Re: Recommendation: Creation of "alt.cypherpunks" (fwd)

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

At 07:18 PM 2/12/97 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
[quoting Tim May]
>> I was making the point that _any_ site distributing a list is likely to
>> face legal pressures not to carry certain items. Read between the lines (or
>> read the unedited list) the discussion by John Gilmore, Sandy Sandfort, and
>> the products of Sandy's company, and legal pressures applied, to see what I
>> mean.
>
>This is exactly the reason that my suggestion to anyone setting up a
>remailer with any sort of controversial content should do it as some sort of
>outreach of their business. It is too expensive in time, money, and hassles
>to do for grins and giggles.

I disagree strongly that a controversial or legally troublesome list (or
other data stream) should be closely associated with a business. While I
agree that it's important that a list be supported by a robust
hardware/software/network infrastructure, businesses tend to be focused on
making money and maintaining business relationships, not on abstract or
philosophical goals like "free speech".

(Also, what is the "right" thing to do where a particular exercise of free
speech looks like it has serious potential to harm the business, thereby
harming or eliminating the list which makes the speech possible? Isn't
every choice a person could make in such a situation reducible to
"censorship"?)

Every "forum" for free speech occurs exists in the context of economic and
political relationships - and there will always be some message which
threatens (to some degree) the stability of those relationships, and by
implication, the forum itself. Unless we can eliminate economics and
politics (ha, ha) I think that will always be the case - and there will
always be some messages which raise "conflict of interest" problems. But
some forums rest on less stable relationships (like, for example, most
small businesses) and are more easily threatened by difficult messages.
It's much easier to disrupt the income stream of a small business than to
disrupt the income stream from a portfolio of investments or savings. But
even a system whose upkeep was funded by something as unremarkable as
interest on a savings account or a CD would still theoretically be
"conflicted" were someone to use the system to propose or carry out a
scheme to, say, overthrow the U.S. Government, or eliminate the FDIC and
loot various savings & loans. 

The threat(s) to systems providing transport/storage for controversial
messages are not limited to liability after a judgement; it is becoming
more common for civil plaintiffs to seek (and get) discovery of the actual
hardware owned and used by defendants, in order to look through the storage
media for discoverable information, including "deleted" files. The tactics
the Co$ used against its critics were shocking but also legal (modulo some
irregularities). It's certainly not unimaginable that similar tactics would
be used against a remailer or majordomo operator were the list to pass
traffic that someone didn't like. And if a computer system is the target of
a search warrant in the criminal arena, you'll be lucky if you get to keep
your electronic alarm clocks after the search. Count on everything with a
chip in it going away in the police van.

Most businesses don't want to expose themselves to the threat of civil or
criminal seizure or discovery, especially not at random times and for
non-business reasons. So, to the extent that they're paying attention, they
may choose not to expose themselves to extra liability which carries little
(or no) business value.  
--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.
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