From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 05:13:32 PDT
To: rarachel@prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)
Subject: Re: PC Expo summary!!
In-Reply-To: <9407010136.AA03743@prism.poly.edu>
Message-ID: <9407011213.AA16156@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Arsen Ray Arachelian says:
> > rarachel@photon.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian):
> > >                   FEB 17  CYPHERPUNKS TRANSCRIPT
> > >     Copyright (C) 1994, cypherpunks@toad.com  All Rights Reserved.      
> >                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > I wonder how the courts will interpret that ;)
> 
> This will certainly put a nice toad up the NSA's ass.   Anyone reading this
> will see that the cypherpunks are a bunch of folk that stick together as a
> single entity whose purpose right now is to kill clipper.

That wasn't the topic of the discussion in question, actually. It was
largely just a discussion on cryptography in general and its
implications, slanted towards anarchists, who were the audiance being
addressed. Most of the population is extremely hostile to anarchism,
so from a PR point of view that talk isn't what you want. Also, it
unfairly makes it look like "cypherpunk" means "anarchist". Now, it
happpens that I am an anarchist, but that isn't what most people
associated with the term "cypherpunk" believe in, and it isn't fair to
paint them that way -- hell, many people on this mailing list are
overtly hostile to anarchism.

I don't want people to think you have to hate the idea of government
in order to like cryptography.

The copyright is also meaningless because a non-person (human or
corporate) cannot copyright something. Certainly an email address
can't hold a copyright. In any case I consider it a little odd that I
would not under your copyright be permitted to sell someone a copy of
my own words.

Lastly, I don't know what was on that disk exactly, but I've started
getting calls from random kooks about it. I find that a bit
disturbing. Did you leave my phone number on it or something?

Perry