A question about the new ISP ruling and email...

Hi,

I was pondering the draconian implications of the requirement to register
ISP's. Would an email only site be an ISP under these regulations?

What I had in mind was a box sitting here on a link to the Internet and
several local dial-ins. When a user logged in they could start pine, elm,
slip, or ppp. It would support inbound only telnet. The only commands that
would execute besides the above would be exit, quit, bye. There would not
need to be any directory access or related issues. The only storage avaiable
would be quotas on email buffer size.

Would such a commercial entity require registry to be protected?

I have to talk with a lawyer and find out if TAG needs registered. If so
then I'd be interested in participating in a civil liberties suit.


    ____________________________________________________________________
 
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On 7 Nov 1998 13:50:20 -0600, Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com> wrote:

>
>Would such a commercial entity require registry to be protected?

A more interesting question is whether anonymous remailers will need to
register.  I suspect that there will be a challenge to this law that will
lead judges to define what an ISP is.  That definition will problably be
something like:

	Any service that allows users to connect to, send, or receive
information to/from other sites or any site acting as a conduit for users
to communicate with others.

Already, companies like Newscene and Newsguy (usenet only services) believe
that they will need to register, though they aren't technically ISPs, as
most people would think of them.

Is an anymous remailer needs to register, what will the implications be?

-- Phelix

On Sat, 7 Nov 1998 phelix@vallnet.com wrote:

> Is an anymous remailer needs to register, what will the implications be?

Ok, if there's been a URL posted explaining what the law says about
registration, I missed it.

Being an owner of a cybercafe, I imagine I should see what the law has to
say.

- b!X (Guerrilla Techno-fetishist @ GEEK Force)

>A more interesting question is whether anonymous remailers will need to
>register.  I suspect that there will be a challenge to this law that will

I think they will. The brief period of loose controls over communication
media is coming to an end. State correctly identified the problem and
now it is effectively being dealt with.

As printed mass media enjoyed short period of "freedom" at the beginning
of the century, so did internet in last five-six years or so.

All identifiable concentration nodes (news, ftp & http servers,
remailers, dial-in access points etc.) will eventually be censored. It
is interesting to note that today's network topology is more vulnerable
to censorship than UUCP was.

The only (partial) solution is to raise the cost of censoring by
requiring one-to-one effort. In other words, serverless world in which
end users directly exchange (preferably encrypted) packets over common
carriers. Hint: *Bsd + IPSec + uucp over IP and then merge in Crowds
technology where real-time relaying is needed.

Actually ... cypherpunks is a good choice for the first port.

The Barnman