Re: The Frightening Dangers of Moderation

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 4:31 AM +0000 2/8/97, Against Moderation wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>Well, folks, tonight I have witnessed the frightening dangers of
>moderation and censorship first-hand, and would like to tell you what
>has happened.  I think there is an important lesson to be learned from
>these incidents.

(long account of getting legal threats for quoting a message about CENSORED
elided)

This is indeed an important incident. I hope we can discuss it. Many issues
central to Cypherpunks are involved. To name a few:

* the moderation/censorship issue itself (though we have probably beaten
this one to death in the last few weeks).

* the "libel" issue, especially as it involves Sandy, his company, and the
machine the list is hosted from. The introduction of a censor has, as many
of us predicted, raised serious libel and liability issues. (This is the
best reason I can think of it to move to an "alt.cypherpunks" system, where
bypassing of liability, libel, copyright violation, etc.,  laws is
naturally handled by the globally decentralized and uncontrolled nature of
Usenet.)

* conflicts of interest issues. Apparently Sandy feels information
deleterious to C2Net, having to do with a claimed CENSORED in the software
product CENSORED, cannot be passed by him to _either_ of the two lists to
which articles are supposed to be sent. (Sadly, he did not tell us of this
meta-censorship when it happened. This made what he did deceptive as well
as wrong.)

* chilling of discussion. As "Against Moderation" notes, merely _quoting_
the article of another caused Sandy to not only reject his article, but
also to contact him and raise the threat of legal action. (This even though
Against Moderation added all sorts of "obviously false" comments to what
Vulis had written.)

* even more threats. At the request of CENSORED today, I called CENSORED
and had a verbal communication with him (a nice guy, by the way) about this
situation. He averred that "you don't want to be pulled into this," and
suggested that if I post certain things, even quoting the reports that a
CENSORED exists in CENSORED, I could well be sued by the lawyers of his
company!

These are issues which remailers, decentralized servers, anonymity, data
havens, and other Cypherpunks technologies make important issues for us to
discuss.


When did Cypherpunks start thinking about libel? (Obvious answer: when
_their_ companies were the targets of criticism, lies, libel, whatever.)
It's not as if insulting or even "libelous" (I'm not a lawyer) comments
have not been made routinely on the list. Insulting companies and other
institutions has been standard Cypherpunks fare since the beginning.
Mykotronx has been accused of high crimes, RSADSI has been declared to be
placing backdoors in code, Phil Zimmermann has been declared to be an NSA
plant ("only trust the versions of PGP before he cut the deal to get his
freedom"), and so on. Think about it. Just about any company with any
product related to crypto has at one time or another had their motives
questioned, their products slammed, etc.

Unfortunately, our Late Censor is an employee of one of the companies so
slammed, and he has reacted by rejecting one or more of these slams without
bothering to tell the list that he has to do so. (Were it me, I would have
"recused" myself from the decision, or at least told the list in general
terms what was going on, or, more likely, resigned as censor. But then I
would never have been a list.censor in the first place.)

I understand that Sandy is stepping down as our Moderator. The Censor is
Dead, Long Live Sandy! I expect to harbor no continuing resentment toward
Sandy (though I expect things will be strained for a while, as might be
expected).

The issues raised are ugly ones. Here's what scares me: the "precedent" may
irretrievably be established that companies offended by words on the list
will threaten legal action to recover their good name. I can imagine
Mykotronx or even First Virtual citing the actions of C2Net as a precedent
(a cultural precedent, to the extent there is such a thing) for their own
legal letters.

As with the terrible precedent set by the "even Cypherpunks had to censor
themselves" experiment, these companies may be able to say "But even a
Cypherpunk-oriented company realized that the antidote for damaging speech
was not rebutting speech. No, these Cypherpunks realized that some
threatening letters and pulling the plug on the speaker was a better
approach."

And we won't be able to easily argue that Mykotronx has no right to do this
while C2Net does.

Sandy, in his message a few hours ago to Against Moderation, even made the
claim (and Sandy _is_ a lawyer, or at least once was) that John Gilmore
could be held liable for speech on the Cypherpunks list. (I don't doubt the
"could," but I hate like hell to see a Cypherpunkish company leading the
charge.)

Perhaps this is true. But the Censorship experiment, and the resulting
threats of legal action by C2Net to stop mention of the alleged CENSORED in
their product CENSORED, fuel the fire. Instead of denigrating such legal
moves--as I'm sure most Cypherpunks would have done a few years ago if
RSADSI were to try to sue people for making outrageous claims--we have a
major company consisting of several leading Cypherpunks making just such
threats.

I'm not a legal scholar, but is it really the case that merely _alluding_
to the allegedly libelous comments of another is itself a libel? Is a
reporter who writes that "Person X has alleged that Product Y has a Flaw Z"
thus committing a libel? (I don't think so, as reporters frequently report
such things. If merely quoting an alleged libel is also libel, then
presumably a lot of reporters, and even court clerks reporting on cases,
are libelers.)

(ObLisp reference: quoting an expression ought to have a different return
value than evaluating an expression! That's what quotes are for.)

My comments this past week have not been motivated by animosity toward
Sandy, and certainly my comments today are not motivated by any animosity
about C2Net or any of its employees (including CENSORED, whom I spoke with
today).

My comments started out as being a summary of why I had left Cypherpunks
when the Great Hijacking was announced. Since last Sunday, when I issued my
"Moderation" post, I've only responded to messages I was CC:ed on, or to
messages on the Flames list, which I subscribed to temporarily to better
see what Sandy was calling flames. The discovery that certain posts were
not appearing on either the Main list or the Flames list triggered today's
comments about Sandy and the alleged CENSOREDCENSOREDCENSORED (blah blah
blah).

I hope we can declare this Censorship experiment a failure and move on.
However,  it is almost certain that as a result of attempts to suppress
certain views, that the move back to an unfiltered state will mean that
some will use anonymous remailers and nym servers to post even _more_
claims, however outrageous.

This is a predictable effect. Cf. Psychology 101 for an explanation.
Kicking Vulis off the list predictably produced a flood of Vulis
workarounds, and a surge in insults via anonymous remailers. Instituting
censorship of the list triggered a flood of comments critical of the
experiment, and a predictable "testing" of the censorship limits. And,
finally, now that C2Net is threatening legal action to stop
discussion--even in quotes!!--of alleged CENSORED in CENSORED, expect a lot
of repetition of these claims via remailers. And, I predict, claims about
CENSORED will even be spread more widely, e.g., on the Usenet.

(Sadly, I half expect a letter from some lawyers or lawyer larvae saying I
am "suborning libel," or somesuch nonsense. As Sandy would say, "piffle."
Lawyers, take your best shot.)


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."