[24836] in Cypherpunks
Re: Remailer Abuse
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Thomas)
Thu Jan 5 09:08:05 1995
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 08:51:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Joe Thomas <jthomas@access.digex.net>
To: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <m0rPrN8-0008ZFC@crynwr.crynwr.com>
On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Russell Nelson wrote:
> From: db@Tadpole.COM (Doug Barnes)
> Heh. An anonymous remailer paid for by credit card... there'd
> have to be an additional level of indirection for it to work,
> which would make the methods for tracking those who don't pay
> quite problematic.
> Why wouldn't it work? I plan on doing this, and I'll be selling lots
> of things besides a remailer, including lots of email traffic. So
> there won't be any effective way to find out who paid for access to my
> remailer.
Another thought: why couldn't you sell a book of "stamps" -- Magic Money
tokens -- and get paid for them using First Virtual? This would get
around two problems: the lack of anonymity using First Virtual, and the
fairly high 29-cent-per-transaction fee. You could sell a book of twenty
remailer stamps for a dollar, or something. I'd buy.
And it wouldn't make it too easy for people to use remailers without
paying. FV will still take an account away from someone who denies
legitimate charges too many times.
I guess there is the problem of Chaum's patents (and RSA's). Is there
anyplace where neither set of patents is valid, or where they'd be
practically unenforceable?
Joe
