Will off-topic libertarian bullshit be allowed on the moderated mailing list?

[Igor Chudov @ home]

Black Unicorn wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 5 Jan 1997, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > For a long time, cypherpunks mailing list has been plagued by
> > two types of irrelevant traffic: 
> > 
> > 	1) Flames by Vulis against cypherpunks and by cypherpunks against
> > 	   Vulis.
> > 	2) Off-topic rants about libertarian ideology, guns, poverty,
> > 	   Ebonics, etc etc.
> > 
> > Both types of messages were equally damaging to the content that I
> > consider worth reading: discussions about applications of cryptography,
> > protocols and crypto-related code. As a result, most of the people who
> > used to talk about cryptosystems do not do so anymore because they moved
> > to other, less noisy, forums.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Cypherpunks's uniqueness and appeal is not in the breadth of issues
> > discussed: there are forums dedicated to libertarian issues, guns,
> > languages, terrorism, and so on. The mission of this forum, as I
> > understand it, was to provide amateurs with interest in applying
> > cryptography, and professional cryptographers alike, a good place to
> > discuss crypto-related issues productively.
> > 
> > It is understandable that many of those people who subscribe to
> > cypherpunks' credo of digital freedom happen to be devoted libertarians
> > and have strong views on other political subjects. It does not justify
> > bringing every important issue to this mailing list, however.
> > 
> > If restrictions on content are to be imposed, it is not only fair
> > but also rational to exclude off-topic political rants as well as 
                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > flames. Both of these categories add zero value to accomplishing
> > Cypherpunks' mission.
> 
> Disagree strongly.
> 
> Were you to call for a total restriction on political topics, frankly,
> your argument would be more convincing.  You do not. This suggests,
> correct or not, that your dispute is with libertarian views specifically.

Thanks for your comments. I apologize for not being clear. I do call for
a total restriction on political discussions not related to privacy and
cryptography. It so happens that the vast majority of off-topic
political ranters on this list are of libertarian persuasion, that's why
I used word "libertarian" to identify what I was talking about. Of
course, I consider any discussion of politics not related to the
cypherpunks charter to be inappropriate for the list.

For example, if in the future a socialist joins this list and starts
advocating gun control, he should be censored just as well.

I do not advocate censoring any particular political view more
than any other.

Another question is, how do we tell an on-topic political discussion
from an off-topic discussion? My suggestion for such litmus test 
would be to ask: do different political alternatives being discussed
have immediate ramifications for digital privacy and use of encryption?

For instance, discussion of ITAR regulations obviously passes the litmus
test.  Discussion of machine gun laws, to the contrary, has nothing to
do directly with any encryption issues or privacy issues, and should
therefore be banned.

Some may argue that they can build a logic chain that would imply
that more machine guns means more encryption or something like that,
and use this as an argument in favor of allowing machine gun 
discussions. This is not a correct approach because the logical chain
would not be "direct" in the sense above.

> It also demonstrates the danger of allowing that kind of selective
> moderation, specificially, that it gives rise to interest group politics
> and issue based censorship.  Moderation here is being proposed in (I

This is absolutely correct. I do not believe that this problem has
a universal and perfect solution. One of the possible remedies would be
to write a charter that restricts moderators' ability to censor messages,
and have a diverse moderator board.

> believe) reaction to the "Tim May sucks (insert reproductive organ of
> choice here)" posts and flames having not even a tangential attachment to
> cryptography.  If you get into singling out other topics as somehow
> universally inappropriate I think you get into very deep water.

We may be in very deep water already. Lately we had a discussion
about a token-based protocol for identifying posters. Someone raised
an issue of preserving anonymity of remailer users, and brought up
a point that in certain cases the list maintainer should be "trusted".

Vulis followed up with a message insulting Gilmore, and said that 
Gilmore should not be trusted in that cryptographic protocol.

Is that about cryptography? And if we answer no, why is our answer
different from the answer for a discussion about machine guns? If we
answer yes, we'd have no way to legitimately prevent other annoying
insults.

> Is finance unimportant to cypherpunks?  I think this is a tougher argument
> to make, but only because financial services and banks are not seen as the
> kind of political entitites that free market systems generally are.

Again, some aspects of finance -- for example, ensuring integrity and
secrecy of electronic transactions -- are. Some, like whether blacks
should pay higher rates in consumer loans, or why investment bankers
make more than computer programmers -- are not. The litmus test should
be the same.

> Cypherpunks is an important and distinct list because of the intense cross
> pollenization between e.g., cryptographers and finance types,
> cryptographers and bankers, cryptographers and lawyers, cryptographers and
> polititians.
> 
> In the same way that crypto types despertly want the rest of the world to
> become crypto savvy, it is important for crypto types to become
> political, economicly savvy, and generally understand the larger context
> of crypto applications.

This is an excellent argument. I am not sure if my answer to it is any 
good, but do we want to make this a general education forum that is
meant to be a free replacement for college and books? Probably not.

"Political savviness for cypherpunks" probably does not mean that
cypherpunks should learn here how to run campaigns. Financial savviness
probably does not imply that cypherpunks should expect to learn here the
methods of derivatives pricing, negotiating M&A deals, and security 
analysis. There are better places to do that.

You are mentioning learning the "context of crypto applications", and that
is very close to the answer that I had in mind. Discussions of all 
disciplines -- law, finance, politics -- are very important and relevant 
here as long as they are giving us the "context of crypto applications",
and irrelevant beyond that.

> > Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy.
> 
> And how will this happen without having the bankers, lawyers, polititians,
> brokers, and economists in the boat?

Having all these interesting people here does not contradict my
proposals in any way.

	- Igor.