From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 16:05:26 -0800 (PST)
To: unicorn@schloss.li
Subject: Re: Secrecy: My life as a nym. (Was: nym blown?)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.94.961113155458.2905D-100000@polaris>
Message-ID: <199611131722.RAA00682@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li> writes:
> Vald Nuri <vznuri@netcom.com> writes:
> > actually, I heard this interesting rumor that Unicorn threatened
> > to sue someone who "defamed" his pseudonym. quite an amusing
> > story if true, given his last essay that talks about how he
> > created the pseudonym in the first place to avoid exactly what
> > it accomplishes, i.e. dissociating his professional identity
> > from the "lunatic anarchist" writhing beneath the surface.
> 
> You fail to not that dissociating one identity from another requires the
> existence of two identities.  Is the second any less entitled to
> protection than the first?
> 
> [...]
>
> There is no morality other than the morality of the market.  I submit that
> we do not need a central authority to dictate morality.  We need only
> individual views of morality.  There will only be as large a pornography
> market as there is a demand.  Ditto for narcotics, guns.  If the market
> believes that porn is immoral, customers, by their own moral decision,
> will reduce the market to nothing.  Of course this will not happen
> in the near future because the cost of this moral choice exceeds the
> benefit for many customers.
> 
> Why is use of the legal system any different?  If it is so wrong for me to
> use the legal system as it stands, and if I am to be the subject of
> criticism for the conduct, then aren't the critics imposing their moral
> view on me?  Isn't this what libertarian cypherpunks dislike in the first
> place?

The problem for me when people talk about suing people for slander in
net discussions is that it involves governments and laws impinging on
the internet.  Other examples of legislation interacting with the
internet have been entirely negative: some people have called for
legislation to stop "spamming", legislation to restrict pornography,
"indecent speech", etc, etc The internet in my view is best off with
the least possible government or legal interference.

It is difficult to see ways for you to stop people intentionally
damaging your nym's reputation capital however.  Aside from the more
speech to fight the speech, you are left with the reputation capital
mechanisms.

If someone with a low reputation slanders someone with a high
reputation, this reduces the impact of the slander, and clueful
readers one presumes regard the derogatory statements on the part of
the slanderer as suspect.

However this still leaves the less clueful (the newbies to a
discussion group for instance), and also the chance that others are
still slightly affected by these statements.

Something else I might suggest, if a nym becomes too valuable to risk
using for posting to flame prone discussion groups, perhaps a lower
value nym could be used in such discussions.  This has disadvantages,
in that you have to start over building reputation capital, and so
forth.  But such is life.  You have another nym which you used for the
DCSB talk, and one presumes other ones for use in real world business.
You use nyms accordingly.

> If the government is going to hand me the means to curb conduct which may
> be harmful to me, why should I refuse to use it on some "moral" grounds.
> (The moral grounds might consist of "well it's not a nice thing to do." 
> but other than that, I am at a loss to identify them precisely).

There are plenty of people with a wont to sue people for all sorts of
things.  Many of them would do so on much less grounds than perhaps
you might.  Some get pretty groundless, in fact.  Colin James III
being one example.  (Erk, may be I ought to be using a nym here, I
hear he scans newsgroups, but hopefully not mailing lists)

It stifles discussion to bring real monetary threats behind peoples
words.  It is also in some sense a call to outside authority,
something which I resent.  For instance many of the people CJ III has
harrased from my reading have suffered considerable inconvenience.  No
need to mention a certain pseudo-religious organisation which has made
extensive use of law suits for the purpose of harrassing it's
dissenters.

Now I'm sure the idea of slander law suits is to stop the slander,
recompense for damages etc. but it is a thing prone to misuse, and
balanced in favour of those with money.

Someone who is using a nym, and for purposes including avoiding the
possibility of frivolous law suits, to suggest suing someone who
slanders this nym is not that productive I think.  The slanderer may
also adopt the same strategy, and adopt their own nym!  

Nym sues nym.  I think not.  An alternate view of slander law suits is
as a way to encourage the use of Nyms.  Certainly the dissenters of
the unnamed pseudo religious have learnt the value of nyms, remailers
and so forth.  There are distinct advantages to nyms.

Adam
--
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)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`