Re: Why does the state still stand:

From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
> I did not
> include offshore.com.ai in Anguilla due to its high cost; I consider anything
> over 25$ a month to be impractical.
> 
> _Country/Area_  _Name_                          _Email_
> Anguilla        Cable & Wireless                webmaster@candw.com.ai
> [...]

Thanks very much for making this list.  However I would not be so quick
to reject http://offshore.com.ai.  It is run by long-time Cypherpunk
Vince Cate, apparently specifically for the kinds of purposes we are
discussing.  His project was discussed in a recent issue of Wired, I
think the May issue.  (I have no contact with Cate, and have never met
him as far as I can recall.)

For doing something like running a remailer which will post material
which is illegal and/or copyrighted in the U.S., you are going to need a
service which can stand up to pressure.  Presumably some monetary
incentive is going to be a necessity.  Of course by this standard $25 a
month is pretty inconsequential.

One issue is whether these banking-secrecy countries like Anguilla are
followers of the Berne convention or other international copyright
regulations.  Banking secrecy and software piracy don't necessarily go
hand in hand.  I hear a lot about copyright violations in China but not
in the Caribbean.  So actually it isn't clear that this country is the
right location for a remailer that can post arbitrary material.

As for the costs to the remailer operator, he simply passes those on to
his customers.  I think in the long run onshore remailers will be forced
to take measures to restrict copyright-violating posts.  So if your
choice is between paying nothing and not getting your whistle-blowing
message posted, or paying $10 and getting it out on the nets, then
hopefully it is worth that much to you.

We have discussed for-pay remailers and the consensus has been that no
one would use them when others run for free.  However now I think the
false premise is being exposed, that free remailers simply will not be
able to run in the current mode for much longer.  Once a single remailer
operator has been fined thousands of dollars because somebody posted some
copyrighted message, I don't think you will find many people eager to
sign up as operators.  So this dream of a volatile collection of
remailers popping up and going away just doesn't work in my view.  Why
would anyone offer a service knowing that he was exposing himself to
liability like this?  It would be just a game of Russian roulette,
waiting to see whether it is your remailer which gets the bullet in the
form of a post which violates the copyright of someone with deep
pockets.

Hal

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Thu, 16 May 1996, Hal wrote:

> We have discussed for-pay remailers and the consensus has been that no
> one would use them when others run for free.  However now I think the
> false premise is being exposed, that free remailers simply will not be
> able to run in the current mode for much longer.  Once a single remailer
> operator has been fined thousands of dollars because somebody posted some
> copyrighted message, I don't think you will find many people eager to
> sign up as operators.  So this dream of a volatile collection of
> remailers popping up and going away just doesn't work in my view.  Why
> would anyone offer a service knowing that he was exposing himself to
> liability like this?  It would be just a game of Russian roulette,
> waiting to see whether it is your remailer which gets the bullet in the
> form of a post which violates the copyright of someone with deep
> pockets.

It is possible for someone to operate an anonymous remailer anonymously.
Just get a UNIX shell account under a fake name, pay with cash, and set up
the remailing software.  The identity of the operator of such a remailer
would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover.

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"The concept of normalcy is just a conspiracy of the majority" -me


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> It is possible for someone to operate an anonymous remailer anonymously.
> Just get a UNIX shell account under a fake name, pay with cash, and set up
> the remailing software.  The identity of the operator of such a remailer
> would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover.

Thousands of users want to do just that,
but can't code, which is currently 
nessessary for effiency and security.

Do you want to help us out?

I can do casual business and legal 
research, but source code is
as good as cyphertext to me.


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> markm@voicenet.com              | finger -l for PGP key 0xe3bf2169
> http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348
> ((2b) || !(2b))                 | Old key now used only for signatures
> "The concept of normalcy is just a conspiracy of the majority" -me