[Repost] Bear writes:
A few years ago merchants were equally adamant and believed equally in the rightness of maintaining their "right" to not do business with blacks, chicanos, irish, and women. It'll pass as people wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately that won't be until after at least a decade of really vicious abuses of private data by merchants who believe in their god-given right to snoop on their customers.
My God, how low the cypherpunk list has sunk. Here we have someone not only demanding that merchants be forced to deal with pseudonymous customers, he invokes civil rights laws to support his argument! Where's Tim May when we need him? His racism is odious but at least he's not trying to force other people to follow his beliefs. I'm sure he'd have a thing or two to say about our wonderful civil rights laws and Bear's proposal to extend similar regulations to cyberspace. Here's a clue, Mr. Bear. The cypherpunks list was founded on the principle that cyberspace can enhance freedom, and that includes freedom to associate with whomever you choose. Racism is evil, but the solution must lie in people's hearts. Pointing a gun at them and forcing them to act in a politically correct manner (which is what civil rights regulations really do) is no solution to the problem.
So yeah, I think that the right to privacy implies the right to use a pseudonym. For any non-fraudulent purpose, including doing business with merchants who don't know it's a pseudonym.
And I think that's a constitutional right, whether the merchants happen to like it or not...
And of course any reference to the constitution betrays utter cluelessness when talking on an international mailing list about technology which spans national borders. Unless you are prepared to be bound by the Iraqi constitution, Mr. Bear, don't ask us to be governed by yours.
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 02:23 PM, Anonymous wrote:
[Repost]
Bear writes:
A few years ago merchants were equally adamant and believed equally in the rightness of maintaining their "right" to not do business with blacks, chicanos, irish, and women. It'll pass as people wake up and smell the coffee. Unfortunately that won't be until after at least a decade of really vicious abuses of private data by merchants who believe in their god-given right to snoop on their customers.
My God, how low the cypherpunk list has sunk. Here we have someone not only demanding that merchants be forced to deal with pseudonymous customers, he invokes civil rights laws to support his argument!
Where's Tim May when we need him?
I'm right here. But you have missed something very important: "Bear" did not write that article for the _Cypherpunks_ list. It was one of many articles cross-posted between the _Cryptography_ list and the _Cypherpunks_ list and even some of Hettinga's many lists. Here are the headers:
-- On 1 Jul 2002 at 15:06, Tim May wrote:
I have strong views on all this DRM and TCPA stuff, and especially on the claim that some form of DRM is needed to prevent government from taking over control of the "arts."
But we said everything that needed to be said _years_ ago. No point in repeating the same points.
No, it does need to be said again. You cannot merely do a copy and paste from the cyphernomicon. You will find it necessary a copy and paste from the cyphernomicon followed by several global search and replaces and a small amount of new material referring to current events. Palladium, as described by Microsoft, is actually a pretty cool idea that would be useful for quite a few cypherpunkly projects. When Microsoft gave its description of Palladium, there were a few caveats and maybes that to me sounded as if they were saying "Well our hearts are in the right place, this is the way it will be if only it was not going to be the way that it actually is going to be". Unfortunately it is being introduced at the same time as there is legislation proposed, the SSSCA, to outlaw general purpose computers, turning them into set top boxes, and license software engineers, so that only a small number of specially privileged people will be permitted access to general purpose computers. This timing creates a reasonable suspicion that Palladium is in fact a stalking horse for that project, a preparation for a slightly more acceptable variant of the SSSCA. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG jJb9+mkN3R59T+7qqwbaNl6DlnXtC7susSRKhpeg 2XCDBLPYrZ4/b3EazgN2sjfbch9lCok9wmcWkHl6X
On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 1 Jul 2002 at 15:06, Tim May wrote:
I have strong views on all this DRM and TCPA stuff, and especially on the claim that some form of DRM is needed to prevent government from taking over control of the "arts."
But we said everything that needed to be said _years_ ago. No point in repeating the same points.
No, it does need to be said again.
I agree it needs to be said over and over again. But for a different reason. There are always new people to teach. New kids born every day, who don't have the history, nor any clue that there *is* a history. Old folks who never pain any attention before because it didn't concern them, but now it does. I would be willing to bet the ancient Greeks argued about many of the same things we do now, and in much the same way. The time scale has changed, but the basic ethics hasn't.
Unfortunately it is being introduced at the same time as there is legislation proposed, the SSSCA, to outlaw general purpose computers, turning them into set top boxes, and license software engineers, so that only a small number of specially privileged people will be permitted access to general purpose computers. This timing creates a reasonable suspicion that Palladium is in fact a stalking horse for that project, a preparation for a slightly more acceptable variant of the SSSCA.
I'm not so paranoid. Somebody will point out that the US can't license all the software engineers in India (and vice versa). If they want us all to buy set-top-boxes, or hdtv's with built in encryption, they can set up the transmission towers and pay the FCC for the broadcast channels and just pump out all the crap they want. Everybody who's just gotta have the latest DVD can sight right up for it. The rest of us can ignore the whole mess and use our computers the way we want to. A few will be able to tap into the hdtv plaintext and pipe it over to the net. They'll get caught eventually and have to deal with concequences. It doesn't take any new laws to make it happen, but it does take a lot of up front cash. And I think that's what is bugging the "content providers". They can't just jump on the bandwaggon. They need to build new distribution networks, that they can control. Fine, let them! But don't make me have to join in. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 07:15 PM, Mike Rosing wrote:
On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 1 Jul 2002 at 15:06, Tim May wrote:
I have strong views on all this DRM and TCPA stuff, and especially on the claim that some form of DRM is needed to prevent government from taking over control of the "arts."
But we said everything that needed to be said _years_ ago. No point in repeating the same points.
No, it does need to be said again.
I agree it needs to be said over and over again. But for a different reason.
There are always new people to teach. New kids born every day, who don't have the history, nor any clue that there *is* a history. Old folks who never pain any attention before because it didn't concern them, but now it does.
I would be willing to bet the ancient Greeks argued about many of the same things we do now, and in much the same way. The time scale has changed, but the basic ethics hasn't.
Then say it. I'm not stopping you. I explained why _I've_ already said it several dozen times, not why you or others shouldn't. (Helpful advice: Realize that those to whom it needs to be said won't be listening to you and that those who are listening don't need to hear it for the fifth time. And realize that crossposters from Perrypunks are not interested.) --Tim May "How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?" --Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 05:58 PM, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 1 Jul 2002 at 15:06, Tim May wrote:
I have strong views on all this DRM and TCPA stuff, and especially on the claim that some form of DRM is needed to prevent government from taking over control of the "arts."
But we said everything that needed to be said _years_ ago. No point in repeating the same points.
No, it does need to be said again.
You cannot merely do a copy and paste from the cyphernomicon. You will find it necessary a copy and paste from the cyphernomicon followed by several global search and replaces and a small amount of new material referring to current events.
I didn't say my views on Palladium and TCPA/DRM are already contained in an 8-9-year-old document, only that the ground is well-trod. Especially the ground involving voluntary vs. mandatory, Brin's ideas, and the "policeman inside" notion that if we don't install DRM Big Brother will have to do it for us. I don't try to discourage others, but I have better things to do with my time than to argue futilely with statists who are not even reading my stuff! (Many of them are cross-posting in from Perrypunks, so my replies are unseen by them.)
Palladium, as described by Microsoft, is actually a pretty cool idea that would be useful for quite a few cypherpunkly projects.
Probably _not_, for the very reason Palladium will fail: a plethora of extant systems which people will not scrap just so they can watch "The Fast and the Furious."
Unfortunately it is being introduced at the same time as there is legislation proposed, the SSSCA, to outlaw general purpose computers
Anyone who believes this, or even repeats it as a rumor, is on drugs. I have half a dozen computers, all usable in various ways. Not even in a Chinese-type police state could these legally-acquired computers, acquired for a lot of money, be declared "outlawed." Not even counting your computers, and my computers, and 500 million computers already out in the U.S. alone, there are the designs of processors like Pentium 4, Athlon, McKinley, Thoroughbred, Duron, etc., _none_ of which are of this Valenti-friendly TCPA form. None of the hundreds of millions of systems now being prepared for sale are of this form. Saying that general purpose computers lacking TCPA/DRM will be "outlawed" is silly. --Tim May --Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
From: "Tim May" <tcmay@got.net>
I have half a dozen computers, all usable in various ways. Not even in a Chinese-type police state could these legally-acquired computers, acquired for a lot of money, be declared "outlawed."
Now, I love hyperbole as much as the next guy, but you have no idea what a Chinese-type police state could declare outlawed. I heard about a country that declared illegal people's own gold. Wait, maybe you heard of it too! [Duh...] If China declares that all people with an IQ over 70 are to be killed tomorrow, they WILL be killed tomorrow, and those few who manage to escape will be prosecuted by everyone - especially by those with IQs below 70. I've seen something like this at work in my country, right after our revolution - the "We Work, not Think" slogan was actually very much in use, and I won't be very surprised to find people who still believe / embrace it. (People WERE attacked because they were "intellectuals", which was worse than "burgeoise" for several months in 1990.)
Not even counting your computers, and my computers, and 500 million computers already out in the U.S. alone, there are the designs of processors like Pentium 4, Athlon, McKinley, Thoroughbred, Duron, etc., _none_ of which are of this Valenti-friendly TCPA form. None of the hundreds of millions of systems now being prepared for sale are of this form. Saying that general purpose computers lacking TCPA/DRM will be "outlawed" is silly.
You still failed to say why. This is Tim "Saying that gold will be outlawed is silly" May for you. Mark
Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind... Adam On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 08:46:46PM +0300, Marcel Popescu wrote:
Now, I love hyperbole as much as the next guy, but you have no idea what a Chinese-type police state could declare outlawed. I heard about a country that declared illegal people's own gold. Wait, maybe you heard of it too! [Duh...]
Adam Back writes:
Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind...
Roosevelt called an emergency session of congress to pass the Emergency Banking Relief Act, an amendment to the Trading With the Enemy Act. He then seized the gold of all US citizens, compensating them at a rate of twenty-some dollars an ounce. Subsequently, he set an exchange rate for the dollar of $35 per ounce of gold, and this revaluation of the government's new gold stocks wiped out the national debt. Where the President and Congress are concerned, "Emergency" is generally a code word for "The Constitution is toilet paper." -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 8:53 PM +0100 on 7/2/02, Adam Back wrote:
Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind...
Roosevelt wanted to make the dollar a fiat currency, IIRC. Before then, you could redeem dollars for gold, after then you could redeem dollars for, well, dollars. This was slid sideways a bit after the war by the Bretton Woods agreement, which made various European currencies exchangeable into dollars at mostly fixed rates, and *foreigners* could exchange dollars into gold. Which, once Europe was on its feet financially, and Johnson's democrats began inflating the dollar to pay for Vietnam and other fun things, deGaulle's France (did I spell those both right, AAA? :-)) happily started changing dollars into gold, FOB Paris, thank you very much. At which point, Nixon floated the dollar, and, at the same time, allowed the private possession of gold in the US again. Then he did something really stupid and instituted price controls, but, he was always an Nerf-Conservative political opportunist anyway, or at least a Keynesian, which is the same thing, even Le Monde Diplomatique says so ;-)... Fortunately, the rest of the innumeracy that was the New Deal has been going down the shitter since then. They finally got rid of the Glass-Stegal act a few years ago, for instance, the law that bifurcated investment banks and banks of deposit. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSI5NMPxH8jf3ohaEQLH8wCeOlVDblBsF0ZCkqfUH89d2tfXn+QAn0UU Ab7b99fnYcZi+Db1BFivOsu3 =iCZG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere. On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 07:37:48PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
At 8:53 PM +0100 on 7/2/02, Adam Back wrote:
Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private posession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind...
Roosevelt wanted to make the dollar a fiat currency, IIRC. Before then, you could redeem dollars for gold, after then you could redeem dollars for, well, dollars.
This was slid sideways a bit after the war by the Bretton Woods agreement, which made various European currencies exchangeable into dollars at mostly fixed rates, and *foreigners* could exchange dollars into gold.
Which, once Europe was on its feet financially, and Johnson's democrats began inflating the dollar to pay for Vietnam and other fun things, deGaulle's France (did I spell those both right, AAA? :-)) happily started changing dollars into gold, FOB Paris, thank you very much.
At which point, Nixon floated the dollar, and, at the same time, allowed the private possession of gold in the US again. Then he did something really stupid and instituted price controls, but, he was always an Nerf-Conservative political opportunist anyway, or at least a Keynesian, which is the same thing, even Le Monde Diplomatique says so ;-)...
Fortunately, the rest of the innumeracy that was the New Deal has been going down the shitter since then. They finally got rid of the Glass-Stegal act a few years ago, for instance, the law that bifurcated investment banks and banks of deposit.
Cheers, RAH
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5
iQA/AwUBPSI5NMPxH8jf3ohaEQLH8wCeOlVDblBsF0ZCkqfUH89d2tfXn+QAn0UU Ab7b99fnYcZi+Db1BFivOsu3 =iCZG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
-- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere.
There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason. I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against silver sometime later one. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 11:34:17PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
At 7:31 PM -0500 on 7/2/02, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Wasn't the dollar backed by silver for quite awhile? There were definitely real silver dollars coined for quite awhile, and the dollar said something on it about silver certificate. Likewise many smaller coins had a high silver content -- this ended sometime during Vietnam, not sure the year. I've still got a bag of silver coins laying around somewhere.
There were silver certificates, yes, and silver coins, until the market value of the silver exceeded the value stated on the coin. Pennies have a lot of zinc in them now, for the same reason.
I'm not sure when the silver certificate notes stopped being issued, though it seems to me that FDR had something to do with that. I'm pretty sure they were being honored at least into the 1970's, and it seems to me that they'd just give you $20 worth of silver at market prices if you gave them a silver certificate, which wasn't much help unless you thought either the future price of silver was going up, or the dollar going down against silver sometime later one.
I did a quick search -- started issuing silver certificates in 1878, quit in 1957, but kept redeeming them for silver dollars until 1964, and for silver bullion until 1968. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Adam Back wrote:
Just curious, but what was the rationale under which private possession of gold was made illegal in the US? It boggles the mind...
Adam
Eric's comment are correct. A bit more info. The US wanted to devalue the $ and substitute a general gold standard for a government to government gold standard. The gold standard price of gold was $20.67/ounce. By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. They also wanted the freedom to inflate. Gold clauses were common in contracts and they would have made soft money difficult. As is traditional under US law, gold ownership was banned for US citizens and permanent residents anywhere on earth. There were controlled exemptions for coin collectors, jewelers, and dentists. Gold smuggling became popular during the Vietnam war and the monetary crises of the '60s and '70s. It was re-legalized in January of 1975 (the only decent act of the Ford Admin). DCF
Duncan Frissell said: By forcing Americans to turn in their gold before devaluation, the Feds got more gold for less money. ........................ But: the individual common folk couldn't be forced to turn in their gold if the govmt didn't know they had any, right, since gold wasn't/isn't trackable. So it would only have been highly visible commercial entities who couldn't refuse? .. Blanc
Tim wrote:
Unfortunately it is being introduced at the same time as there is legislation proposed, the SSSCA, to outlaw general purpose computers
Anyone who believes this, or even repeats it as a rumor, is on drugs.
If the government can outlaw the sale of TVs which do not have the closed-caption feature, which do not tune UHF as easily as VHF, which do not have Macrovision compliant AGC circuits, or countless other government mandated features, what makes you think that computers could not be required to be compliant with a similar laundry list? Sure I can own and use use a "general purpose" TV which was manufactured before the requirements, but it won't have a remote control, nor a high contrast black matrix picture tube, nor a coax input, and it will take me all afternoon to adjust the purity and convergence. It will also weigh a ton. Almost all TVs in use today have the mandated features. If analagous features are mandated in computers, almost all computers in use will be compliant within a period of a few years. Sure I will be able to use an antique "general purpose" computer, but it won't run the right software, and it won't play current content. Will most innumerate Sheeple bother? Of course not.
I have half a dozen computers, all usable in various ways. Not even in a Chinese-type police state could these legally-acquired computers, acquired for a lot of money, be declared "outlawed."
Whem Moore's Law gives your wristwatch more computing power than all your antique machines combined, you will haul them to the dump, just like your neighbors are doing.
Not even counting your computers, and my computers, and 500 million computers already out in the U.S. alone, there are the designs of processors like Pentium 4, Athlon, McKinley, Thoroughbred, Duron, etc., _none_ of which are of this Valenti-friendly TCPA form. None of the hundreds of millions of systems now being prepared for sale are of this form. Saying that general purpose computers lacking TCPA/DRM will be "outlawed" is silly.
Such functionality will be placed in a dedicated chipset apart from the microprocessor initially. How many computers made 10 years ago are around today? How many made today will be around 10 years from now? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Eric Cordian wrote: [...] I agree that making them mandatory requirements for new machines will do more than enough, without having to bother to make old machines illegal.
Not even counting your computers, and my computers, and 500 million computers already out in the U.S. alone, there are the designs of processors like Pentium 4, Athlon, McKinley, Thoroughbred, Duron, etc., _none_ of which are of this Valenti-friendly TCPA form. None of the hundreds of millions of systems now being prepared for sale are of this form. Saying that general purpose computers lacking TCPA/DRM will be "outlawed" is silly.
Such functionality will be placed in a dedicated chipset apart from the microprocessor initially. How many computers made 10 years ago are around today?
Plenty. Most are so old as to be virtually useless by modern standards, but hey.
How many made today will be around 10 years from now?
Even more. And I think it likely that they will be more useful than currently 10 year old machines, as well. Why do I think that? Mostly because Intel/AMD/Dell/co are having such an awful time trying to sell the latest and greatest whiz-bang stuff. Back 'in the day', virtually _any_ speed increase was worth buying. But at this point, unless you've got something really special in mind, you can often stay a generation or two (or three) back without any problems at all. Also, pretty much any machine made in the last couple of years is fast enough to do real time audio capture and compression. Real time video still requires something fairly high end, but give it a year. Not to say that having DRM hardware will not be a total pain the ass. Just that mass-scale piracy will still be very much possible. But I suppose they already know that. -Jack
participants (12)
-
Adam Back -
Anonymous -
Blanc -
Duncan Frissell -
Eric Cordian -
Harmon Seaver -
Jack Lloyd -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
Marcel Popescu -
Mike Rosing -
R. A. Hettinga -
Tim May