Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

The Netly News
http://www.netlynews.com/
November 11, 1996

Cypher-Censored
By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
                                       
       The cypherpunks mailing list, so legend goes, coalesced around two
   principles: the dissemination of strong encryption and an absolute
   commitment to free speech. It was a kind of crypto-anarchist utopia:
   Here was a place where anonymity was encouraged and PGP-signed
   postings were the norm -- and nobody seemed to be in control.
   
       That is, until recently, when Dimitri Vulis was given the boot.
   After he refused to stop posting flames, rants and uninspired personal
   attacks, Vulis was summarily removed from the mailing list.
   
       Now, normally, when someone gets evicted from a mailing list, it
   excites little attention. But here was an ironic -- some would say
   momentous -- event: The list is run, after all, by John Gilmore, the
   EFF cofounder, a cypherpunk god who is famous for having once said
   that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around
   it. And it was none other than Gilmore who gave Vulis the boot. The
   shunning of Vulis was "an act of leadership," Gilmore said.
   
       Thus began a debate over what the concept of censorship means in a
   forum devoted to opposing it. Did Gilmore have the right to show Vulis
   the virtual door? Or should he have let the ad hominem attacks
   continue, encouraging people to set their filters accordingly? The
   incident raises deeper questions about how a virtual community can
   prevent one person from ruining the forum for all and whether only
   government controls on expression can be called "censorship."
   
        Vulis, a 31-year old Russian emigre who completed a PhD in
   mathematics last year at the City University of New York, is described
   as sociable, even friendly, by people who have met him. Online,
   though, he's almost notorious. His .sig file, for instance, proudly
   points out that he's a former Kook of the Month; Vulis was also a
   Net-legend and even has the alt.fan.dimitri-vulis newsgroup named
   after him.
   
       Vulis portrays himself as a victim, but as I posted to the list
   last week, I disagree. Anyone who's spent any time on the
   100-plus-messages-a-day list can read for themselves the kind of nasty
   daily messages that came from Vulis's keyboard. The list is on
   Gilmore's machine and he can do what he wants with it; he can moderate
   the postings, he can censor material, he can shut the whole thing
   down. By kicking off an offending user, a list owner merely exercises
   his property right. There's no government involvement, so the First
   Amendment doesn't apply. And the deleted, disgruntled user is free to
   start his own mailing list with different rules.
   
       But then the question is whether Gilmore should have exercised
   that right, especially in such an open forum. Again, I think Gilmore's
   actions were justified. Consider inviting someone into your home or
   private club. If your guest is a boor, you might ask him to leave. If
   your guest is an slobbish drunk of a boor, you have a responsibility
   to require him to leave before he ruins the evening of others.
   
       Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, runs a number of mailing
   lists and has kicked people off to maintain better editorial control.
   Volokh says that the most valuable publications are those that
   exercise the highest degree of editorial control.
   
       But what if your private club's express purpose is to cherish free
   speech? That's where the terrain gets mucky. One 'punk wrote: "For
   someone who espouses freedom of speech to arbitrarily censor someone
   is indeed hypocritical." Another called it a "big cypherpunkish move"
   that couldn't be condoned "even bearing in mind the inane and
   wearisome behaviour of Dr. Vulis." Still others said that this
   demonstrated that "libertarianism can't work without some measure of
   authoritarianism." (Libertarianism being the primordial flame war
   topic, the debate nearly consumed itself at this point.)
   
       Vulis told me yesterday: "I'm particularly disappointed by John
   Gilmore's actions. I've known him and communicated with him before.
   His treatment of me was rude and unprofessional and inappropriate." In
   posts to the mailing list, Vulis levels the additional criticism that
   it was "arbitrary and capricious" and that he was not notified that he
   would be forcibly unsubscribed.
   
       This week Vulis busied himself by saying that now Gilmore can be
   sued for what happens on cypherpunks, arguing that the list owner is
   exercising greater control and so is subject to greater liability. Of
   course, in this country anyone can sue for anything. But it's highly
   unlikely the suit would go anywhere. Solveig Bernstein, a lawyer with
   the Cato Institute, says: "Chances are in a defamation lawsuit he'd be
   treated like a publisher or bookstore owner.. They exercise some
   control over content and enjoy pretty broad immunity from lawsuits."
   
       For his part, Gilmore calls removing the Russian mathematician "an
   act of leadership." He says: "It said we've all been putting up with
   this guy and it's time to stop. You're not welcome here... It seemed
   to me that a lot of the posts on cypherpunks were missing the mark.
   They seemed to have an idea that their ability to speak through my
   machine was guaranteed by the Constitution."
   
       What does Vulis's ouster mean to the community that sprang up
   around this mailing list, of which he had been a member for nearly
   three years? Many of his peers think he did it for attention or
   notoriety; one longtime list-denizen declined to be interviewed for
   fear of encouraging him. (If that's his goal, he's already succeeded.
   Will Rodger from Inter@ctive Week and Lewis Koch from Upside Magazine
   are writing about this.)
   
       Other cypherpunks wonder why Vulis is abrasive online, yet
   mild-mannered in person; Gilmore likened him to "a Jekyll-and-Hyde
   personality."
   
       The flap comes at a time when other prominent cypherpunks are
   leaving, citing too many flames and too little content. Perry Metzger,
   another longtime member, announced last month he would start his own,
   moderated mailing list. The hard-core programmers have moved on. Yet
   the list membership has never been higher, at 1,949 direct
   subscribers. And the cyber-rights issues the group discusses have
   never been more important.
   
       Ironically, tools like anonymous remailers that the cypherpunks
   labored to create now make it impossible to get rid of Vulis
   completely. Blocking posts from remailers is unthinkable to the
   cypherpunks. So the embattled Russian �migr� continues to read the
   list under a pseudonym and appears to be posting as frequently as
   ever. But perhaps Gilmore succeeded in part. If not more polite,
   Vulis's messages now are at least on-topic.
   
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