Quoting David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>:

At 07:17 AM 9/16/01 +0000, Ryan Lackey wrote:

...

My primary concern is limiting the usability of these services for HavenCo AUP violations; specifically spam and spam-mailbox. A per-message charge or decrement would likely accomplish this, along with either payment or proof-of-work.

You could use human- and not machine- readable text that the user has to enter ---many free-hosting sites do this to prevent bots. That won't prevent emailing spam to a list, but will prevent mass mailings.

That's exactly what I meant by "proof of work". This topic has been discussed on p2p lists (mainly by the freenet people), as well as other places. Fundamentally, though, I don't like the idea of providing a service based on "burning" human or computer time; this is deoptimizing best-case performance in order to improve worst-case. And I *do* want automated programs to be able to use the remailer network, blacknet style. Other proof of work systems are entirely automated; such as adam back's hashcash. Already on the search engine sites which require "read these numbers" to enter a URL, there are other sites which advertise "all new codes, all the time". The only viable long-term solution I see for most of these things is charging per-transaction for messages. Remailers are exactly the kind of application where "postage" could first be applied. The problems seem twofold: 1) Remailer operators are exposed to new and additional legal threat if they accept payment for service (right?) 2) It's much easier to trace payment instruments than remailer messages. While a blinded cash system might only leak "this person is using the remailer payment system", and not provide linkability to given messages, it does complicate things substantially, and provides the potential for a lot of tracing. It would be an interesting experiment to simultaneously offer a "proof of human work" system, a "proof of computer work" system, and a pay per message system, both bulk and per-message, and see which is most popular. Given the existence of ~20 public free remailers, it seems unlikely people would use them, except perhaps if they had a good web-based UI, integration into common MUAs, etc. This would have the effect of monetizing cpu time and human-who-can-read-numbers time, which would be interesting. (sort of like the "get paid to surf the web" stuff). What would be really cool would be replacing "decipher these numbers" with some kind of task which produced actual value, but could be evaluated either by a machine or a horde of other humans; "prove this theorem", "sort these files", etc. I wonder if any other remailer operators be interested in such a system. It becomes more interesting as the cost of being a remailer increases, of course. -- Ryan Lackey [RL7618 RL5931-RIPE] ryan@havenco.com CTO and Co-founder, HavenCo Ltd. +44 7970 633 277 the free world just milliseconds away http://www.havenco.com/ OpenPGP 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F

-- On 17 Sep 2001, at 7:54, Dr. Evil wrote:

Yes, there are no "sustainable" non-tracable remote payment systems in existence, and it's almost impossible for such a system to exist. Why? There are many reasons. One of the most obvious ones is that it would be so disruptive to the activities of so many very powerful institutions (tax collectors and law enforcement mainly) that they will shut it down, where ever it may be, as soon as it gets big enough to be on their radar. Staying small enough to be under the radar is also not a sustainable strategy

A sensible strategy is to set one up, stay small (micropayments) until the momentum starts building, then move to some place that still permits bearer bonds -- Antigua or Nauru. If they try to close you down in the micropayment stage, the judge, being unfamiliar with crypto anarchist theory, is likely to microfine you. The law is not concerned with trifles.

The more fundamental reason why an untracable payment system is unsustainable is that it will be used to pay for things which society (including all of us on the c'punks list probably) abhors, such as non-state-sanctioned murder-for-hire, and eventually the operator will be found and put out of business one way or another.

By this argument we should have abolished cash already. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG JFaP31zYOsi+UM+0wvKxy2yqIv9jQbGD7nvxEJog 4j+MeJE2wu3qTScZeQQkLBEBYFCVbWKXNMqDJamkE

-- On 17 Sep 2001, at 10:30, Ryan Lackey wrote:

I'm not sure if I buy that remailers are even going to have serious problems in the future. I see two approaches:

1) The aforementioned ecash-based system. We don't have a problem getting people to smuggle drugs, because people in the drug game get lots of money, women, cars, etc. I wonder how many drug dealers would do it just for "moral goodness" (actually, a lot of last-stage dealers do that, just buying for their friends and distributing, which obviously doesn't work for remailers;

Works fine for remailers. If you need to use a remailer, run one. You know that at least one remailer in the network is OK, guaranteeing that your messages will be really untraceable.

I don't think we'll have to wait long for this kind of theorizing on anonymous communications and prosecution to no longer be merely academic.

Closing down remailers right now would involve going off message. They might however go off message if the war is nearly won, or nearly lost. If the war is nearly lost, we can expect a claim that "we were stabbed in the back", followed by a focus on the internal enemy. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bVRat5mEHVZsqG36x0si0fvps1elLGAhf9i2JTeT 4+akZKq1bBg9sR1kH3r9/fnKcYH+e0PCBg0UIIcAa

At 07:23 AM 9/17/2001 +0000, Ryan Lackey wrote:

The only viable long-term solution I see for most of these things is charging per-transaction for messages. Remailers are exactly the kind of application where "postage" could first be applied. The problems seem twofold:

1) Remailer operators are exposed to new and additional legal threat if they accept payment for service (right?)

"New and additional" might be too strong, but one of the elements of contributory or vicarious copyright infringement is whether or not the defendant profited from the direct infringement - and changing remailing from an unpaid public service to an (apparently) for-profit business pretty much concedes that point to the plaintiff. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids

At 10:15 AM 9/17/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:

On Monday, September 17, 2001, at 09:50 AM, Greg Broiles wrote:

...

At 07:23 AM 9/17/2001 +0000, Ryan Lackey wrote:

...

1) Remailer operators are exposed to new and additional legal threat if they accept payment for service (right?)

"New and additional" might be too strong, but one of the elements of contributory or vicarious copyright infringement is whether or not the defendant profited from the direct infringement - and changing remailing from an unpaid public service to an (apparently) for-profit business pretty much concedes that point to the plaintiff.

I'm not a lawyer, but why not look at "package delivery services" for some examples:

-- Federal Express, UPS, Airborne Express, Emory International, DHL, etc.

-- none of them are held liable for the contents of what they ship, whether illegal copies of software, pornography, etc.

This isn't an area where we need to start reasoning from analogies or first principles - there's already case law more or less directly on point - _RIAA v. Napster_ and _RTC v. Netcom_, both of which look back to _Fonovisa v. Cherry Auction_ 76 F.3d 259 (9th Cir. 1996), online at <http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/76_F3d_259.htm> and discussed in the Napster context at <http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/08/23/napster_fleamarket/>. The shippers could be held liable for the contents of the packages they carry if a plaintiff can establish that they knowingly materially contributed to the distribution or sale of infringing items. I suspect they avoid criminal liability by cooperating fully with law enforcement, so that even where they're technically guilty (or indictable) they have no realistic fear of prosecution; and that they avoid civil liability because domestic infringers will be attacked by IP holders directly, and foreign infringers will have their goods seized during Customs inspections, so Fedex et al never really get a chance to contribute to the infringement. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids