Re: Banning any subscriber

Jim choate <ravage@wixer.bga.com> sez:
>Hi again,
>
>I want to thank everyone for their repsonce to my earlier mail. I do have
>some questions however.
>
>1. CypherPunks supports crypto so people cant tamper w/ my mail but you want
>   to censor somebody at the source. How can you support this?

I personally disagree with censorship. It would be impossible to enforce
anyway. A move of this type would simply drive Detweiler to use the
Cypherpunk remailers which would be harder to detect. Then what do we do?
Stop accepting mail from our own remailers?

>4. The responces to L.D. about mail-bombs and posing as a AIDS lab is much
>   worse and more troublesome to me than anything I have seen L.D. post. Not
>   only is some of the actions proposed criminal but I fail to see how a
>   group which relies on its reputation can support or condone such comments.

Look again, that WAS Detweiler, posing as "Psychopunk" (the same Anon id-
an12070@anon.penet.fi - that S.Boxx and "The Executioner" have been using)
trying to bait someone into doing something illegal, and to get the
reaction you just gave. The twisted f*ck is now plotting against himself.

People should be on the lookout, btw. I wouldn't put it past him to try
past him to try to use any of these ideas against others. He's obviously
been thinking about how to screw with other peoples lives remotely.

>5. If you don't like what he says then kill the mail and forget it.

I agree. Besides, after getting past my initial anger, I realized that
Detweiler's posts are funnier than Gary Larson's 'Far Side' cartoons.

I feel safer when he's posting long e-mail messages anyway, at least then
he's not doing anything else. And the more he posts, the lower his
credibility gets.

_______________________________________________________________________
Geoff Dale    -- insert standard disclaimers here --    plaz@netcom.com
"Once you've gone plastic, you can never go back."  - Plastic Beethoven

>I personally disagree with censorship. It would be impossible to enforce
>anyway. A move of this type would simply drive Detweiler to use the
>Cypherpunk remailers which would be harder to detect. Then what do we do?
>Stop accepting mail from our own remailers?

Basically, yes, except for signed letters from previously
authenticated pseudonyms.  This is a simple form of a positive
reputation system.  A kill fill is a negative reputation--'not that
person'.  A positive reputation rejects all but a particular set of
identities.

Much of the debate on cypherpunks magically incants 'reputation
systems' to solve all sorts of sticky problems, but none have ever
been implemented in software, except for killfiles, which are not
effective against disruption in an anonymous environment.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  A motivated individual trying
to disrupt a communications forum and who has to avoid a kill file
will be necessary to create the need for a positive reputation system.
Once the need is there, the software will follow.  LD could become the
most valuable participant in the endeavor of creating a positive
reputation system, namely, the irritant at the center of the pearl.

Let us encapsulate him well.

Eric

Eric <eric@ah.com> Hughes writes -

> Much of the debate on cypherpunks magically incants 'reputation
> systems' to solve all sorts of sticky problems, but none have ever
> been implemented in software, except for killfiles, which are not
> effective against disruption in an anonymous environment.

This is an interesting point within itself. Anon messages from
remailers such as <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> continually have the
same banner/header information, regardless of user (which in my
ideal anonymous environment is a GOO THING (tm)). Anon mail from
penet is account -ized and assigned -- not an ideal anonymous 
environment from my viewpoint.

The Net is still in its infancy, as far as I can assess. We will
all be much the historians, if the soothsayers are to be believed.

- Paul

One of my mischievous tentacles developed a mind of its own and
misbehaved. "Eric Hughes" said:  

> Much of the debate on cypherpunks magically incants 'reputation
> systems' to solve all sorts of sticky problems, but none have ever
> been implemented in software, except for killfiles, which are not
> effective against disruption in an anonymous environment.

Actually, I disagree. The Extropians list has an "::include" command
that can be used to specifically include only certain thread or
certain users (or any combination). I know for a fact that Dean
Tribble and Paul Baclace are doing an "::exclude all" and then a
selective "::include foo" to include certain threads and/or authors.

I would call this a classic example of a positive reputation system.

> Necessity is the mother of invention.  A motivated individual trying
> to disrupt a communications forum and who has to avoid a kill file
> will be necessary to create the need for a positive reputation system.
> Once the need is there, the software will follow.  LD could become the
> most valuable participant in the endeavor of creating a positive
> reputation system, namely, the irritant at the center of the pearl.
> 
> Let us encapsulate him well.

I agree. And I suggest the Extropians software is suitable for this.
It even used the Cypherpunks "::" syntax as its model, albeit with the
command on the same line as the "::'. My understanding is that this
software is available for our use--I will cc: Ray Cromwell on this
message to make sure he sees it (Harry Shapiro is still on this list,
I believe).

My main concern would be that the CPU demands on toad are too much.
Ray C. and Harry S. can tell us how many CPU seconds are needed to
process the Perl commands needed to filter; on a list with 500+
subscribers, some pressing needs to filter out a couple of addresses,
and an old machine (toad), I worry.

--Tim May, who generally finds it faster to hit "D" than to filter
(and, ironically, I keep all of the Detweiler/Pervert/S. Boxx/etc.
posts, both for archival value and because it's stuff I'll want to
reread in future years and perhaps use in a book I may write).


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

>> [...] none have ever
>> been implemented in software, except for killfiles, which are not
>> effective against disruption in an anonymous environment.

>Actually, I disagree. The Extropians list has an "::include" command
>that can be used to specifically include only certain thread or
>certain users (or any combination). I know for a fact that Dean
>Tribble and Paul Baclace are doing an "::exclude all" and then a
>selective "::include foo" to include certain threads and/or authors.

>I would call this a classic example of a positive reputation system.

It's a positive reputation system (+RS), albeit primitive, but the
reputation system (RS) as such is not in software but rather in the
minds of those who must explicitly include what they want to see.
What the extropians list sofware (ELS) is in this case, as software,
is an information system that can support a +RS, but not that system
itself.  The distinction is fine, and not always easy to see.

Now I was careful not to claim that RS's had never been implemented,
but rather never implemented in software.  The ELS is almost a +RS,
but not completely so.  A +RS must have a database of objects (people,
threads, topics, lists, etc.)  to be sure, and some sort of statement
about preferences about these objects, but database is not per se the
+RS.

The key that distinguishes an information system from a RS are the
rules of inference which connect the _preferences_ in the database to
_actions_ on the objects of the data.  The ELS does not contain
preferences at all but rather directly stores the actions on the
objects.  The connections between the preferences and the actions are
in the minds of the users of the ELS.

One can argue that the actions themselves represent the preferences,
but this is an argument to justify an existing design.  Ontologically
("what it is") preferences about objects and actions on objects are
different things; my attitude toward something is different than what
action I take toward it, although these may have been less
distinguishable when I was, say, fifteen.

Eric