should we use same nym on multiple servers?

[Bruce Baugh]

At 01:05 AM 2/20/96 -0800, tcmay at got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote:

>You know, shalmaneser at alpha.c2.org sent me a message demanding that he be
>given the name shalmaser at black.net on my system, for exactly this reason.
>I told him to fuck off.
>Now he's threatening to sue me. Do you folks think this is right?

No fooling? Wow. That's astonishingly clueless on his part, I'd say. 

When I sign up with an Internet provider, I don't necessarily get the user
name I want. When I joined Teleport, "bruce", "baugh", and "bbaugh" were all
already taken. I presume by, in turn, someone with the first name of Bruce,
someone with the last name of Baugh, and someone with a first initial of B
and a last name of Baugh. (There are, oh, third or fourth cousins of mine in
the area. These things happen.) When I transferred to Aracnet, "bruce" was
free, so I grabbed it. If Bruce Boxleitner were to try to get an account
there, that'd be his tough luck.

Even more so with nyms, and even more more so with nyms that aren't real
names. "Shalmaneser" is a name with antecedents, after all. If someone else
beat the c2 guy to it at black.net, that's his tough luck. No provider, I
think, is compelled to offer anyone the user name they might like to have,
nor to hold one indefinitely on the off chance. Welcome to the real world,
where more than one person can have the same idea.

And, as you say...

>about "claims" on nyms, it's pointless. Even if _some_ nyms are apparently
>persistent across nymservers, all it takes is the possibility of this not
>to be so for the fiction to collapse. The best way to prove that
>"shalmaneser at alpha.c2.org" is really the same True Name (or in alliance
>with) as "foobar at black.net" is to show that either can read the messages
>encrypted to the other.)

Right. It at least shows some level of cooperation, if not identity. And
realistically, that's about as close as anyone is going to get.

-- 
Bruce Baugh
bruce at aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce