The Difficulty of Source Level Blocking

[Timothy C. May]

Greg Broiles wrote:

> > Very long term, when message costs are borne by the sender, this
> > problem goes away. (Others remain, such as death threats, extortion,
> > markets for murder, etc., but they're in a different category.)
> 
> If you mean digital postage when you say "message costs", I don't see
> how charging Detweiler $.25 or so to send his messages is going to stop
> him; it might put a dent in the sheer volume, but probably not in the
> variety of inappropriate groups he chooses to annoy. If message costs
> are high enough to deter Detweiler, they're going to be high enough to
> deter legitimate and useful posts, too.

OK, this issue just keeps coming up again and again! I fully concede,
and have never maintained otherwise, that charging 25 cents or a
dollar or whatever for digital postage will stop Detweiler or anyone
else for posting an "inappropriate" message to an individual, a list,
a newsgroup, or even many newsgroups. What I maintain is that, absent
such digital postage, flooding of many newsgroups is just too damned
cheap. Remailers are even't needed, as the "Jesus is Coming" posts so
clearly show. This is the "Usenet in its current form is broken"
point.

But we can't change the whole world overnight. What we _can_ do is
experiment with things like digital postage. I maintain that this is a
useful step, not a total solution.

And keep in mind that the issue of us not liking what Detweiler has to
say, or the readers of sci.health.diabetes not liking a "Welcome to
BlackNet" posting in their newsgroup is NOT SOLVABLE by us. Pleenty of
posts I don't like, and plenty of posts of mine are doubtless disliked
by others. What's an "annoying" post and what's a "legitimate and
useful" post is in the eye of the beholder.

What Detweiler writes is up to him and to the newsgroups that choose
to accept what he writes (no moderation) and to the pricing structure
that results in the subsidization of these postings. Where *we* get
involved is in the practical issue of minimizing short term damage to
our remailers (to the owners, too).

I hope I'm making myself clear:

- we can't hope to filter annoying posts from legitimate and useful
posts

- there is probably no conceivable standard for this

- government censorship is not a solution Cypherpunks will support

- ideally, recipients will decide what they wish to receive, or at
least will not have to pay for mail they don't want.

(This is the situation with the Post Office today---imagine if you had
to pay the Federal Express charges on packages sent to you
unsolicited, and the sender had to pay nothing at all to send
them....that's roughly the system we have today with Usenet. It mostly
works because others (universities, corporations, grants,
cross-subsidies) are footing the bill. But ask anyone who has to pay
25 cents per mail message what he thinks of getting mailbombed.)

- digital postage will *not* fix the problems of abusive and
inappropriate message (see points above)--nothing will, save for
censorship or screening at some point

- but digital postage may reduce some types of flooding

- and it gets us started in a real and easy-to-understand application
of untraceable digital cash

I call these some good reasons to explore this further. And such a
system is likelier to be the basis for a "next generation Usenet" than
idle speculations about new features.

--Tim May



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Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay at netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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