Administrivia: the porn and advertising thread

[phil hunt]

(Incidently I am getting some of my email to this list rejected,
because I -- or rather, all Freeserve customers -- are on a spam
blacklist. I wonder if this one will get through?)


On Saturday 27 April 2002  7:22 pm, Richard Clayton wrote:
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> In article <02042717313302.18465@comuno>, phil hunt
> <philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>
> >Two questions I'd be interested in people's views on:
> >
> >(1) if everyone starts using crypto, will it be possible to effectively
> >limit the availability of any type of matter (such as child porn, or
> >for that matter unauthorised copies of music) over the net?
>
> yes ... the property that would give a problem would be anonymity. It
> doesn't really matter how much crypto there is if the source of the
> material can be traced.

Of course, crypto is useful in enabling anonymity servers. If Alice
sends a message to Bob through a chain of S1...Sn anonymity servers,
she can only be caught if all n of them keep log messages passing 
through, or are otherwise unsafe.

Are anonymity servers illegal in the UK? Even if they are, the Internet is
international, and I would be surprised if they are illegal everywhere in 
the world.

> >(2) if the answer to the first question is "no", will the authorities
> >eventually stop trying?
>
> no ... because they would sometimes catch people - achieving perfect
> anonymity is rather hard to do.

That's true. One would need to be careful and know what one was doing --
something that most computer users would find hard, since they don't know
much about computers.

Also there is the analogy with speeding: anti-speed laws were essentially 
impossible to enforce until there were widespread cameras, but the laws 
stayed on the books.

Why are things illegal, anyway? Because politicians want them to be.
And politicians will, in general, favour making things illegal whenever 
there is votes in it. So as long as the public wants child porn or 
unauthorised MP3s(*) to be illegal, they will be; regardless of whether
govmts think they can actuall catch law-breakers.

(*) in the case of things being illegal because that might harm companies' 
profits, politicans might also listen to those companies, as well as 
(or instead of) the public.

-- 
<"><"><"> Philip Hunt <philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <"><"><">
"I would guess that he really believes whatever is politically 
advantageous for him to believe." 
                        -- Alison Brooks, referring to Michael
                              Portillo, on soc.history.what-if