CDR: Re: Anonymous Remailers

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Steve Furlong wrote:

> Quite a reasonable answer in today's America. But how much of your
> answer is supposition based on the general climate and how much is
> actual cases? If a remailer accepts all comers, with no filtering of
> content, can he claim common carrier exemption from liability, or has
> that been taken away <bleat>for the chiiiildren</bleat>?

Actual cases of what? Remialers win very few cases. Ask the remailer operators 
how many complaints they handle per day and how much money and time comes
out of their pocket with little hope of recovery.

You can't 'claim' commen carrier, that must be earned by going through a
long difficult process of vetting through the government. Besides, commen
carrier status brings with it lots of other aspects such as covert
regulation by your 'public utility commission' or whatever they call it
that reduce your freedom.

You should talk to a real lawyer about the various aspects of remailer
operation. I did several years ago when the Austin Cypherpunks was running
kourier.ssz.com. It was clear that to do it right was going to be very
expensive.

> In my case, I already have the hardware and DSL line, so the physical
> cost might be a little extra electricity. No funding is necessary unless
> the usage is so high that my ISP bitches at me. Personal time involved
> in maintaining the system will, I hope, be low; if it's more than
> negligible I won't be able to do it. I can see the sense of running the
> plan past a lawyer, but why would there be a continuing expense in this
> area?

It isn't a technical issue that makes remailers hard, it's the people side
of thing.

You really should have a lawyer look this over, especialy your ISP
contract.

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