Moral Crypto

[Greg Broiles]

At 12:38 PM 9/4/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>In the next five years or so, I would not be suprised to see a call
>for federal licensing of remailers. Some of the more mainstream
>remailer operators might even go along with it, eventually, calling
>for a "voluntary-mandatory" code of conduct and industry self-
>regulation.

Rather than a direct ban on remailers, I think a creeping expansion of the 
DMCA is more likely, and a greater threat. Instead of making remailing a 
criminal act - where only law enforcement is able to chase violators - it's 
more effective to change liability rules, empowering lots of aggrieved 
parties to do their own takedowns. The civil version of the DMCA has 
already been more effective in limiting programmer speech than 20 years of 
ITAR and BXA regs were - not because the penalties are scarier, but because 
they're swifter, more certain, and applied to upstream providers instead of 
actual infringers, which changes those providers into reluctant (but 
effective) local enforcers.

(this is just a corporate/institutional version of "the policeman inside", 
discussed eventually on the list every time the "make bombs d00d" topic 
occurs - see
<http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg01213.html>
<http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1996.08.29-1996.09.04/msg00426.html>
<http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1997.05.08-1997.05.14/msg00339.html>)

Whereas many people reasonably calculated that their odds of being 
successfully prosecuted under a criminal enforcement scheme are very low - 
just look at the ratio of law enforcement agents to individuals using the 
Internet - broadening the categories of "enforcer" and "viable target" 
changes that calculation dramatically. By making every content provider a 
virtual prosecutor, and every ISP/web host/web page publisher/remailer a 
target, it's a lot easier to find someone to sue - and with that kind of 
risk in the air, potential targets get a lot more conservative and 
interested in suppressing the behavior in question.

>I can envision a legal situation that is close to the Napster-Gnutella
>controversy, where the entry points to the network are targets for the
>RIAA/MPAA lawyers. Similarly, the entry points to the remailer network
>may be targets under such a legal structure.

Yeah - at least if the content isn't nested-encrypted, such that there's no 
reasonable way to identify content or its source.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids