From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 94 12:19:25 PST
To: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Subject: Re: We are ALL guests (except Eric)
In-Reply-To: <199411301931.LAA02490@netcom8.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199411302019.MAA28634@netcom20.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



James A. Donald wrote:
> 
> James A. Donald wrote:
> > > The extropians list claimed to be managed in accord with the
> > > principles of justice.  Eric makes no such grandiose claim.
> 
> Timothy C. May writes
> > This is a straw man, as I have made no mention of "justice."
> 
> But the extropian list, which you cite as precedent, did make
> that claim.

Strange logic. I indeed mentioned experiments and debate on that list,
but hardly transferred any mention of "justice" or "fairness" on
_that_ list to _this_ list.

> You also make the claim that Eric does not own the list.
> 
> The question of ownership is only relevant to questions of what is 
> just and fair.

First, I don't accept this last point: issues of "ownership" and
"control" are more related to policy, access, and rule enforcement
than to issues of "what is just and fair." I rarely argue in terms of
justice and fairness, so please don't imply that I have done so.

Second, my discussion of the "ownership" and "whose house" issues was
more nuanced than a simple "You also make the claim that Eric does not
own the list."

(To elaborate on this, I claim that the Cypherpunks list emerged in
1992 as a gathering/meeting/club/gang of folks with converging
interests in the topics at hand. We began to meet, to converse. A
mailing list was created by Hughes and Daniel, running on the machine
owned by Gilmore, to meet various and diverse purposes. That among
these were the pursuit of digital liberty and cyberspatial happiness.
Common sense tells us that the operator(s) of the list--the "owners"
of toad, the listadmin, etc.--have a kind of caretaker arrangement.
The list could move, could become an unmoderated newsgroup, etc. I'm
not advocating this, just rejecting the "Foobar owns the list--if
Foobar tells us to wear funny hats when we post to the list, we'd damn
well better do so." There are more nuances to the issues of
"ownership" involved.)

> If you claim that Eric does not own the list then you claim that it
> is unjust for him to change the rules without consent.

This chain of logic falls because the premise is false. Further, the
term "own" is not well-defined, as just discussed.

> If I claim he owns the list then I claim that it perfectly proper
> for him to change the rules without consent, regardless of whether
> or not he has a good, or even sane, reason.

For the second time in pointing this out, I used the term "unwise."

Face it, there are places where syllogistic reasoning like you are
using is useless. Especially when no mention of "justice and fairness"
was made. I think it's unwise for a listadmin, or a site owner, to
impose rules about the wearing of funny hats, for example. The
mandaory signing of posts is not quite in this category, but I still
think it unwise.

(Phil Zimmermann does not, as is well known, often use PGP. He rightly
considers it a drag on his productivity. Not everyone has the same
connectivity: some are on CompuServe, some on Prodigy, some on AOL,
etc. It would seem "unwise" to, for example, exclude from this forum
someone who cannot reasonably sign or encrypt all of their messages.)


> My point was that the ownership debate on the extropians list
> was a result of the questionable and grandiose claim of extropian
> justice, and is therefore not a relevant precedent for the 
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ownership of lists in general.
> 
> You raised the issue of the extropian precedent.   The extropian
> precedent is irrelevant because the *extropian* list management
> made the claim of "extropian justice".

I never cited it as "precedent," legal or otherwise. I mentioned the
debate which had ensued on that list. Jeesh!

> *Relevant* precedent and custom indicate that the list is Erics
> private property, and he may do as he pleases, wisely or unwisely.
> 
> Such actions are morally neutral, except in that wisdom itself is
> good.

What moral claims did I make?

The "private property" argument is more murky than you claim. Last I
checked, John Gilmore owns toad and the disk space used, and he pays
for the Net connections. Does this make him the owner?

Because of these nuances--which is why I mentioned the Extropian list
experiences--it is not useful to make propertarian arguments when
policy changes are being planned.

--Tim May

(I am not getting list traffic right now, presumably due to the Netcom
overload problem, and so am only seeing messages I am directly copied
on. And maybe not all of them, either.  Why this is so has to do with
how toad tries to connect with Netcom's mail machine--Hugh Daniel and
John Gilmore have both tried to get this fixed, claiming Netcom is not
properly handling mail. No resolution.))



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