From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 01:40:24 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Subject: Re: Building crypto archives worldwide to foil US-built Berlin Walls (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199812091324.HAA18021@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <366EA96D.B6E92992@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Choate wrote:
> 

> 
> > I don't see why you have to pose such severe selection criteria.
> 
> Because those are the issues that will determine success.

Let there be a large number of sites. If part of these fail, there
are others that are successful. (Compare evolution.)


> > If the 'economies', 'infrastructure' 'religon' and what not of the
> > countries do not (yet) affect crypto laws, why care about them? If
> 
> They effect crypto by defintion.

How, for example, can they affects the functioning of an archive, if 
you get the right people and machine?


> 
> > at a later point of time some of these countries do have crypto laws,
> 
> If they don't have crypto laws it's likely they don't have a lot of other
> sorts of laws and the social and economic structure those laws imply. This
> makes it very difficult to operate a archive with any sort of stability or
> protection.

It is not true that there are more gangsters in the small than in 
the powerful nations. What do you mean by stability (which has plenty 
of meanings)?


> 
> > well, simply close down the archive there and let the sites in the
> 
> And what about the costs and effects incurred by that person you so glibly
> throw away?

I suppose that running an archive is a voluntary (self-sacrificing)
act of a benovolent person ready to offer his service to the public. 
If his site has to close down sometime later, he has to accept his 
bad luck. Why should you care so much minutely for him? (And you
say below that the money problem is trivial!)


> There is NO financial problem. It costs hundreds of dollars to purchase the
> hardware. The connectivity is less than $100 a month in most parts of the
> world. It simply isn't expensive or economicaly challenging.

So it rests to find people who have the time and (that small) money 
and energy to run sites and some countries that aren't going to
have strict cryto laws in the near future. THAT, however, is
difficult, I believe.

M. K. Shen