Remailers an unsolveable paradox?

[Tyler Durden]

Variola wrote...

> >    Making sure we have robust remailing services in one shape or
> >another and at the same time have some kind of at least indirect
> >acceptance from legislators and also a low degree of spam flowing
> >through are essential goals.
>
>Any legislator seeking to control how people use a communications
>medium needs killing.

Well, although the sentiment is appreciated, I'm not sure it's well applied 
in this case.

What this guy seems to be saying is that it's better to 'solve' the SPAM 
problem now rather than waiting for legislators to use Spam as a reason to 
try to shut down the remailers (and this seems distinctly possible 
particularly if George W makes it to his 3rd term!). I don't think the guy 
is looking for state-ish 'OK', but pointing out that things get a lot more 
difficult if/when remailers or their use is outlawed.  Like back in the day 
when I used to toke on a regular basis...I sure was going to keep scoring 
nicklebags and whatnot, but my count would probably have been better at my 
potstore if it were legal. (And yes, a potstore...there's tons of them in 
NYC with plexiglass walls and a few canned food props lying around. You 
stand in line and order your nickel/dime bag just like buying tokens.)

The hascash idea is OK, and obviously will work (as of now...the dividing 
line between human and machine is clearly not static, and smarter spam 
operations will start doing some segmentation analysis and then find it 
worthwhile to pay up). But the kind of person that may have legitimate need 
of a remailer may not understand and/or trust what would probably be 
necessary to use hashcash. And OK "that's their tough luck", but then I 
always feel there's safety in numbers.

-TD

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