However, there are advantages as well. Here are some of each:

* Advantages:

- Usenet is set up to automagically propagate articles across tens of thousands of sites.

- there is no "nexus" of control, no chokepoint, no precedent (in the U.S.) for halting distribution of Usenet newsgroups. (Canada stopped some Homulka-Teale newsgroups a few years ago, other countries have blocked entire sections, but note that the Scientologists have been unable to block "alt.religion.scientology"...I surmise that a mailing list version of a.r.s. would have faced lawsuits against the list.owner, if reachable in U.S. or European courts...a lesson to think about with the current imbroglio over certain claims about certain products and the possible liability of Sandy and/or toad.com.)

- fairly sophisticated newsreading software already exists.

- no "unsuscribe" and "unscrive" messages! (It makes it easy for newcomers to discover the group, read it for a while, then stop. It also, of course, increases the number of "What is crypto?" sorts of messages.)

- persons cannot be unsubscribed from an unmoderated list

- with a Usenet group, there is no ability to impose notions of "order" on the list (e.g., requirements for PGP-signing, demands for "on-topic" posts, removal of "illegal" posts, etc.). Thus, people must deal with a virtual anarchy by using proper tools, by ignoring what they don't want to see, or by contracting out the role of "nanny" to others.

* Disadvantages

- Usenet newsgroups are easy targets for spammers, even more so than are mailing lists.

- crossposting often gets out of hand. (With 30,000+ newsgroups, even well-intentioned posters often pick the "three or four most likely" targets for their posts).

- propagation is often spotty, and some sites have no access at all to the "alt.*" hierarchy. (Many corporate sites block the alt heirarchy. Many academic sites block just the alt.binaries.pictures heirarchy. Etc. A news to mailing list gateway is possible for these readers.)

- propagation may be slower than mailing lists.

- Usenet is of course archived and easily searchable via Alta Vista, Deja News, etc.. This bothers some people. (However, the CP mailing list is now also archived and searchable, so the disadvantage is becoming moot.)

- persons cannot be unsubscribed from an unmoderated list (this is also an advantage, of course)

- there will be more newbie-type messages, as casual browsers of Usenet discover alt.cypherpunks and ask questions. This is both a disadvantage and an advantage.

* Discussion of some of these points:

1. The issue of slow- or non-propagation can be handled by having mailing lists which bounce the traffic (from a well-connected site) to folks who get slow distribution, or no distribution at all. News to mail gateways, in other words. Traffic in the reverse direction (end reader back to alt.cypherpunks) can be handled either by "blind posting" to the a.c. newsgroup, via one's newsreader, or through mail-to-news gateways, or perhaps via the distributor described here.

2. And the services of "moderators," such as Eric Blossom's and Ray Arachelian's "best of" lists, or even Sandy's list, are of course still possible. A newsgroup does not change this, except for the latency in getting messages out to newsgroup sites.

3. The advantages of a "no nexus, no chokepoint" distribution are huge. The Usenet carries huge advantages in terms of having no place to attack it.

4. Some have raised the point that Usenet is "inefficient" and should not be used for this reason. Well, it may indeed be ineficient, but the costs have already been incurred, and alt.cypherpunks would only be 1/30,000th of additional load (very roughly speaking). In other words, might as well use what's out there. If a "second Usenet" ever comes into existence, fine.

5. Some of us discussed the creation of alt.cypherpunks back in '92-93. At that time, we thought the mailing list had some major advantages. In my view, the situation has changed dramatically since then. The mailing list has become huge, the volume of noise has increased, majordomo is allowing the list to be used for spamming (any 'bot system will probably have this), and the list is already gatewayed to many sites as a _newsgroup_ anyway.

So, I think the time has come to just create it. The "activation energy barrier" of a mailing list, where people would have to make the effort to subscribe, has long since become irrelevant.

It may be a target for spammers, but it's hard to imagine it being much worse than what we have now.

Usenet is an anarchy. We might as well use it.

I've never created an alt group, but I presume many of you have (and I know of one currently fed up Cypherpunk who created the entire alt.* hierarchy a decade or so ago). I presume some of you can thus help in such an effort.

--Tim May

Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

- Igor.

At 1:20 PM -0600 2/11/97, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

If the people decide for creation of a new USENET newsgroup, we need to think very hard about actually moving it to a different hierarchy from alt.*. I would propose comp.org.cypherpunks, comp.cypherpunks, sci.crypt.cypherpunks or something like that.

A comp.* or sci.* newsgroup, if created, has the following advantages over an alt.* newsgroup:

1) There is usually less spam in sci.* or comp.* 2) There are virtually no completely irrelevant flamewars 3) The propagation will be a lot better 4) More people will be able to read it because of the issue of providers not carrying alt.*.

I see nothing that would make a sci.* or comp.* newsgroup worse than alt.* newsgroup.

Sure, and this has come up in every past discussion of creating "alt.cypherpunks." But the creation of alt.cypherpunks is _easy_, and needs little permission or support, whereas the creation of "soc.culture.cypherpunks" or whatever takes work, requires a vote, blah blah blah. And so it never gets off the ground. (Nor is it clear to me, and perhaps not to others, that it belongs in the the various places Igor mentioned. Comp.org.cypherpunks probably is the best fit, but then many would cite the "comp" part to try to insist that only _computer_ topics be discussed. Likewise, the "soc" domain would skew discussion...etc. "Alt" has the nice advantage of explicitly not be part of sci, or comp, or soc, or even talk.) Since posting my comments I've just seen the proposal that tivoli may host a list. Fine with me. But I wonder how long Tivoli and its parent company, IBM, will tolerate such things as postings of dumpster divings at Mykotronx and RSADSI, of deliberate slams against Tivoli products (a la the case John Gilmore referred to this morning), postings about assassination markets, and so on. I still feel that the time has come to move virtual forums such as ours out of U.S. jurisdictions. Given that most European nations are worse in some ways (no Holocaust denial posts allowed in "cypherpunks@foobar.de"?), I recommend the alt.cypherpunks as the best overall compromise. --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Timothy C. May wrote:

At 7:11 PM +0000 2/11/97, Attila T. Hun wrote:

...

two points you make: 1. the propogation is slow... 2. some sites do not carry alt. groups are enough to kill an active discussion list. of course, it does slow down excessive volume.

Good if all this is worked out in advance. I'd like to add a couple thoughts: The freedom from temptation to interfere (censor, etc.) outweighs the slowness. The nature of the list (crypto) creates more paranoia than most other lists, making the above even more important, with the advantage being that there *should* be less noise than other forums due to the technical nature of the discussion. Thanks to the last couple of months, c-punks has now provided nearly every example of what to look out for and plan for.

Attila T Hun writes:

tim:

two points you make:

1. the propogation is slow...

2. some sites do not carry alt. groups

are enough to kill an active discussion list. of course, it does slow down excessive volume.

Is there any offline newsreading software for linux? (Something to grab feeds from an NNTP server of selected newsgroups to put in /usr/spool/news/, and something to queue posts for posting via NNTP when on line) (My difficulty with USENET groups is that we have pay per second phone bills over here, and online USENET reading is inefficient, that plus propogation delays). Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

"Timothy C. May" writes:

...

At 1:20 PM -0600 2/11/97, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

...

If the people decide for creation of a new USENET newsgroup, we need to think very hard about actually moving it to a different hierarchy from alt.*. I would propose comp.org.cypherpunks, comp.cypherpunks, sci.crypt.cypherpunks or something like that.

A comp.* or sci.* newsgroup, if created, has the following advantages over an alt.* newsgroup:

1) There is usually less spam in sci.* or comp.* 2) There are virtually no completely irrelevant flamewars 3) The propagation will be a lot better 4) More people will be able to read it because of the issue of providers not carrying alt.*.

I see nothing that would make a sci.* or comp.* newsgroup worse than alt.* newsgroup.

Sure, and this has come up in every past discussion of creating "alt.cypherpunks."

But the creation of alt.cypherpunks is _easy_, and needs little permission or support, whereas the creation of "soc.culture.cypherpunks" or whatever takes work, requires a vote, blah blah blah. And so it never gets off the ground.

(Nor is it clear to me, and perhaps not to others, that it belongs in the the various places Igor mentioned. Comp.org.cypherpunks probably is the best fit, but then many would cite the "comp" part to try to insist that only _computer_ topics be discussed. Likewise, the "soc" domain would skew discussion...etc. "Alt" has the nice advantage of explicitly not be part of sci, or comp, or soc, or even talk.)

(I apologize to everyone whose e-mail has gone unanswered this week - I've had a bunch of other stuff to do, but I'll get to it eventually. Also, I posted the Anshel+Goldfield zeta function paten number - do check it out.)

Random thoughts:

1. A newsgroup like comp.privacy.cypherpunks will be carried on a lot of corprate news servers that don't carry alt.* (or even soc.*). Note that soc.org.cypherpunks is inappropriate since cp is *not* an organization. :-) Another possibility is sci.crypto.cypherpunks. (True, people whose corporate newsservers don't carry soc.* and talk.* can use dejanews - provided their firewall lets them.)

2. It takes more work to create a comp.* newsgroup than an alt newsgroup. It takes a vote. I'm willing to be one of the proponents and generally help with the process. (Both I and Igor have been co-proponents of major Usenet newsgroups - don't know about other people onthis list. :-)

Not only it takes a vote. What is more important is what a vote gives: a good discussion of the newsgroup and the formal RFD/RFD/CFV process ensures that, on average, a good balance is found between various groups of readers. I am not concerned as to what the name of the group will be, it is not important. What is important is that it should be in a more or less flame-free zone. It is too late to stop alt.cypherpunks, but if I had to make a prediction again, I would predict that soon posters will BEG to help them create comp.*.cypherpunks, because of spam and alt.flamage.

3. An unmoderated Usenet newsgroup would have even ore crap than this mailing list. I've been thinking of how to deal with crap, and with the obvious desire by some people to delegate their decision what to read and what not to read to other people.

It is alt.* and soc.* that has most crap, sci and comp are way better.

Most people don't have nocem-enabled newareaders yet... Which is where the network of cypherpunks majordomos Igor's been busy creating comes in very handy.

It is a very good idea to let NoCeM issuers and filterers work independently from list nodes. - Igor.

Dale Thorn wrote:

Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

...

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

...

"Timothy C. May" writes:

...

At 1:20 PM -0600 2/11/97, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

...

If the people decide for creation of a new USENET newsgroup, we need to think very hard about actually moving it to a different hierarchy from alt.*. I would propose comp.org.cypherpunks, comp.cypherpunks, sci.crypt.cypherpunks or something like that.

...

It is too late to stop alt.cypherpunks, but if I had to make a prediction again, I would predict that soon posters will BEG to help them create comp.*.cypherpunks, because of spam and alt.flamage.

I would lean toward sci.crypt.cypherpunks myself. Are there any implications in the use of that name as to restrictions, etc.?

Not really. All you have to do is to go through a formal newsgroup creation process, post a RFD, second RFD, a CFV, and supposedly impartial votetakers will record the votes. You must get > 100 votes YES, and the number of YES votes should be more than twice (thrice?) the number of NO votes. - Igor.