Re: Hate speech and censorship

[Lance Cottrell <loki@infonex.com>]

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At 10:58 AM -0500 12/20/97, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
<SNIP>
>I also wouldn't trust Lance Cottrell.  He's selling privacy for the $$, not
>for the ideology; he'll bend over the moment he thinks there's more $$ in
>bending over, which is usually the case.
>Remember how Sameer Parekh's C2Net used to try to peddle a "privacy ISP"
>because he failed miserable and diversified into peddiling shitty software
>and making idiotic legal threats? He happily pulled plugs bases on content,
>while at the same time stating in court papers that he doesn't censor content.
>What a pathological liar.
>

I am very glad some helpful anonymous individual forwarded this note to me.
These days I only read a filtered version of the Cypherpunks, although I
host one of the unfiltered nodes, and Dr. Vulis has been in my kill file
for some time.

I am a bit startled at his assumption that because I charge for my services
that I would bend at the first sign of trouble or pressure. Allow me to
clarify my business interests. The Mixmaster software I created is free and
licensed under GNU Copyleft. I do not and never have charged for the use of
the Mixmaster remailer I run at mixmaster@remail.obscura.com. At this time
we charge for anonymous ISP accounts, shell accounts and web hosting, and
for the Anonymizer. I don't think anyone would every expect me to offer
free Internet services with technical support. We also charge for
unrestricted use of The Anonymizer (a free unlimited trial with 30 sec.
delay is available to anyone). We did not want to charge for use of the
Anonymizer, but the advertising supported model for the service fell
through when advertisers turned out to be smart enough to see that the
whole point of The Anonymizer is to keep them from gathering the data which
is the whole reason the like to advertise on the Internet in the first
place. The Anonymizer is not like a remailer in the resources it consumes.
I have run remailers from home machines over 14.4kbps modems. The
Anonymizer will overload a T1 (up to 1000 ms ping times) by its self. This
translates to approximately $2000 of generosity per month, more than I can
afford by a wide margin.

As to my ideology, I think the fact that I run many of my services for
free, and the rest with a limited free option, and that I could double or
triple my income if I closed shop and went to work for someone else, speak
for themselves.

As long as privacy tools are free and run by hobbyists they remain, on the
whole, toys. Fees allow me to have several people working full time to
provide technical support, software development, and other services.

I think anonymity is important. I have thought so for many years. I have
put my time and efforts where my mouth is. I think that my contributions
have not been insignificant. I hope that the public feels that privacy is
important too, or I am wasting my time. The fact that they are willing to
pay for strong privacy and anonymity shows that they do.

Dr. Vulis' attack on Sameer was much worse than his attack on me. It is
totally off base. Sameer handed off most of his "privacy ISP" business to
me. The reason for this was not that it was failing, but that the software
side of the business was so much more successful. About half his efforts
were going toward a service generating about 10% of his revenues. Not to
focus his efforts would have been very poor business practice.

I don't care to be involved in long flame wars, or pointless and endless
arguments, so I will not be following this thread on the list. My record,
reputation, and positions are well documented, and easy to research. Anyone
who wants the truth should have no difficulty finding it.

	-Lance Cottrell


- ----------------------------------------------------------
Lance Cottrell   loki@infonex.com
PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server.
http://www.infonex.com/~loki/

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly
it flips over, pinning you underneath.  At night the ice
weasels come."
                        --Nietzsche
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