Re: Politics on the List?

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Graham Toals writes:

>  (What I'm really saying is that this list clearly serves a purpose,
>  and it is evolving into its own character, whatever that may be, despite
>  the efforts of the early founder members to keep it on some tightly
>  defined track that they once conceived it as.  I don't see this
>  evolution as being a problem, and I'm slightly (though not to
>  Detweilerian proportions) annoyed whenever people like Tim or Perry
>  pull rank and try to limit the topics of discussion, when on closer
>  inspection they're just as bad as the rest of us at drifting 'off topic'.)

The point of my last article was exactly this, that I drift "off
topic" all the time. Far from "pulling rank" and limiting the topics
(how could this be done? Eric has only twice, that I recall, called
for a halt in some especially unproductive topic, one that Perry and I
were involved in, ironically).

It is true that we see messages of the form "Let's not waste time on
topic foo, let's stick to our charter bar. Cypherpunks write code."

I try to avoid this form, as my interests are all over the map. The
political, legal, and economic issues surrounding crypto seem to me to
be fair game for this list. More basic debates about the validity of
taxation, the abortion/antiabortion debate, and religious arguments
about Christians vs. pagans (or whatever) seem generally unfruitful
and probably would be a waste of list bandwidth.

(Which doesn't mean, I think, that they shouldn't come up now and
again. It's just that back-and-forth arguments that are nothing more
than restatements of initial postions are pointless.)

On a more recent topic, the NII, I have several things to say that
connect with this thread.

First, I dropped out of the debate with Godwin and Perry and others
when it seemed to reach a point of repeating initial positions.

Second, I now have all three major NII position papers (Kalil's NII
docs, the EFF Open Platform paper, and the CPSR position paper) and am
rereading them with a more analytical eye, trying to figure out what
the _real datahighway_ is intended to be....it's not at all clear.

Third, the NII could have profound implications for crypto. For
example, suppose the various law enforcement and business regulation
goals (NII will be a business infrastructure, too) are used to limit
strong crypto? Perhaps data packets will have to be tagged,
analogously to license plates and to business licenses (have to be
able to trace packets to ensure NII laws are complied with, that the
originator has hired sufficient numbers of persons of color, and so
on).

(I can construct many plausible worries, and will do so in a longer
piece.)

So, I don't use the "Cypherpunks write code" mantra as anything more
than a kind of ideal goal. 

Let a thousand flowers bloom.

--Tim May


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