"Owning" Ones Own Words, Peaking Too Soon, The Cypherpunk Purity Test, and Bora-Bora (Re: MD5 collisions?)

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Wed Aug 18 06:20:36 PDT 2004


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At 1:40 AM -0400 8/18/04, Declan McCullagh trots out the Cypherpunk
Purity Test, among other tasty bits of speciousness:


>At 01:02 AM 8/18/2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
>>Since when is on-topic crossposting an issue here?
>
>Since forever.

To elucidate this a bit, Declan believes in this obscure
WELL.nonsense called "you own your own words". No. Seriously.
*Nobody* can forward *anything* you say, *anywhere* on the net,
without your permission. On the net. Without your permission.

Pardon me. Almost 10 years after I heard of it, my stomach still
hurts from laughing at this ignorant blend of "communitarian"
hippy-logic and 19th century industrial-age legal nostrum. Hint,
Declan: the definition of property, especially digital property in an
age of perfect digital copies on a ubiquitous geodesic :-)
internetwork, is that it's sitting, preferably encrypted, on my hard
drive. The, um, bald, fact is, once it's there, I can send it,
anywhere on the net, whenever I feel like it, without your
"permission".


Declan's actual subtext in this case is that he's written this nice
summary article on ... wait... where do you work this week, Declan?
Time Magazine? No. Not there anymore. Wired, right? No, not there
either. Oh, that's it, CNET. Still there, right? CNET probably can't
hire enough fact-checkers, so you're probably safe there for a while
until the cacophony of protests from your misquoted article subjects
rises above a dull roar. Reminds me of a cartoon in Tom Wolfe's
"Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Currier and Vine" about the Guy Who Peaked
Too Soon.

Anyway, as usual, Declan has, dutifully, one imagines, ground out
something he wants you to read instead of seeing (mostly relevant
:-)) first sources in more or less real-time, on this list where you
read it, instead of interrupting your flow to click around on the web
for it.

This way, though, he "owns" the words, you see. And, obviously, if
you click the link, provided here as a courtesy,
<http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1105_2-5313655.html?tag=printthis>, he
gets paid more money. Sooner or later. Or at least they might pay his
way to more conferences, like they used to during the Clinton
Internet Bubble :-). Maybe. Anyway, maybe if we all click it a lot of
times, Dear Declan might sit down, shut up, and move that sock from
his trousers to his pie-hole.


By the way, the reason I didn't send *that* article to the list, too
- -- before he pissed on my shoes -- is that he whines at you offline
about it. And, before this, I took pity on the once-richer-now-poorer
erst-ink-stained wretch.

Fuck that. I expect to be getting a phone call from CNET's lawyers
for copyright violations under COPA, or whatever, now, as a result,
but what the hell.

>Since before either of us joined the list (and I first started
>reading a decade ago).

Here we go, folks. The ol' cypherpunks purity trick. "My tenure on
these lists longer than yours." Or, "I've been voting libertarian
longer than you have." Or, "I play on Cato's Invisible Foot and you
don't." Or, "I can dry-jack a Mossberg, or Nikon Coolpix, or
whatever, faster than you can." Or whatever. For the record, I've
been here since March or April of 1994. Whatever.

This list, and it's lineal predecessors, is long past the time when
cutting edge cryptography was discussed here for the first time
instead of somewhere else. So, periodically, the tree of cypherpunks
must be watered with the blood of other lists. Or something. :-)



In the meantime, remember that Declan's main purpose here is to sniff
around for stories. Which is fine, until he starts pretending he's
Tim May (I knew Tim May -- he wished I didn't -- and, Mr. McCullagh
you're... Oh, forget it), or, paradoxically for cypherpunks, that he
owns the list somehow, and that, like Mighty Mouse, he's here to save
the day and play list.policeman.

>It's a matter of politeness and degree.

True enough. And, frankly, I've respected both of those in what I've
sent here over the years. The only people who've complained, at least
until I've explained myself to their satisfaction, have been
"professionals" who "owned their own words" and got scooped. If one
can consider forwarding something important from cryptography to this
list to be "scooping" the CNET Political Editor in Chief. Or whatever
they say he is these days.

>A pointer to a discussion archived
>on the web is more useful than dozens of forwarded messages.

>Hey, I have an idea! Why don't I write a script crossposting
>everything from sci.crypt to cypherpunks! How about a few dozen
>other "on-topic" newsgroups and mailing lists too?

Go ahead. Are you going to reformat them for legibility first, if
necessary? Are you going to personally decide, in *your* opinion,
what's worth forwarding and what isn't? Are you going to be topical?
More to the point, Declan, are you going to do it in such a way that
the residents of the list actually *use* in further discussion?

Or are you going to do it to "prove" that, reductio ad absurdum,
*any* forwards are equivalent to *all* forwards?

I thought not.



Hey, I got an idea, myself. Let's just close down the list and do it
*all* on the web? Maybe CNET can stick pop-up ads in our faces for
the privilege, Declan an up his click-count, and CNET will send him
to the Black Rock Desert, or Bora-Bora, or the Crimea, or wherever,
for some conference or other. Or a Senate hearing. Or whatever.

I mean, who needs that pesky 'd' key, anyway?

In the meantime, Declan, own *these* words: don't be a putz.


Cheers,
RAH


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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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