what's in a name?

[Greg Broiles]

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At 04:58 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Wei Dai wrote:

>An interesting way to look at what happened is that John
>Gilmore owns the name "cypherpunks at toad.com" and has chosen to exercise
>that ownership. [...]
>I suspect that the hierarchical nature of name ownership on the Internet
>today will be an important technological barrier for the establishment of
>truly anarchic virtual communities.  Unless this problem is solved, the
>closest we'll come is pseudo-anarchies that exist with the tolerance of
>beneficent dictators.

Wei Dai's message raises an important question: what is the relationship
between ownership and list content or quality? 

Much of the pathology of the list in the past few months can be characterized
as a "tragedy of the commons" problem, where several private actors are
seeking to maximize the gain they can extract from a finite and commonly
owned (or unownable) resource. The resource in this case is the "reputation
capital" which has built up in the terms "cypherpunks" and
"cypherpunks at toad.com". Dmitri Vulis' behavior, where he seeks to punish the
list for failing to punish or ostracize Tim May after Tim was disrespectful
to Vulis, is an attempt to achieve private gain (public retribution) at the
expense of public goods (the continuing quality and good name of the list).
Several authors have characterized John Gilmore and Sandy Sandfort's actions
with respect to moderation and the list as an attempt to monopolize or
appropriate the good name of the list for their own private purposes. (I do
not think that the latter characterization is accurate, but it is at least
popular.) I suspect that many people will see at least one "tragedy of the
commons" problem related to the list.

Some free-market economists have suggested that the solution to "tragedy of
the commons" problems is private ownership - that where economic actors are
given ownership over what might have been owned in common, that they will
seek to maximize their long-term gain through careful management and will not
adopt wasteful or harmful short-term strategies which would have otherwise
seemed attractive.

That view (that private ownership is likely to eliminate or at least minimize
wasteful or nonoptimal use of resources) has historically been a popular one
on the list. Yet private ownership of the list (or of the list's most
concrete identity, the label "cypherpunks") seems wrong to many people.

Are mailing lists an example of a situation where "the tragedy of the
commons" is not a useful metaphor? Are mailing lists an example of "public
goods" where private ownership is impossible, or should be avoided? If not,
shouldn't we work towards more private ownership, not less?

Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for good use of
resources? 

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--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles at netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.
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