From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 03:55:41 PST
To: nzook@bga.com (Nathan Zook)
Subject: Re: Cooperation
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9502060545.E19655-0100000@ivy.bga.com>
Message-ID: <199502061154.DAA11069@netcom15.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Nathan Zook wrote:

> But there is a major difference between active cooperation and agreeing to
> a standard.  Active cooperation is just that--something which cannot be
> automated, or which involves automated judgement decisions.  I claim that
> my ideas are merely standards.  A standard which might even be extendable
> into the dominions of a hostile government.

Yes! Standards are not collusion. In fact, standards can lessen the
amount of ad hoc contact needed between remailer operators, and thus
reduce somewhat the prospects for compromise and collusion.

Robust standards are also helpful for building "hands-off" remailers,
in which remailer account owners take a hands-off approach, possibly
even to the point of creating the accounts and then never checking
again.

The proposals I've made, sometimes called a "Remailer's Guild," were
not for a cabal, but for a market standard that would tend to reward
those who follow certain standards and punish (all in a market sense)
those who flout standards just for the sake of being different.

(The real idea was to get some progress on deciding on some features
and terminology, to the point that a "Release" version could be
produced, like PGP 2.6, for example.)

It may be that such convergence on standards can be done without any
contact at all, just through market forces and things like pinging
scripts. The remailer analog of a self-healing network, rerouting
around brain-damaged sites.

--Tim May, posting at 3:55 a.m. because this is my jet lag rebound
period, in which I can't go to sleep because I slept for 11 hours upon
my arrival at home


-- 
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