From: Johan Helsingius <julf@penet.fi>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 03:55:18 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The Anonymous service needs your help.
Message-ID: <199310251050.AA25618@mail.eunet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Sorry to interrupt the Detweiler thread, but...

As of last week, my server has been sending the following message to active
users of my anonymous service. I am turning to you, fellow cypherpunks, not for
monetary support (albeit that is of course welcome, too) but to ask for ideas
on how to arrange the payment mechanism - and to avoid taxes, currency export
problems etc. 

Maybe I should seek the help of a non-profit organisation such as EFF to
handle the transfers?

	Julf

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Subject: The Anonymous service needs your help.

Hi! You have just used the anonymous server at anon.penet.fi. When I set it up,
almost a year ago, I definitely could not foresee how popular it would become.
It now has something like 45.000 registered users, wuth maybe 10.000 active
users. Thousands of mesages are handled each day.

Unfortunately, the popularity of the server might also be it's downfall. At
the start, it was easy to handle all the problems and the queries, and to
pay for the network connection. But now I spend 4-5 hours every day trying
to answer questions, fix problems and deal with abusers - but I keep getting
further and further behind on my mailbox. And the traffic is overloading the
64K international connection - I already had to cut out the binary postings.
It now costs me something close to USD 1500/month just to keep the machine
connected.

I'm afraid I can't afford the time and the money much longer. And unless
there suddenly turns up some benevolent big sponsor, the only hope for
survival for the service is contributions from individual users. If all the
10.000 active users would each contribute $5, it would pay for the costs
of running the service for a full year, as well as allowing me to employ one
or two part-time students to reply to mail queries, improve the service, and
report abuse - allowing me to concentrate on improving the software and dealing
with the abuse cases.

So I'm asking you - how much would you be willing to contribute? Use of the
server will always be free, but continuing the service needs soem funds.
At this stage, I only need to know how much you are willing to contribute -
$1, $5, $25, $100? The replies will determine the need to set up some
kind of money transfer system. Please send your replies to donations@penet.fi.

	Julf