Re: Cyberspace, Crypto Anarchy, and Pushing Limits

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

Sorry to be writing so much today, but these topics of
crypto-cypberpolitics are of great interest to me.

Hal Finney raised good points. I won't elide any material:

> A thought-provoking essay as usual from Tim.  However, I see a contradiction
> between:
> > * Crypto means access to "regions" can be controlled by "owners":
> > 
> > - "my house, my rules" enforced locally, without central State
> > authority
> 
> and:
> > * Physical location of cyberspace locations will be increasingly hard
> > to pin down. A vast "labyrinth of rooms and corridors" might be
> > physically instantiated on a computer in Malaysia, while a "virtual
> > gambling hall" is being run via cryptographic cutouts (remailers) from
> > someone's bedroom in Provo, Utah.
> 
> The problem I have is that it is not clear that cyberspace is a space,
> that one can identify regions which have boundaries, and which can be
> patrolled by owners.  These physical, 2-D and 3-D concepts do not map well
> to cyberspace.  Cyberspace is more of a mental conception, a meeting of
> the minds.  It's not clear that it can be owned.

I don't mean that it's a 2-D or 3-D (nor do I mean it's a tres-trendy
N-dimensional space, though it's more that than it is a simple space,
a la "Snow Crash"). Rather, we can create and maintain "worlds" which
may be mailing lists (with input from others), publications ("Wired"
is certainly a cyberspace, subject largely to the rules set down by
its owners, publishers, editors, and writers---with market forces
shaping the evolution of it), organizations, and so forth.

These "worlds" or cyberspaces have access points, internal
consistency/structure, metrics, geometries, topologies, etc. I agree
that it's not always terribly _useful_ to force-fit things into a
spatial model....sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a
magazine is just a magazine.

But the interactivity of things like this list, and the Extropians
list (where Hal and I and others debated this "is the list the propery
of the Extropian Institute" issue), and of so many similar things says
that these cyberspaces are taking on a very real existence. In another
10 or 15 years, commerce will move more noticeably into the domain of
these constructed realities, other structures will similarly
complexify, and the "colonization of cyberspace" will be made manifest.
 
> For a concrete example, who owns the Cypherpunks list?  Tim and Eric started
> it, Eric keeps the software working, and John Gilmore supplies the machine,
> as I understand it (apologies if I am leaving someone out).  Do they own
> the list?  What about the role of the contributors?  Aren't they the ones
> who give the list value?  (Granted, Tim, Eric and John have been some of the
> best contributors, but that is separate from their role, if any, as owners
> of the list.)

Right now, the list is effectively "owned" by Eric Hughes, with no
input from me (and I like it that way, frankly!). Only he can delete
users....he never has, to my knowledge, not even Detweiler (LD asked
to be removed, last November or so).

John Gilmore owns the machine(s) it runs on, and also graciously
provides the meeting space for our physical meetings, at his company
Cygnus. Hugh Daniel is also invvolved in various capacities.

There's little need for overt expressions of ownership, because few
issues have needed it. Detweiler has been the only troublemaker. A few
others have gotten wound up about some issue, posted a lot, then
either settled down or left the list. There are no formal offices or
staff, unlike CPSR, EFF, etc., so no need for a budget, votes, etc.
(Cypherpunks has never held a vote, never made up a formal charter, etc.)

But the list has a "cultural life" that provides an operational way of
viewing the ownership issue. Let us examine what whould happen under
various contingencies:

- If Eric Hughes were to leave the list, another person would take
over his duties. Just as "Pink Floyd" outlived the departure of Roger
Waters (and Syd Barrett almost 25 years ago), so, too, the list would
survive.

- If John Gilmore were to take away his machine, things would likely
stumble along for a few weeks until another machine could be found.
Manual list distribution, running it on Netcom or Panix, finding a
university site....all are possible. 

- The rest of us are important for the things we contribute and would
not effect the list if we left.

So, in this sense the list does not belong to any single person, but
to an emergent group. (Where it used to get silly on the Extropians
list was when someone would claim that their participation has given
them some kind of "squatters rights" to have a say in the running of
the List....that's patently false. Ditto for the Cypherpunks list: the
anarchic approach works well, but not when someone makes a claim that
they have some kind of voting power over things.)
 
> Suppose, as Tim implies, that the list someday evolved to be some kind of
> virtual list, hosted on a flexible network of machines around the globe.
> Who would the owners be then?  I would suggest that there would not nec-
> essarily be any.  The list would be a voluntary meeting place for people who
> had certain interests.  Its existance would be essentially defined by the
> commonality of that interest.  It exists not in a cyberspace thought of as
> machines on a net of wires and fiber, but in a conceptual space that
> transcends the physical machines which support it.

Well, of coure that "conceptual space" is precisely what I am talking
about. But more than just a conceptual space: a set of economica and
social interactions, a persistent structure, reputations, webs of
trust and reputation, and all that stuff.

The Internet, and especially Usenet, are already this kind of
"distributed meeing place." Nothing revelatory there. (This doesn't
mean improvements won't happen....paying for services is one such thing.)

> The issue of the ownership of cyberspace has similarities more to the
> ownership of intellectual property than of houses and roads and other
> physical objects, IMO.  And the problems which arise when you try to
> fence off part of intellectual property space will also be a part of
> attempts to own cyberspace.
> 

It'll be easier to "fence off" regions of cyberspace becausee one
_creates_ them out of nothingness and then uses controls access. In
the "Wired" example, there was not some Platonic ideal of the "high
tech magazine" out there that the founders of "Wired" staked a claim
on and then fended off claim-jumpers. Rather, the founders of "Wired"
created a product, a set of ideas and styles, a pool of writers and
artists, and said: "This is our world. You can enter it for $4.95 an
issue."

An important difference. The realities are created, not claimed. Just
as books are created, not claimed. (Needless to say, the virtual
worlds of authors, fictional genres, art, etc., are prime examples of
these conceptual spaces. They are every bit as "real" and important to
most of us as the supposedly real world around us. Calling them
"cyberspaces" may be a stretch, but when computers are used to help
support and maintain the world-like illusion, I have no problem
calling them cyberspaces.)

Ditto for Mosaic-driven, 1280x1024 full-color "worlds" on the hardware
of 5 years from now. The designers with special talents will be able
to command a premium for their worlds, their mailing lists (mailing
lists can have software architectures, too, as the Extropians list
software shows). The may license their methods out, creating
"Cyberspace Construction Kits." The same way skilled architects shaped
the physical colonization of cities and suburbs.

I hope this clarifies what I mean by cyberspaces and the infinite
colonizability of them.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."