-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- It is silly to talk of someone "owning" the list. The list is a community. The only possible owners are the people in the community. If we all left, Eric would still have control over the list--but the list would be worthless. It is just as silly, though, to talk about whether or not Eric has the "right" to enforce his ideas. He *CAN* make changes to the list--anything else is irrelevant. This whole discussion seems to be based on the idea that signing everything is a Good Thing. Yet I haven't seen a convincing argument for that. If I read a forged message, I haven't been hurt. If the person being impersonated doesn't exist, nobody has been harmed--and if he does, ONLY that person has been harmed. So, let's put the onus here where it belongs. If people feel their reputations are important enough that they need to sign their messages, more power to them. If they don't feel it is important, who are you to tell them the value of THEIR reputations? When signatures are easy enough to do, the scale will balance on the side of security--people will value their reputations more than the trouble it takes to sign messages. Until then, people will not sign. For me, signing is easy--even though I am ridiculously unconnected right now. So I do it, using an off-line mail-reader shell that I wrote and distributed myself. The list members who are convinced that digital signatures are valuable could do much more to advance their cause by eliminating some of the barriers to using digital signatures than by mandating them. Any type of a stick will not work very well in this situation. The people most interested in privacy and encryption are those who are by nature most individualistic and stubborn. Forcing them to do something will make most of them go the other way, or go away. I know my mind works that way. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.7 Comment: Call 818-345-8640 voice for info on Keep Out magazine. iQCVAwUBLt6x1Wj9fvT+ukJdAQGKcAP/TqIF6b8UEo6IWV93JdktGoYSxQ5w6wKw MR3tXicSCRI1S/tSOSqcZm45M9CExKz7W4z417Ip8iP/wzjEmAb+s0ObgRoxoHPL Xe+VFSYq6o7f5XT67eBr+lK6t+pknmkc626Z86LsjqKIZ5jBLZrpKzmOP+La2Ypv /uE1/ZckzbA= =G1kK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- **EZ-PGP v1.07 --- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 -- |Expressnet: John Schofield 11:310/12 |Internet: John.Schofield@sprawl.expressnet.org | | Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.