From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 04:27:01 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: PRZ "battle lost"
Message-ID: <199601122000.MAA18622@netcom2.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



regarding PRZ,
SP wrote earlier that "we have gained nothing--the US can still harass
people over cryptographic algorithms".  

that's true, but that's a side effect of our legal system, not of our
secret government bureacracy (the NSA etc).

it has always been the case that someone with lots of money, time, and
lawyers can harass someone else in the courts without any leg to
stand on. the government does not have a monopoly on this capability,
and in fact they can arguably be shown to be a minor player when it
comes to what happens every day in the business world.

you can consume someone else's time and money significantly,
and scare them into submission, without ever even going to trial, through
pre-trial hearings and all that kind of thing.

is there an alternative? yes, but it involves fewer lawyers than are
in the US today.

however I don't see lawyers as the problem, but a symptom of something
deeper: the tendency of people to resort to legal action to settle
even trivial disputes.

I for example am aware of a case where someone threatened to sue a 
well-known kook on the internet for "libel" for material that was
clearly satire, and the supposed "libel" was committed--AGAINST A PSEUDONYM!!

so to me all the lawyers are not the problem, but the attitude in our
society that if you have been offended in some way, you should 
use the legal system to get "justice".

a rather immature kind of mentality, of course, but who am I to criticize
an infant for being an infant? I suppose its partly my mistake if I
run into an adult that is actually an infant and I don't realize it at
first.