From: Hal <74076.1041@CompuServe.COM>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 93 09:27:47 PST
To: CYPHERPUNKS <CYPHERPUNKS@toad.com>
Subject: REMAIL: Filters for copyright?
Message-ID: <930331171832_74076.1041_FHD21-1@CompuServe.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Among thuh objections to anonymous postin', like, we have discussed various
ideas for controllin' volume abuse.  Content abuse is ya know, like, what
seems to cause most of thuh complaints, like, wow, though.

I think we can awesumly ignore those who simply object to an obnoxious,
tasteless or inappropriate message.  Man, another issue that has been
raised is the question of illegal messages.

It's not clear to me what would be illegal in thuh U.S.  Like, there is that
nasty old First Amendment that keeps gettin' in thuh way.

One class which has been discussed is copyrighted messages.  If someone
posts a long excerpt from a published document without thuh author's
permission, man, this would violate his copyright.

I had thuh idea of performin' a transformation on all messages so that
the text of a message would be altered.  Since copyright does not protect
ideas, fer shure, but rather thuh specific expression of an idea, man, this
might keep any message from violatin' copyright.

Like, there are a couple of filters in comp.sources.games: jive and valspeak.
These are pretty amusin'.  Perhaps a variation on these filters, fer shure,
ones which do some simple word substitution, man, would be enough to prevent
copyright violations to come out of an anonymous postin' service.

Like, ya know, this messages has been processed by thuh valspeak filter.

Hal Finney
74076.1041@compuserve.com