Re: Usenet and Re: extortion via digital cash

[snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>]

> >At 12:34 AM -0400 on 10/20/96, Scott McGuire wrote:
> >IMHO, it will end up similar to the late night infomerical spots on TV.
> >Not puch of value there, but bored people will still look.
> >Any effort to regulate it will come from a tangent; IDs of some sort
> >to post in public, or have access to the net, or screening it out of
> >the hypothetical InfoBahn II networks,  or similar.
> In the U.S., at least, attempts to enforce identification of Internet users
> or anonymous posters to newgroups and such are likely to meet with stiff
> legal resistance.  The Supreme Court has ruled that anonymous use of
> protected speech (e.g., political handbills) must be permitted.

      To quote the title of a movie "That was then, this is now".  

      More and more I am coming around to the idea that reliance on political
solutions to problems is a mistake. Every politician is out for what he can
get, and every judge is out to change the world. More and more judges will 
be products of an eductional system that is soured by the tenets of modern 
liberalism. The foolish notion of a benevolent paternalistic government, 
coupled with the Hallam-Baker like ideas of man as a violent wicked beast that
must be "nurtured" (i.e. controlled and lead) for his or her own good. 

     I reject the idea that all men must be controlled for their own, or
societies, good. I believe that there are good people, and bad people. I 
beleive that good people do what is right, regardless, and bad people will
find a way to take advantage of any system that is in place. 

      Nothing can stop good people from doing what is right (as opposed to 
making them do wrong, which is a different matter), and nothing will stop 
bad people from doing wrong.

     That last was important, so I'll repeat it. Nothing will stop bad 
people from doing wrong. Nothing. They will take advantage of any system that
you put in place. Can't be helped, any more than you can stop a hurricane, 
an earthquake, or a dog from marking his territory. It is simply their nature. 

     The idea is to minimize the danger to the good people. If you have to 
put systems into place, make them as simple and unobtrusive as they need to
be. Make them as fool proof as possible. These two requirements mean that 
you need to keep people out of the system as much as possible. People complicate
things. People (most) are foolish. 

     The court system is a prime example of this. The mission of the courts 
is simple, seperate the guilty from the not guilty (there are no innocents,
at least not enough to worry about). People get involved, and what do you have?
a system where it takes _teams_ of people on both sides to argue "guilt" or 
"innocence" based on arcane bits of obscure rules and traditions. Once
guilt or not-guilt has been established, and this is in a case where there
is a binary (1 or not 1) outcome is possible. 
	
      Constitutional law seems to be a much bigger gamble, and I personally
have no doubt that politics plays a HUGE part in their descesions. 

     Cypherpunks are supposed to write code, they are supposed to deploy 
code, and they are supposed to promote the writing, use, and deploying 
of code. 

     Unfortunately I can't write code. I've tried, and my mind doesn't work 
that way. I do what I can to talk about crypto, security, and privacy issues,
to get other people to think about these things, and to get the code deployed. 

     Technology cannot (yet) be good or bad. It isn't like people, it has 
no intentionality, no motives, no dreams, or beliefs, it simply is. People 
are not to be trusted, and this includes the supremes.
 
Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com