Remailer Abuse

[Joe Thomas]

On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Russell Nelson wrote:

>    From: db at Tadpole.COM (Doug Barnes)
>    Heh. An anonymous remailer paid for by credit card... there'd
>    have to be an additional level of indirection for it to work,
>    which would make the methods for tracking those who don't pay
>    quite problematic.

> Why wouldn't it work?  I plan on doing this, and I'll be selling lots
> of things besides a remailer, including lots of email traffic.  So
> there won't be any effective way to find out who paid for access to my
> remailer.

Another thought:  why couldn't you sell a book of "stamps" -- Magic Money 
tokens -- and get paid for them using First Virtual?  This would get 
around two problems:  the lack of anonymity using First Virtual, and the 
fairly high 29-cent-per-transaction fee.  You could sell a book of twenty 
remailer stamps for a dollar, or something.  I'd buy.

And it wouldn't make it too easy for people to use remailers without 
paying.  FV will still take an account away from someone who denies 
legitimate charges too many times.

I guess there is the problem of Chaum's patents (and RSA's).  Is there 
anyplace where neither set of patents is valid, or where they'd be 
practically unenforceable?

Joe