Re: Remailers-in-a-box

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

Greg Broiles wrote:

> Tim May wrote:
> 
> > I am waiting for such services to be actually, formally, solidly
> > announced, not just casual remarks that it might be possible. And of
> > course the software should be "ready to wear," port-a-potty, so that
> > the remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the account.
> 
> In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks?
> It is this sort of administrivia (plus the threat of liability) that
> makes running a remailer troublesome, not a lack of someone's $20/month.

In this model the owner of the machine (who is not himself a remailer,
only a seller of accounts) simply ignores all such issues of
mailbombs, spams, request for address blocks. He has a form letter
than says something like:

"I am not the initiator of any mail bombs, spams, or illegal mail. I
merely sell accounts, like private mail boxes. Some of the mail you
are objecting to may have originated on my system, some may merely
have passed through my system, just as mail passes through many
systems from sender to receiver. If you have problems, talk to the
sender, not to me. Under the ECPA I cannot even _look_ at the mail on
my system, and even if it were legal, I would not."


> I think it's disingenuous to say that "X pays the bills for the network
> link; X purchased the hardware and keeps it running; the box is in X's
> house/office; X is the person who reads complaint mail and responds (or
> fails to); but because Y sends X $20/month, the remailer (and attendant
> liability for its mis/use) belongs to Y." I realize that there's a 
> certain formal logic to it, but I don't think that anyone - not courts,
> and not the world-in-general - is going to pay attention to that 
> formalism when it's clear that a machine essentially under the control
> of X is being used for 'antisocial' means.

It likely buys a couple of years of protection, though. Currently the
remailer sites = remailer accounts, so they have little or no
protection.

I don't think "disingenuous" as very apt description. For one thing,
my proposal certainly doesn't make things any _worse_ for the true
remailers. 

--Tim May


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