Re: FBI Visits JPUNIX

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

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At 10:46 PM 3/21/97 -0800, Toto wrote:
>  Two remailers go down in the same week, both being tenacles of C2Net.
>  Greg Broiles once again happens upon the scene of the accident, and
>predictably warns everyone of the grave dangers and liabilities facing
>remailer operators. How long until he publicly calls for the remailers
>to be "killed," as he did with the cypherpunks list?

You ought to read more carefully. I suggested that remailers who *charge for
remailing* may be treated differently under the law than remailers who don't
if they're sued as contributory or vicarious infringers of copyrights. I've
been making that point for at least a year, maybe as long as two years.
(There's a particular Ninth Circuit case - _Fonovisa v. Cherry Auction_ -
which I believe suggests that conclusion, or at least highlights the
relationship between profit and contributory/vicarious liability. It's also
discussed in _RTC v. Netcom_, although the _Fonovisa_ case discussed in _RTC_
was the district court's opinion, which was reversed in the Ninth Circuit, if
I remember correctly.)

Would you prefer that I don't mention that potential development and silently
watch remailer operators unknowingly expose themselves to extra liability? Or
that I speak up and be called an enemy of the remailers? It's not clear to me
what you think I ought to do, except perhaps modify my understanding of the
law to more closely match what you wish it was. 

Also, I did not call for the list to be killed, I said I thought it was dead,
and still think so. The list sees precious few messages worth reading or
responding to. Other forums provide a much better signal/noise ratio and have
far fewer distracting kooks. This list was once a useful place to keep
up-to-date on new developments in cryptography, both technical and
legal/political. Now it's mostly useful as a decoy, allowing loons & kooks of
various flavors to focus their energies and messages here, leaving other
lists and other forums for people actually interested in getting things done.
I get better crypto news faster from other places now. 

My comments, sent on 2/6/97, about "killing the list" are below:

- --

I've been meaning to write up a long message explaining why I think I'm about
to drop off of the list. It's peculiar to spend a lot of time discussing
things with a group of people over the course of several years and then
disappear without saying why. But I'm having trouble coming up with anything
more profound than "it's not interesting any more." Philosophically, I agree
with Lucky - it looks to me like it's time to kill the list and move on to
other things. But that's not my choice to make, and perhaps other people can
still extract something useful from this. More power to them if they can.

- --

>  Instead of solutions to the problems facing small remailers, we have
>schills coming out of the woodwork to proclaim that remailers are only
>feasible for Big Business to operate.

I think anyone (be they a "real person" or a "corporate person") with any
substantial assets ought to distance themselves from remailers because there
are too many people inclined to deliberately attack remailer operators and
the remailer network by sending harmful messages which they or third parties
then complain about. If I didn't think this was true, I'd run a remailer
again myself. 

My current favorite model for remailer ownership and financing consists of a
charitable or spendthrift trust which [perhaps funds a nonprofit corporation
which] rents machine time/net access to run a remailer.

I think that actually fighting a lawsuit against a remailer is likely
pointless, unless the remailer attracts an attorney willing to handle it pro
bono and the remailer operator feels like being a test case. It makes much
more sense to think of remailers as temporary and ephemeral, disappearing
when squeezed too hard and reappearing with a different name and different
ISP. 

>  Corporate takeover of the list failed, now corporate takeover of the
>remailers seems to be the new agenda.

Why would this be useful? Big greedy corporations can't get enough potential
liability? Big greedy corporations can't get enough spam? Big greedy
corporations want to get complaint mail? You've obviously never run a
remailer or a corporation yourself.

>  I suggest that, instead of wasting time on a new battle, we simply 
>resurrect all of the arguments over list control and re-post them
>as arguments over remailer control, simply substituting the word
>"remailer" everywhere that the word "list" occurs.

I suggest that you get a new hobby.


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--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.
                            |