AA + Anonymous ECash = Unhappy Fundies
hkhenson@cup.portal.com writes:
AA BBS is still up, and may well stay up for the whole time Robert is in prison. He has no other way to support his family or pay for legal defense. Also, outside of western TN, OK, Utah, and other backwards places, what he is selling is legal--even protected under the First Amendment. (Though some of it *is* kinda gross :-) )
But certainly no worse than the stuff which regularly flows through a.b.p.tasteless and a.b.p.bestiality.
AA BBS is up to about 25,000 files. There is a good chance that they will be available through the internet at some point.
It strikes me that this would be the perfect way to generate consumer interest in anonymous digital cash protocols. The entire AA collection, hooked up to the net through a T-3, and available for a nominal fee per GIF, could easily make the AA Sysops millionaires by the time their sentences are over. Such a setup would make their pictures available to everyone, not just the limited number of people their BBS has the capacity to handle. Perhaps the server could be placed securely overseas in a neutral country which still respects privacy and free speech. Orders could be encrypted using the server's PGP key and the customer could specify the passphrase to be used to IDEA encrypt the "goods" prior to shipment, ala NetBank.
Trying to control information in the network age is about as sucessful as pissing into the wind.
When the government pisses into the wind, the citizens get wet. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
On Sat, 21 Jan 1995, Mike Duvos wrote:
hkhenson@cup.portal.com writes: [. . .]
AA BBS is up to about 25,000 files. There is a good chance that they will be available through the internet at some point.
It strikes me that this would be the perfect way to generate consumer interest in anonymous digital cash protocols [. . . .]
Actually, this strikes me as a worst case scenario as far as promoting cryptography goes. Don't get me wrong--I have no interest in telling people they can't look at whatever pictures they want, or prevent others from selling those pictures to them. But...to make such a close association between what Joe Public considers degenerate trash and cryptography.... The "cause" will do much better if the first major association is made with something much less controversial. Girl Scout cookies, say. b& -- Ben.Goren@asu.edu, Arizona State University School of Music Finger ben@tux.music.asu.edu for PGP public key ID 0xCFF23BD5.
Ben Goren <ben@Tux.Music.ASU.Edu> writes:
Actually, this strikes me as a worst case scenario as far as promoting cryptography goes.
It's two things. It's a "killer app" for strong crypto, and at the same time, a crypto public relations disaster. Let me now make the argument that the advantages of the first far outweigh the disadvantages of the second. Success in spreading cryptography will not be achieved by convincing the government that we are all nice people with noble motives and asking their permission. It will be achieved by writing neat code like PGP which protects privacy and individual freedom regardless of the plans of the state. The public has already been indoctrinated by the government that cryptography permits Terrorists, Pedophiles, and Drug Dealers to thumb their noses at law enforcement, and has been fed a comprehensive series of alarmist scenarios about what this might imply. Terms like "message laundering" are beginning to be used in the media to describe fundamental Cypherpunk technology, and the level of public anxiety about such issues is being deliberately raised. Robert Anton Wilson once commented that freedom and democracy make infrequent appearances in the totality of human history because "All you have to do is frighten the people, and they will beg you to take their freedoms away." We probably only have a short time remaining in which to implement a privacy-friendly world Net before the Powers That Be(tm) engineer consent for the implementation of something much more Draconian. Given the current political climate, there is therefore little incremental heat likely to be born from the revelation that strong crypto permits people to purchase AA GIFs, and considerable likely benefit from being able to implement and test strong crypto based digital cash technology in conjunction with a virtually unlimited highly motivated customer base. There is also the added advantage of generating revenue to assist the AA BBS Sysops with their legal problems, before the precedents created become OUR legal problems.
Don't get me wrong--I have no interest in telling people they can't look at whatever pictures they want, or prevent others from selling those pictures to them. But...to make such a close association between what Joe Public considers degenerate trash and cryptography....
Some Islamic country (I forget which one) quashed opposition by the clergy to the introduction of television by reading the Koran over the first television channel to be installed. Our government does much the same in reverse, by demonstrating to the stupid peasants how unwanted cryptographic technology can be used to conceal pictures of naked children or bomb plans.
The "cause" will do much better if the first major association is made with something much less controversial. Girl Scout cookies, say.
Fear, Greed, and Gonads are the major human motivators which must be tapped for symmmetry-breaking change in social organization to occur. AA GIFs are directly targeted at the third of these. Girl Scout Cookies have no significant cross-section with any of these motivators, are already available everywhere, and are much more difficult to transmit in binary form. :) -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
participants (2)
-
Ben Goren -
mpd＠netcom.com