Anarchy Eroded: Project Efnext

[Jim Choate]

On Sat, 30 Dec 2000, Eric Cordian wrote:

> A typical citizen-unit will quickly trade a large amount of privacy for a
> small amount of convenience.

That begs the question and misrepresents reality to a good degree. People
take the choices they think they have, usually those choices are made
available by the party that is operating the service the consumer will
use. So, there is usually very little say for the consumer other than
yes/no. This is not the fault of the consumer, it's the fault of the
producer. In their drive to gain a significant share of the market
(something which goes against free market economy by the way) they will
reduce the number of combinations they must offer (reduces cost).

Blaming the consumer is simply a quick way to justify whatever strategy
the producer finds attractive.

> Sheeple-shearing is never so successful as when it's "voluntary."

History says otherwise...

> Note that the two things IRC really needs, end to end encryption and
> authentication, are not even on the list of "improvements" these people
> are working on.

Why does IRC need encryption? Why authentication? I can see no reason to
authenticate IRC sessions. This is contrary to the spirit of free speech
and open access. Encryption won't prevent snooping since joining the
servers themselves is trivial for the potential user and provides yet
another sole source for traffic analysis. Being easy to join is what IRC
is about after all, it's hard to build a community otherwise.

What IRC needs is anonymity, distribution, and a mechanism to limit the
sorts of activities (ie anti-Dos) that cause the problems. This should be
resolved in a "Open Source" sort of mechanism and not through some
proprietary (irrespective of how voluntary, after all what sort of choice
is there if there are no alternatives?) society.

Personaly, p-2-p technology is the way to go with IRC. Not more
centralized servers. That way if some script kiddy gets randy the one or
two clients they connect to directly can eliminate the problems. After
all, you have a right to do what you want until it interferes with
somebody else.

> A little over a month ago, Adam J Herscher wrote a lovely little rant on
> Efnext, and rather than reiterate points which he made more articulately
> than I could ever hope to, let me simply paste chunks from his message to
> EFNet opers and admins.

It's 'lovely' because you're already biased to that view.
 
> "The way that this is being implemented is simply unfair.

Do current operators have the choice to not join, to take their IRC toys
and go elsewhere? Then it isn't unfair, it's inconvenient perhaps and
it's definitely autocratic. Neither of those make it unfair a priori. For
it to be unfair the action would have to prevent you from choosing
alternative selections.

What amazes me is that instead of whinning about it they don't go out and
create more IRC channels. It's parallel to the question of why on a list
of hundreds of 'crypto-anarchic individualist' we only see a handful of
mailing lists (though they are trivial to build and inexpensive to 
operate). It's also similar to Eric's comments above about 'sheeple', why
is it that anarchist/libertarians are always saying on one hand that the
way to run a society is to let individuals make choices, yet they're the
first to complain about how 'stupid' people are when they don't take the
choices the anarchist/libertarian wants.

> They're supporting themselves with the argument that since every EFNet 
> admin will be approached, it is fair - yet they easily admit that there 
> will be a network split and that there is no other way to do it.

This is GOOD, diversity through philosophical disagreement means the
system is working.

Here's a monopolistic market and forces are driving a split and even the
anarchist are against it apparently.

> Well, at this point, let's take a look from the admin being approached 
> perspective. I am an EFNet admin, and approached by a group of people that 
> tell me they have a great solution to fix the network. They tell me that I'm
> welcome, and my opinions will be heard (though I have no -official- 
> voice/vote - yet), as long as I change my server to meet requirements not 
> officially approved by anyone. That is, I will need to run new code, open 
> my I:lines, possibly add more opers, possibly resign as admin and allow a 
> new one to take over (again no server names mentioned, but I have specific 
> ones in mind - and no, not my own - a list of servers that were discussed 
> as not being allowed to link without conforming was actually posted). So 
> what are my options at this point? Well, I can link to their network, or I 
> can decide not to. If I decide not to, I will remain with a group of 
> unwanted leaf servers with no hubs. And yes, I mean unwanted by them - if 
> you haven't been approached by them yet others were months ago, why do you 
> think this was?  Perhaps because you wouldn't go along 100% or keep quiet?
> Essentially this process is "conform or be delinked" - because it's
> obvious at this point that if the major EFNet hubs and client servers go,
> you will be left delinked - their idea of a network split."

Whine, whine, whine. This is one of the most self-important, self-serving
commentaries I've seen in a long time. This guy is a bozo.

His argument is something like this:

-	The organization is changing the way it operates through a
	process that is representative and doesn't require participation
	by any party against their will.

-	The current operator wants to keep it the same and feels that
	because he's in the minority he's getting a raw deal.

"I lost, and that isn't fair."

There is a distinction between 'EFNet Admin' and 'IRC Admin'. As to
'conform' or be 'de-linked', that's the way 'free choice' works. You go
along or you go alone (at least until you can find some more suitably
minded parties).

As to the point of a list of servers which won't be served, there is
nothing wrong with that under this mechanism. If I have a party at my
house it's up to me whom to invite, simply because I might know you
doesn't give you any right to show up without an invite.

What this whole bunch of bozo's needs is a p2p deamon that has something
akin to 'host.deny/host.allow' that applies to domain names, IP's,
channel ID's, and user ID's. If you want to create a 'permanent'
channel why should EFNet be the ones to decide? Why not let the 'market'
decide through their transient choices?

This is just another example of why human psychology makes anarchic or
libertarian communities unworkable. People have entirely too strong a
social need to be comfortable in such environs. Which side (it's good/it's
bad) isn't important, what is important to recognize the subconcious need
to have a structure at all. Of course this also ignores the tendency of
most people to be 'lazy' with respect to their contribution to a project.
Which is really one of the main reasons we don't see more CDR nodes or
alternate IRC networks springing up, it takes responsibility and activity.

> > It seems to me the 'cypherpunkish', 'libertarian', 'anarchic' thing to
> > do is to promote the growth of individualy operated servers other than
> > those on ISP's (who will have a motive to drop the old system and use
> > the new system - just another example of why libertarian/economism is
> > not sufficient in and of itself for a basis for society - they have no 
> > motive to protect the individual, only the 'market').
> 
> It would indeed be unfortunate if all controversial IRC traffic ended up
> being carried by isolated IRC servers, akin to remailers, whose admins
> were under constant attack, and which came and went on a daily basis.

This is probably a good thing really. It makes it harder for LEA's and
other 'mallet's' to have a window of opportunity that is open long enough
to take advantage off.

> I anticipate that if Efnext pulls off this "Conform or be
> Delinked" exercise, people will be setting their sights on Usenet as the 
> next thing that needs "fixing."

They already are, and have been for years. Usenet is another service that
could use some sort of p2p datahaven environment. This should be one of
the Cypherpunk 'target projects'.

Of course this activity is yet another example of how
'anarchit/libertarian' market ideals are not the ideals that the community
as a whole desires. It's also demonstrates that 'free markets' without
some 3rd party regulation (eg 1st and 4th) are inherently unstable.

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