Re: forged cancels (Re: Entrust Technologies's Solo - free download)

[Dave Hayes <dave@kachina.jetcafe.org>]

Adam Beck put this nicely:
> Some people have been arguing that cancelling other peoples posts
> based on their own subjective views is a good thing.
> 
> It would seem that they are arguing that it is a good thing because it
> saves bandwidth, and because it gives them satisfaction to silence
> unpopular minorities.
> 
> Foo on that.
> 
> It's censorship.  If you didn't write it, you have no business
> cancelling it.

Thank you for wording this yet another way. 

> A temporary fix for emails, or another approach, is to use hashcash.
> Hashcash is a token of CPU time.  It proves that the sender has
> consumed a given number of seconds/minutes/hours CPU time.  The
> receiver sets their software to reject mail (bounce with explanation,
> or put into potential spam folder) to squelch out spam.
> A description of hashcash, and an implementation can be found here:

While I don't know that I would use this yet, I applaud the author
for an attempt to address the "spam problem" in a non-content-based
manner. 

I will certainly investigate this more than briefly.
------
Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave@jetcafe.org 
Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet

            "It is a dragon, destroyer of all," cried the ants. 
                      Then a cat caught the lizard.