Recommendation: Creation of "alt.cypherpunks"

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

(Please leave my name in any replies to ensure I see your comments.)

I talked to Hugh Daniel at the Saturday meeting about the creation of an
"alt.cypherpunks" unmoderated (of course) newsgroup as a possible
alternative (or supplement) to cypherpunks@toad.com. Greg Broiles and John
Gilmore were there for part of the discussion, too.

(We did not, unfortunately, get to the "future of the list" topic at the
physical meeting...the excellent presentations ran way over the expected
time and we never got to this topic. Sort of too bad, given John's edict
that we have 10 days to find and implement an alternative....)

A Usenet newsgroup has many advantages and disadvantages. Whether it might
be gatewayed to other mailing lists--perhaps even the list(s) which
survives "cypherpunks@toad.com"--depends of course on the decision of those
hosting others lists.

A charter statement is needed, and then the issuance of a creation message.
A better charter statement will increase the chances of more sites carrying
the newsgroup. While many sites carry essentially all newsgroups--more than
30,000--, some sites do not and only carry some of the alt.heirarchy. And
some sites do not carry _any_ of the alt newsgroups.

At Hugh's suggestion, I'm suggesting a "first cut" at a charter statement.
Suggestions for additional language or changes are welcome.

Charter for alt.cypherpunks: (suggested)

"Alt.cypherpunks is for the unmoderated discussion of cryptography and the
political, social, and economic implications of unrestricted, strong
cryptography. The Cypherpunks grpup has existed since 1992 and has been
central in the debate about strong crypto, government restrictions, crypto
anarchy, and in showing weaknesses of various ciphers and security
products. The mailing list has had as many as 1500 subscribers, plus
gateways to newsgroups and Web sites. It is expected that "alt.cypherpunks"
will be a free-wheeling forum for many viewpoints. As it is unmoderated,
readers are strongly advised to learn how to use filters and other tools
for making virtual anarchies manageable for their own tastes."

I invite your comments, editorial suggestions, etc. Perhaps when enough of
the "collective mind" has made inputs (ughh!), the charter can be submitted
with the creation message. (I'm not knowledgeable about the process, but
I'll bet many of you are.)

There are of course disadvantages to such a newsgroup, as any Usenet user
certainly knows. However, there are advantages as well. Here are some of
each:


* Advantages:

- Usenet is set up to automagically propagate articles across tens of
thousands of sites.

- there is no "nexus" of control, no chokepoint, no precedent (in the U.S.)
for halting distribution of Usenet newsgroups. (Canada stopped some
Homulka-Teale newsgroups a few years ago, other countries have blocked
entire sections, but note that the Scientologists have been unable to block
"alt.religion.scientology"...I surmise that a mailing list version of
a.r.s. would have faced lawsuits against the list.owner, if reachable in
U.S. or European courts...a lesson to think about with the current
imbroglio over certain claims about certain products and the possible
liability of Sandy and/or toad.com.)

- fairly sophisticated newsreading software already exists.

- no "unsuscribe" and "unscrive" messages! (It makes it easy for newcomers
to discover the group, read it for a while, then stop. It also, of course,
increases the number of "What is crypto?" sorts of messages.)

- persons cannot be unsubscribed from an unmoderated list

- with a Usenet group, there is no ability to impose notions of "order" on
the list (e.g., requirements for PGP-signing, demands for "on-topic" posts,
removal of "illegal" posts, etc.). Thus, people must deal with a virtual
anarchy by using proper tools, by ignoring what they don't want to see, or
by contracting out the role of "nanny" to others.


* Disadvantages

- Usenet newsgroups are easy targets for spammers, even more so than are
mailing lists.

- crossposting often gets out of hand. (With 30,000+ newsgroups, even
well-intentioned posters often pick the "three or four most likely" targets
for their posts).

- propagation is often spotty, and some sites have no access at all to the
"alt.*" hierarchy. (Many corporate sites block the alt heirarchy. Many
academic sites block just the alt.binaries.pictures heirarchy. Etc. A news
to mailing list gateway is possible for these readers.)

- propagation may be slower than mailing lists.

- Usenet is of course archived and easily searchable via Alta Vista, Deja
News, etc.. This bothers some people. (However, the CP mailing list is now
also archived and searchable, so the disadvantage is becoming moot.)

- persons cannot be unsubscribed from an unmoderated list (this is also an
advantage, of course)

- there will be more newbie-type messages, as casual browsers of Usenet
discover alt.cypherpunks and ask questions. This is both a disadvantage and
an advantage.


* Discussion of some of these points:

1. The issue of slow- or non-propagation can be handled by having mailing
lists which bounce the traffic (from a well-connected site) to folks who
get slow distribution, or no distribution at all. News to mail gateways, in
other words. Traffic in the reverse direction (end reader back to
alt.cypherpunks) can be handled either by "blind posting" to the a.c.
newsgroup, via one's newsreader, or through mail-to-news gateways, or
perhaps via the distributor described here.

2. And the services of "moderators," such as Eric Blossom's and Ray
Arachelian's "best of" lists, or even Sandy's list, are of course still
possible. A newsgroup does not change this, except for the latency in
getting messages out to newsgroup sites.

3. The advantages of a "no nexus, no chokepoint" distribution are huge. The
Usenet carries huge advantages in terms of having no place to attack it.

4. Some have raised the point that Usenet is "inefficient" and should not
be used for this reason. Well, it may indeed be ineficient, but the costs
have already been incurred, and alt.cypherpunks would only be 1/30,000th of
additional load (very roughly speaking). In other words, might as well use
what's out there. If a "second Usenet" ever comes into existence, fine.

5. Some of us discussed the creation of alt.cypherpunks back in '92-93. At
that time, we thought the mailing list had some major advantages. In my
view, the situation has changed dramatically since then. The mailing list
has become huge, the volume of noise has increased, majordomo is allowing
the list to be used for spamming (any 'bot system will probably have this),
and the list is already gatewayed to many sites as a _newsgroup_ anyway.

So, I think the time has come to just create it. The "activation energy
barrier" of a mailing list, where people would have to make the effort to
subscribe, has long since become irrelevant.

It may be a target for spammers, but it's hard to imagine it being much
worse than what we have now.

Usenet is an anarchy. We might as well use it.

I've never created an alt group, but I presume many of you have (and I know
of one currently fed up Cypherpunk who created the entire alt.* hierarchy a
decade or so ago). I presume some of you can thus help in such an effort.

--Tim May






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."