ADMIN: proposed new policy on the mailing list

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

Cypherpunks is an experiment in anarchy whose participants share
overlapping concerns with respect to privacy and cryptography.

One of the commonly shared goals of the participants in this group is
to change the technical context of the political debate about
cryptography.  This goal has not been reached, nor even has very close
approach been made as yet.  I believe that we have been successful in
inculcating, at least in ourselves, a set of values and attitudes
toward encryption .  Unfortunately this mental presence has not
blossomed into actual culture and practice, although we have attempted
and practiced.

Not all systems are self-organizing, and ours is not dissipative in
the right way.  Therefore in true micro-Keynesian fashion, I am
considering creating an artificial inducement toward cryptography on
this list.  You will be, of course, free not to participate.  The
rule I am considering is the following:

   Digitally sign your articles or their transmission will be delayed.

In terms of email privacy, we have not yet even reached the level
where content encryption is standard.  Since software to make digital
signatures is almost always the same software needed for encryption,
and likewise for signature verification and decryption, an inducement
to sign one's posts will be also an inducement to encrypt.  At the
very least it requires some change in the status quo of one's own
email system.

The hampering above will not be outright rejection, since the cost of
rejection creates a step function to participation, an insurmountable
hurdle for most of us.  Rather I am considering hampering posts by
delaying their transmission, by destroying some of their timeliness.
Timeliness, as I analyze it, will be one of the few things that have
economic worth in a post-copyright environment.

Delaying unsigned posts does not prevent people from participating,
merely from getting very close the topicality of discussion.  If you
are debating delayed against an undelayed correspondent, you will be
at a disadvantage, as your points may be immediately responded to, but
the other's points will stand unopposed for longer.  Truth, in other
words what _you_ believe, might triumph eventually, but practical
epistemology is more a matter of rhetoric than of validity.

Nor does it prevent occasional use of the forum by lurkers and
learners.  The first article on any new subject has very little time
value, rhetorically, but the question still gets asked.  Furthermore,
it will tend to slow down debate, at least for a while.

My initial thoughts are that the delay should be about six hours,
which would limit the number of salient responses of the unverifiable
to about one per topic per day.  As more and more people begin to sign
their posts, that delay would be increased.  I have considered more
sophisticated schemes, such as allowing automatic delayed moderation,
which sends you back a ticket that allows immediate posting, but after
some number of hours, or perhaps longer delays for unsigned repsonses
to signed articles, but I think that a simpler system will work
better, certainly at the outset where people are coming to grips with
delay's effect on the discussion.

I invite discussion of this proposal on the list itself.  If you only
wish to express approval or disapproval, that is, to "vote", please do
so only in private e-mail to me.  I welcome further analysis of this
idea as well as evaluations of its desirability or odiousness in your
own value system.

Unsigned,

Eric