From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 19:27:48 +0800
To: hfinney@shell.portal.com
Subject: Re:  Why does the state still stand:
Message-ID: <01I4SAIWANV28Y5EUK@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"hfinney@shell.portal.com"  "Hal" 16-MAY-1996 10:21:05.33

>From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
>> I did not
>> include offshore.com.ai in Anguilla due to its high cost; I consider anything
>> over 25$ a month to be impractical.

>Thanks very much for making this list.  However I would not be so quick
>to reject http://offshore.com.ai.  It is run by long-time Cypherpunk
>Vince Cate, apparently specifically for the kinds of purposes we are
>discussing.  His project was discussed in a recent issue of Wired, I
>think the May issue.  (I have no contact with Cate, and have never met
>him as far as I can recall.)

	I was originally creating this as a list of places for me to look at
for sponsoring a remailer, and then decided that the list might find it useful.
I would find over 25$ a month impractical. However, in the 2nd edition I'll
include http://offshore.com.ai, with a note on the cost (and on Vince Cate's
political orientation.)

>For doing something like running a remailer which will post material
>which is illegal and/or copyrighted in the U.S., you are going to need a
>service which can stand up to pressure.  Presumably some monetary
>incentive is going to be a necessity.  Of course by this standard $25 a
>month is pretty inconsequential.

	Yes. As I recall, there's supposed to be an ecash library coming out
soon. I trust that someone involved in remailers is planning on making up one
that charges ecash once those facilities are available? There's also the
deposit idea for ones that serve an end-posting function; I didn't have this
in mind when I created the list initially, again.

>One issue is whether these banking-secrecy countries like Anguilla are
>followers of the Berne convention or other international copyright
>regulations.  Banking secrecy and software piracy don't necessarily go
>hand in hand.  I hear a lot about copyright violations in China but not
>in the Caribbean.  So actually it isn't clear that this country is the
>right location for a remailer that can post arbitrary material.

	Good point. I'll try to look up on the Berne convention.

>As for the costs to the remailer operator, he simply passes those on to
>his customers.  I think in the long run onshore remailers will be forced
>to take measures to restrict copyright-violating posts.  So if your
>choice is between paying nothing and not getting your whistle-blowing
>message posted, or paying $10 and getting it out on the nets, then
>hopefully it is worth that much to you.

>We have discussed for-pay remailers and the consensus has been that no
>one would use them when others run for free.  However now I think the
>false premise is being exposed, that free remailers simply will not be
>able to run in the current mode for much longer.  Once a single remailer
>operator has been fined thousands of dollars because somebody posted some
>copyrighted message, I don't think you will find many people eager to
>sign up as operators.  So this dream of a volatile collection of
>remailers popping up and going away just doesn't work in my view.  Why
>would anyone offer a service knowing that he was exposing himself to
>liability like this?  It would be just a game of Russian roulette,
>waiting to see whether it is your remailer which gets the bullet in the
>form of a post which violates the copyright of someone with deep
>pockets.

	I've discussed this somewhat above, but whether one needs to charge
may depend on how one runs the remailer. If it only sends to other known
remailers (ideally only to other mixmaster remailers), and the traffic analysis
defeating features work properly, then it's going to be hard to charge you for
some mail going through the net that may not have even gone through you.
	In other words, we may get a division into two types of remailers:
	A. those that charge, and do send messages other than to other
		remailers; these may also be nym servers demanding a deposit,
		with a confirmation as to who's who via signatures
	B. those that don't charge, and don't send messages other than to
		other anonymous remailers.

	A combination of the above could certainly work, also; just charge for
messages going to other than other remailers.
	-Allen