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Let's Not Merge Mailing Lists, OK?
There's been an upsurge in "cross-mailed" messages, with Cypherpunks copied
on "www-buy-blah-blah," and vice versa, and Cypherpunks copied on the
growing number of lobbyist lists (EPIC, EFF, etc.). A lot of this is not
new, but some of the cross-posts between our list and the various "Net
commerce" and like groups are causing debates to blur.
This message drove it home for me:
-----begin excerpt-----
From: [email protected] (Ali Bahreman)
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 15:28:00 -0700
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Digital Cash, Privacy, Anonymity, Double spending protection and
Cheating protection
Cc: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
Sender: [email protected]
Precedence: bulk
Let's think out loud here for a minute... I am sending this to Cypherpunks to
see if someone out there has already thought of a solution to this.
Alice wants to get a file from Bob and wants to pay him $1 using some Digital
Cash scheme.
- Do we want Alice's identity to remain Anonymous (and Bob's too)? (Note that
this means that neither party knows who the other really is. They could be
using aliases to conceal their real identity.)
... rest of speculations about crypto elided....
----end excerpt----
I don't know if "[email protected] (Ali Bahreman)" is subscribed to the
Cypherpunks list or not. From the nature of his comments, I suspect not.
There is great danger in constantly "casting the net wider," in trying to
reach more and more people. I understand the temptation for some on both
lists to cross-post some messages. I urge that they do this, as Bob H. has
done on occasion, by personally forwarding the message, with only _one_ of
the lists getting it. (This because the real danger is as above, where
multiple lists are in the recipient or cc: fields, and followups semi-spam
multiple lists.)
Clearly we cannot have our list used to educate others on other lists. Or,
rather, I'm finding it hard enough to stay on top of a list with 1200+
subscribers. Adding people from other lists, at varying levels of
competence in areas we think important, will simply be too much.
For me, at least.
For now, I plan to filter out stuff that gets echoed over from www-buy, as
I can't keep track of their conversations as well as our own.
--Tim May
Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
[email protected] 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."