From: ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)

Right now the remailer network is a mess. There just aren't that many remailers operating in a timely and reliable manner. I am not knocking the remailer operators for this, it's just clear that "free" doesn't make it worth their while to keep the remailers operating perfectly at all times.

I agree with this very much. For a long time we have had two contradictory notions floating around: nobody will pay for remailing services because free ones are available, and the remailer network can't be reliable because the operators don't have the resources to make them work better. Clearly if people understand that the choice is between free remailers that don't work well and for-pay ones which do, things look a little different. Peter's idea of having the remailers keep accounts for people receiving anonymous mail, possibly even sending them a monthly check, would completely change the spam equation.

Furthermore, many remailers don't use 2048-bit keys. Why not? Because they don't want to spend money on the cycles. That's okay with me - it's charity. But, if I pay a dollar for a remailer, I can expect to be able to use a very strong key.

Actually when I ran a remailer I had a small key because it was on a system which I did not control. The small key was meant as a signal to potential users that my system wasn't all that secure. The big problem that I always saw with the for-pay remailing model was the fear of greater liability when abusive mail goes through the remailer. I felt that operating a service for free would make it easier for me to argue that I was offering a public service, while running it for pay would mean that I would be profiting from the abuse. I don't know if this is really a valid argument, though. Hal