Re: We are ALL guests (except Eric)

[jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)]

At 12:04 PM 12/01/94, James A. Donald wrote:
>Jonathan Rochkind writes
>> Assuming Eric could trademark the list, but just chooses not to, then
>> what's to stop _me_ from getting a trademark on the name "cypherpunks" when
>> I start my own competing list?
>
>Nothing, other than the fact it would not be the cypherpunks list, and
>there would not be a mass migration from Eric's list to yours.

Well yeah. That was my point. Whatever "ownership" Eric has of the list
isn't dependent on trademarks, or on the fact that he was one of the
"originators" of the list. It's dependent on the fact that we all use the
cypherpunks that Eric administrates.  Of course there is nothing to
directly stop Eric from doing whatever he wants to configure the particular
software currently running cypherpunks to do whatever he wants.  But some
of us, or most of us, or all of us, could just move to another list. Nearly
painlessly, if the new list we moved to were set up to mirror the "real"
cypherpunks, but without whatever rules we don't like.

"The cypherpunks list" isn't the particular process that happens to be
running on toad.com right now. It's not even the address
"cypherpunks@toad.com."  Eric has control over one of those, and John
Gilmore has control over the other one, but "the cypherpunks list" isn't
either of those, it's the group of subscribers and the articles they write,
and no one "owns" that.