This will be my one and only post on the topic. Let me first say that I support Gilmore's decision... Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net> said:

Adamsc wrote:

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This has been taken far too seriously. Cypherpunks is a *PRIVATE* list. There is no obligation to accept anyone.

Isn't this the same argument used by the state whenever they want to differentiate between your "rights" and your "privileges"? Can they reject one of your privileges whenever they want to, at their discretion? No.

I don't understand your argument here at all. There are, in a libertarian society, no "positive" rights (that is to say, the government owes you nothing). There are only "negative" rights (that is to say, there are things to gov't can not DO to you). When the gov't talks about censoring the works of Maplethorpe or other "offensive" art, I think they have every right to do so since they (we) PAY for it. The gov't does not owe artists the "right" to have their work created at the public's expense. In a libertarian society, the gov't wouldn't subsidize speech or art in the first place. If they want to pay for it themselves, the gov't can not restrict them. They can't force me to pay for it. And no one can force Gilmore to let Vulis destroy cypherpunks.

So if c-punks is really "private", how does it decide (arbitrarily?) who to include and who to reject?

The answer is pretty obvious if you just think about it... if the list is "private" (i.e. private PROPERTY), then the person who *owns* it gets to make the decision. The owner can even make the decision arbitrarily. The decision to remove Vulis, however, does not seem arbitrary. It was not, I think, based on a whim. If you owned a bar in a libertarian society, and one of your patrons stood up on the bar and took a whiz, would you say that his self-expression was censored when the bouncer tossed him out on his arse? Would you call it arbitrary?

Note that I'm not saying that it's absolutely wrong to reject anyone, at any time necessarily, I just don't think your last sentence about a *private* list was well thought out.

I think it was very well thought out and I think Adamsc knew exactly what he was saying. rgds-- TA (tallard@frb.gov) I don't speak for the Federal Reserve Board, it doesn't speak for me. pgp fingerprint: 10 49 F5 24 F1 D9 A7 D6 DE 14 25 C8 C0 E2 57 9D

Lucky Green wrote:

On Mon, 4 Nov 1996, Dale Thorn wrote: [Quoting Adam]

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This has been taken far too seriously. Cypherpunks is a *PRIVATE* list. There is no obligation to accept anyone. Isn't this the same argument used by the state whenever they want to differentiate between your "rights" and your "privileges"? Can they reject one of your privileges whenever they want to, at their discretion? No.

Government != private. Why is this so difficult to understand?[snip] "It" does not decide. "He" does. John Gilmore is the list *owner*. He can decide to remove anyboy from this list. Anytime. For any reason or no reason at all. He can even shut down the entire mailing list anytime he pleases, for any reason or no reason at all.

I've been looking up some of the words tossed around in this thread, in a dictionary and elsewhere, to see if I can understand you. It still sounds to me as though you believe totally in authoritarian systems. I don't consider myself a Socialist, but I believe that some of the well=known concepts of ownership (the U.S. Constitution has some of these) have both a popular meaning and a hidden meaning. Question: When you say *owner*, does this mean he runs the list on his own personal computers, at his home, or at his business which he owns himself, or could it mean that he's functioning on behalf of an educational institution and the term *owner* has a different meaning than what most people would assume? Maybe I shouldn't ask this kind of question, out of fear or something like that.