At 5:05 PM -0400 10/2/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:

Below is a response from one of the students, forwarded here with permission.

-Declan

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From: "Christopher Fazekas" <chrisfazekas@prodigy.net> To: <declan@well.com> Subject: Your speech last night. Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:23:41 -0400 ... However, what makes this topic interesting, bothers me as well. I was the individual who asked the "prepayment" question concerning intellectual property and proper remuneration thereof. Fantastic new economic models would be forced to be created to describe this "market response" to the dissolution of intellectual property rights. So, I will not venture an opinion on such subject. Yet, I think it is important to mention that there is a fine line between anarchism and libertarianism. At least I find there to be one. Hence, when we talk about the overthrow of the nation state, it sets off quite a few bells.

Not surprising that it should "set off quite a few bells." The technologies are likely to profoundly change a lot of things, and ring a lot of bells.

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I do not believe judicial systems should be cast to the wayside in favor of techno-egalitarianism, and I feel that the dissolution of intellectual property would sincerely stress current social institutions which I do not believe need to be overthrown, but strengthened as government power is retracted. However, a case could be made that the two are intricately connected to one another.

Christopher Fazekas is thinking about the issue from the wrong perspective. It is not a matter of society deciding, or him deciding, or the voters deciding, whether or not to "cast to the wayside" certain systems, any more so than society faced a social decision to accept or reject the implications of the printing press, or the telephone, or technology in general. (See, for example, numerous historical studies. A recent one is Ithiel de sola Pool's "Technologies of Freedom," focussing on the telephone and its implications for society. A few societies have attempted to make the judgement call that some technology, even a whole set of technologies, needed to be rejected. China, for example, withdrew its trading/exploration fleets and banned many technologies...this back in the middle of the last millennium. (And, some would say, in later echoes...) Usually it is well-nigh impossible to ban such technologies, and rulers end up fighting delaying actions only. Examples abound in the past century, from control of birth control information to control of copying machines. I think it certain that strong crypto and its implications is already well along and cannot be reversed or even effectively reigned in. (Metaphors as appropriate: genie out of the bottle, Pandora's box open, fire already stolen from the gods, horses out of the barn, etc.) I expect that Mr. Fazekas, now that he has been more thoroughly exposed to these ideas, will be able to see the upcoming "fork in the road": Path 1: Strong crypto is restricted, communications are widely and pervasively tapped, the First and Fourth Amendments are gutted, rules of evidence are changed, all financial transactions are required to be reported, communication across national borders is restricted, travel to foreign nations is strictly controlled, etc. (I'll leave it for a later discussion, if there's any doubt, about just how difficult it has already become to attempt _any_ of these measures. I spelled it out in 1988 in my Crypto Anarchist Manifesto--transparent borders, satellites, steganography, etc. Kevin Kelly's book "Out of Control" includes my circa 1990 outlook on the difficulties facing those who would attempt to control bits.) Path 2: Citizen-units ignore rules (a la Napster, Gnutella, Freenet), they do what they want. Lots of bandwidth sloshing around, lots of "degrees of freedom" (a key concept from control theory/physics, and a good punning connection to crypto anarchy). Governments freak out as the sheeple are downloading files, vising Neo-Nazi and porn Web sites, exchanging lists of those Clinton had killed, and so on. Clerics call for more control, ragheads demand disconnecting from the Satanic West. Politicians scream about "saving the children." But nothing does more than slightly slow the inrushing wave. Governments warn about how digital money will undermine tax collection and faith in the entire system...Cypherpunks say "Yep, that's what we were saying more than ten years ago." Academics write papers on the implications of regulatory arbitrage, on the undermining of international law. Meanwhile, more bandwidth, more untaxed transactions, more offshore gambling, more porn, more political sites. Even women in Saudi Arabia discover that birth control information denied to them locally is available on the Net...though they'd better use anonymous remailers and ZKS and Mojo Nation! Is there a "middle path"? Can the center hold, as the Brits would ask? Doesn't look like it to me. Oh, sure, there will still be taxes. The governments can still tax houses, and cars, and threaten meatspace people with various dire actions if they don't cough up some geld to the protection racket. But the exponential increase in bandwidth and the accompanying degrees of freedom will forever change things politically. And this is not new. I mentioned printing. It revolutionized Europe and led to the destruction of guilds--the "intellectual property" holders of their day. (Make no mistake, the Guild of Leather Tanners "owned" their knowledge in a way quite similar to how modern corporations and governments claim to own knowledge.) Printing made "how to" books possible (the next most popular books after religious hymnals and bibles). The power of guilds began to decline. Likewise, religion changed dramatically...courtesy of "95 Theses" and accessibility of pamphlets and bibles written in the common languages of the time. The Industrial Revolution was another "knowledgequake" which triggered vast changes in the landscape of politics, the law, and everything else. Including taxation, interestingly enough. (Left to the reader to consider how modern factories made possible certain types of taxation and centralization of power.) Suppose an earlier version of Mr. Fazekas was asking whether these changes--printing, steam engines, factory production, electrification, automobiles, computers, the list is long--should be "allowed"? Allowed by _whom_? Now, I grant that we don't know yet know if the Net and its related technologies (crypto, notably) is comparable to the invention of printing and the Industrial Revolution. Or even as important as the telephone. Personally, I think the Net--or, more broadly, the colonization of cyberspace--is a dramatic, world-changing event. Not exactly a surprising revelation to most folks today, given the changes in just the past five years that Web browsers have been commonly available. But profound nonetheless. Where will government be in twenty years? What will happen to local laws when cyberspace makes movement around the world so easy? When regulatory arbitrage moots nearly any law? When untraceable and unbreakable crypto allows "impenetrable bobbles" (a la Vinge) to be erected at will? When digital reputations, handled on a peer-to-peer basis and not subject to "top-down" commands, become the currency of cypherspace? Unrealistic? Check back in a decade and see where things are headed. Meanwhile, I welcome Mr. Fazekas to our community. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.